A Bruce Springsteen show is not really like any other concert you’ve ever been to. The types of people who go to Springsteen shows are the types of people who only go to Springsteen shows. They love the Boss unconditionally, and thus, they find little reason to love anyone else. I’m always skeptical of live acts that have these sorts of audiences. I feel this way because bands with such devout followings usually end up becoming over-rehearsed shades of their former selves, listlessly regurgitating the hits for hungry audiences. I wanted Springsteen to be different, but I doubted that he could be. When you’ve performed "Born to Run" every single night for thirty-five years it must start to get a little tired. After all these years, surely you’ve started to lose touch with why you wrote those words in the first place. At what point do you stop feeling that same magic you felt when you first wrote the tune?

On this night, Bruce and the E Street Band saved "Born to Run" for the encore. Of course, they absolutely nailed it. Right around the time they kicked into the song’s epic breakdown, I began to understand why Bruce still plays this song, night after night: its because performing this song is what he does, and his consciously embracing the act of doing this is what makes Bruce such a dynamic performer. The joy us concertgoers get from seeing Bruce live comes from an almost spiritual belief that it is not performance we are witnessing, but the true expression of an individual’s authentic self. If anything, the manner with which Bruce carries himself onstage bears more resemblance to a preacher than it does a rock n’ roll singer. His music is not the vehicle through which he engages in performance; rather, it is the manifestation of the powerful faith he has in rock n’ roll as a communicative act. Much like a preacher charismatically illustrating the commitment to his vocation, Bruce’s onstage prowess lets us know that rock n’ roll was not his choice, it was chosen for him.

Photo Courtesy of reader2.com

In Performance Studies, Richard Schechner describes the four states of performance: being, doing, showing doing, and explaining showing doing. ‘Being’ refers to existence itself. ‘Doing’ is the act of one’s ‘being’ expressing his or her authentic self through performance. ‘Showing doing’ is the act of performance that refers to the process of ‘doing’ by highlighting the separation between ‘being’ and performance. ‘Showing doing’ is probably the most prominent state, as it refers to the individual who knowingly adopts a foreign persona for the sake of performance. Stage actors, for instance, are always ‘showing doing.’ Whenever dramatic performances are particularly enthralling, it is because the performer is acting so convincingly unlike their actual ‘being.’ Finally, Schechner identifies ‘explaining showing doing’ as “a reflexive effort to comprehend the world of performance and the world as performance.” (22) In other words, ‘explaining showing doing’ is neither the act of one’s ‘being’ expressing oneself, nor is it the act of one’s ‘being’ performing in spite of one’s self. ‘Explaining showing doing’ reflects a state of performance that is more about the performative environment that is enacted.

With performers who are ‘doing’, Schechner is referring to those whose performance illustrates an extension of one’s ‘being.’ Thus, there exists the expectation that the performer is not embodying an external ‘being’, but positioning their authentic ‘being’ in the realm of live experience. What makes the Bruce Springsteen live experience so palatable is being in the presence of his ‘doing’. His persona is that of the American everyman, the rugged kid from Jersey who never abandoned his roots. The assumption is that this cultural position grants him a credible perspective on American life with which he translates to live audiences. Springsteen need not adopt a foreign guise in order to mobilize audiences, for it is the process of his ‘doing’ that allows his performance to thrive.

Of course, you could argue that since Springsteen is now wildly past his heyday, Springsteen is no longer Springsteen being himself, but a performer projecting his former authentic self onto contemporary audiences. Yet, this argument seems unreasonable considering how remarkably unlikable Bruce was throughout the 1990’s. While likely the result of a middle-aged image crisis, ‘90’s Bruce faced a drastic decline in popularity that ultimately signified a personal shift from ‘doing’ to ‘showing doing’. Following the massive success of 1984’s Born in the USA, Bruce began to lose touch with the authentic self that propelled him into mega-stardom in the first place. Instead, he spent most of the 1990’s striving to maintain this mega-stardom by performing as a heavily calculated, rock-star version of himself. He was, essentially, performing Bruce rather than simply being Bruce. When nobody bought it, he returned to what made him successful in the first place: he reunited his hometown band and returned to performing in his more natural and spontaneous manner. Post-1990’s Springsteen performs on his own terms, which includes demonstrating an unwillingness to let his ‘being’ succumb to the external demands of show business.

Schechner outlines that the act of ‘showing doing’ is ‘pointing to, underlining, and displaying doing.’ Springsteen alienated audiences in the 90’s because he was no longer ‘doing’ nor was he even properly ‘showing doing’. He continued to confidently perform under a hyper-real rock star guise but failed to recognize that he no longer actually was this person. His resulting performances were the products of obvious overcompensation: overtly masculine, conventionally rock n’ roll, and fully representative of a performer painfully out of touch with himself. At the time, meaningful performances constantly eluded Bruce, as he found himself unable to clarify his being in the process of performing. When you think of performers like Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie, or Alice Cooper, ‘showing doing’ is the vehicle for creating a spectacle out of the differentiation between performer and ‘being’. Ziggy Stardust, for instance, functioned as an adopted persona designed to evoke the absence of Bowie’s ‘being’ in favour of performative icon.

The sort of unparalleled excitement seen at Springsteen shows is a lot like how concertgoers react to seeing the Arcade Fire live. The last time I saw them live, there was a constant degree of undeniable energy in the room, likely the result of their reputation of excellence, but also that sort of nervousness that comes from knowing you might be about to witness something great. Arcade Fire shows, however, are very much unlike Bruce in their functionality and presentation. For one, the band consistently performs in uniform attire (whether this be their traditional black and whites, or their more recent western wardrobe), an obviously conspicuous choice designed to signify a formal shift from separate individuals to a collective performance unit. Their wildly energetic over-the-top performances do everything short of shaking you by the shoulders and scream “YOU ARE WATCHING A ROCK BAND.” (This is, of course, unless each band member completes all menial off-stage tasks with the same overwhelming determination and excitement - which part of me wishes they did). The show’s visual absurdity is crucial to the Arcade Fire experience because it evokes that passion commonly associated with ‘doing’. Yet, by dawning uniform garb and dressing the stage up with deliberately engaging over-the-top antics, it is easy to recognize that this is not a band trying to present their authentic beings through ‘doing’, but one that is addressing the appealing nature of individuals performing in their most impassioned state.

But this is not necessarily ‘showing doing’, either. For the band to be ‘showing doing’, they would have to be consciously addressing the divide between their performative spectacle and their authentic selves. Their spectacle, however, is not dependent on ‘being’ at all. The Arcade Fire use performance not to highlight the existence or the absence of ‘being’, but to establish a performance spectacle devoid of ‘being’ altogether. In the process, they expose how calculated ‘doing’ and ‘showing doing’ actually is, and how contemporary audiences are often able to harbour a heightened awareness of performative ‘being’ that often renders both ‘doing’ and ‘showing doing’ boring and uninteresting. The Arcade Fire’s method of performance instead functions as a very simple, yet constant reminder that we are, in fact, watching a rock band.

On the Neon Bible tour, the band performed inside a semicircle of tall horizontal light posts at the stage’s forefront and a curved row of small, circular video screens displaying grainy show footage and an array of graphics and video snippets. The setup placed symbolic restraint on the band, keeping them contained within the view of the audience’s gaze. Their relative confinement further signified the context of their existence as performers: On stage, they, the performers, served only the purpose of performing a live spectacle for audiences. The use of video screens augmented this notion, as they equated the band with objects that suspend the viewer in observation rather than ones designed to simply enhance the performance. The entire setup was a conspicuous nod to the fact that a performance was taking place and that concertgoers were also performing their role as the audience. Rather than dominating the audience’s gaze, the band performed within it, positioning themselves in such a way that facilitated the act of ‘explaining showing doing’.

Fans love Arcade Fire shows because they exist without pretense, they engage with the communicative functionality of the spectacle rather than pretending to avoid it. In the process they remain gloriously rock n’ roll yet entirely aware that they are so. As a result, they’re neither striving for irony nor are they cringingly earnest. The Arcade Fire achieve a revelatory sort of honesty that postmodern culture often considers unattainable in an age of heightened cultural awareness. Even when singer Win Butler steps off stage to sing with the audience, as he does most nights, it is not to extend his authority and shove microphones in people’s faces. His destruction of the fourth wall is a jubilant renegotiation of authority that actively posits the concert spectacle as total performance of both performers and spectators alike. He yells and screams and points his fists to the sky, but he never seems to get sick of doing this. Why? Because he doesn’t have to ‘do’ anything at all. That’s our job as audience members, just as long as we don’t get sick of it.

Works cited

Performance Studies. Richard Schechner. Routledge 2002.

Though Bee Thousand is entirely serious about its rock n’ roll content, its lo-fi medium strives to assert a more humorous and flippant tone. This disparity between Bee Thousand’s audible manifestation and tone of its content creates the central territory in which irony locates itself. While it’s lo-fi medium seems like it should express something scrappier and entirely less serious, GBV’s emphatic use of its sonic convention suggests that despite its shortcomings, it is able to express as much, if not more, than the traditionally comprehensible, high budget rock n’ roll medium. The appeal of lo-fi, then, is not in our appreciation for imperfection, but in the ironic appreciation we develop for art that demonstrates one thing, yet says something entirely different. Without establishing these oppositional qualities, lo-fi is nothing more than an aesthetic choice that struggles to translate into more than the novelty of its medium.

Photo by Scott Thomas Moroz

Lo-fi music is a lot like contemporary film intentionally filmed in black and white. What makes it interesting is not its intrinsic black and white qualities, but its intentional lack of colour in an age of advanced filmmaking technology. Once the audience is able to surpass the film’s technological shortcomings, the expectation is that they will locate the ironic disparity between the contemporary film and its seemingly out-of-date medium. A good example of this is Clerks, the Kevin Smith film about the unspectacular nuances of having the seemingly dead-end position of running a New Jersey convenience store. Clerks, released in 1994 and filmed entirely in black and white, is based on a period in Smith’s life in which he actually worked at a New Jersey convenience store. Though Clerks is designed to resemble a recent real life period, its black and white presentation prevents us from assuming that this is so. Rather than immersing us in the more lifelike world of colour, Clerks suspends us in a black and white classic-film gaze that acts as a constant reminder that what we see is distinctly less real than what is actually happening. Had Clerks been filmed in regular colour, it likely would have been less of a spectacularly ironic depiction of boring life and more of simply an unspectacular depiction of boring life.

With Bee Thousand as its primary catalyst, lo-fi has become less of a novelty and far more of a credible medium since the album’s release, also in 1994. While it’s certainly not the first example of a popular lo-fi recording (Springsteen’s Nebraska probably deserves this accolade), Bee Thousand unquestionably stands as the genre’s most celebrated artistic achievement. This, I would argue, has less to do with the songs themselves than it does with the album’s overall flawless mobilization of irony. But just as Bee Thousand exemplified a genre’s core cultural sensibility, it deluded the potential for future artists to achieve the same level of unparalleled spontaneity. In other words, lo-fi is now certainly more of a calculated expression and far less of a creative risk. This is less anybody’s fault than it is the natural progression of cutting-edge art gradually becoming more homogeneous as the medium becomes more commonplace. It’s probably worth noting that in 1999 Guided by Voices traded in their lo-fi sound for a much safer recording endeavor with the Cars’ Ric Ocasek. The resulting album, Do the Collapse, was a colossal flop. Strangely, lo-fi’s growth in credibility seemed to have a backwards effect on GBV. The band broke up in 2004 with frontman Robert Pollard embarking on a relatively successful solo career. It’s probably also worth noting that in 2005 Pollard released a comedy record titled Relaxation of the Asshole. While this is in no way significant to the rest of this article, it’s very much completely awesome.

Though lo-fi continues to become a more palatable term to throw around when describing bands, it remains massively underqualified in describing their live show. Frustratingly enough, this is central to my limited knowledge of both Wavves and Japandroids, the two bands I would be seeing on Friday night of this year’s NXNE festival. I have no choice but to make do, and hope that these artists’ lo-fi tendencies are about more than just an affinity for cheap, novel recording choices. (Wavves were preceded by a set from a band called The Happy Hollows, a ruthlessly energetic band from Los Angeles. I caught half of their set and actually wished I’d been able to see it all.)

A band’s lo-fi aesthetic should be representative of more than just their manifest sound qualities. If this were the case lo-fi would be an entirely superficial descriptor, failing to address the ironic appeal central to lo-fi as a communicative medium. For instance, Guided by Voices, an understandably lo-fi band, would often employ an array of rock n’ roll theatrics in their live shows, including excessive drinking, smoking, windmill guitar strums and Roger Daltrey-esque microphone-swings. At the time of Bee Thousand’s release, frontman Pollard was nearly forty-years old and just recently out of his job as an elementary schoolteacher. Not your typical rock n’ roll band. Yet, the fact that their live show was so unapologetically rock n’ roll seemed like adequate compensation for their remarkably un-rock n’ roll personas. Having a group of middle-aged suburban dudes act like classic rock royalty was not simply mere novelty, but the perfect extension of Bee Thousand’s ironic lo-fi expression.

Wavves, on the other hand, are a young, much-hyped band from San Diego, California. Lead singer Nathan Williams writes hook-heavy, pop-punk songs and records them directly into his Macbook’s internal microphone. Their resulting lo-fi recordings ooze heavy doses of both destructiveness and exuberance. I figured the live show would be a lot like their lo-fi recordings – exciting, energetic and rough around the edges. Even before they’ve played a note, I was already mesmerized by the eight-foot-tall cardboard cutouts of green ghouls they’ve placed on each side of the stage. I did, however, figure this to be a strange choice. Their live show already seemed a lot less accidental than their supposedly spontaneous and haphazard recordings.

By the time their scheduled eleven o’clock start time rolled around, the band was still soundchecking. Williams was demanding more reverb in his microphone while the drummer told mostly unfunny jokes akin to late-90s Blink-182 stage banter. By the time the band finally kicked into a tune, the energy was high and the room got pretty raucous. Despite finally riding some momentum, Wavves brought everything to a halt after the first song, and subsequently every song after that, and continued sharing their grating humour with us. This frustrated me, primarily because their live show seemed to lack all the overexcited qualities that made their lo-fi recorded output so appealing. Instead, the guys just came off looking like a bunch of brats trying to piss everyone off. Constantly toggling room dynamics is an admirable slacker-rock strategy if you allow your songs to set an unchallengeable tone. Unfortunately, Wavves were clinging to their banter as though it were the primary spectacle, therefore marginalizing the strength of their actual songs.

Based on their recordings alone, lo-fi seems like the adequate vehicle for Wavves to emphasize their youthful energy and destructiveness. By pitting their firepower against seemingly oppositional recording circumstances, Wavves come across as a powerfully urgent force on record. Their live show, however, suggests their whole aesthetic is little more than novel choice. That is because on stage, Wavves strive to distance themselves from a room of could-be supporters rather than use their songs to whip everyone into an absolute frenzy. Ultimately, their lo-fi sound is less indicative of urgency and instead painfully symbolic of a band perfectly content with alienating themselves as a means of reaffirming their self-appointed superiority. Rather than using lo-fi as a means of highlighting greater ironic subtext, Wavves’ lo-fi expression appears shallowly fun and self-absorbed.

Japandroids - Photo by Scott Thomas Moroz

For Japandroids to follow up Wavves intentionally staggered and inconsistent spectacle was a lot like a major league batter expecting a series of hard curveballs and instead seeing only lofty softballs. I’d listened to Japandroids’ Post-Nothing a few times before the show and couldn’t help but feel that its heavy dose of earnest garage-rock was exactly what this room needed. Yet, I certainly remained dubious. What I loved about Post-Nothing is how it made Japandroids’ guitar and drum combo appear as full and large as a regular-sized band. Part of this I figured to be due to the album’s limited sonic scope. The instrumental and vocal production is consistently raw, and engineered to peak whenever lead singer Brian King decides scream his face off. Whatever Post-Nothing lacks in sonic perfection it makes up for in sheer attitude and tone of delivery. Despite sounding like a dirty party record, Post-Nothing is desperately sincere in its discussion of adolescent uncertainty and the tribulations of being young, bored and jaded in your hometown. In many ways its attitude/presentation dichotomy is similar to that of Bee Thousand, wherein the limited sonic scope enhances the album’s content by developing an appealing degree of irony.

When Japandroids assembled on stage around midnight, King quickly identified himself, his bandmate (drummer David Prowse), their collective moniker and their hometown. Introduction over. No bullshit (softball already sailing into left-center bleachers). It was hard to tell if his charisma was natural or the result of non-stop touring. Either way, his blistering urgency cleared the air of whatever frustration remained in the room. Clearly, I was no longer doubtful. Japandroids sounded similar on stage to how they sound on record – bleedingly loud and ready to push the limits of their medium to the brink. King spent most of the show hammering out open chords in front of a curiously giant wall of amps. While constantly spitting all over the stage, he frantically leapt on and off a conspicuously placed riser in front of Prowse’s kickdrum. While Post-Nothing thrives by having you believe Japandroids’ overwhelming energy is merely the result of a loud band pinned against a lo-fi guise, their live show operates as a means of proving otherwise. Japandroids’ rock n’ roll presence is positively undeniable. This, of course, only enhances Post-Nothing as an ironic depiction of a very powerful and perfectly capable rock n’ roll band choosing to deliver their content through an intentionally underqualified lo-fi medium. While Post-Nothing or Bee Thousand may appear novel on the surface, it is their careful use of irony that encourage us to look beyond what we normally want to perceive as imperfections.

The Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over tour is the epitome of the reunion gimmick – an overwrought spectacle of a wildly over-the-hill band content parodying themselves into pop culture oblivion. But we can’t really fault the Eagles, can we? By the end of the 1970s the Eagles were probably the biggest band in the universe. It’s tough to downplay a reunion when you penned "Hotel California," or when your greatest hits compilation is one of the highest selling records of all time. Even their 1980 breakup needed to be underlined by Don Henley’s epic declaration that a reunion would only occur “when hell freezes over.” If a reunion had to happen, the Eagles were going to play it up as much as humanly possible.

Cleverly enough, when the Eagles did actually reunite in 1994, they named the tour after Henley’s cheeky claim. While this may have been a bold move for a lesser band, The Eagles had no qualms about their fame. Calling the tour Hell Freezes Over was symbolic of their shameless admission that the notion of a comeback was, in itself, entirely absurd. Would one of the 1970s biggest bands have any relevant perspectives on popular culture in 1994? No, of course not. Did they reunite because they expected thousands of fans would enjoy seeing "Hotel California" live every night? Yes.

The Hell Freezes Over experience wasn’t so much about seeing the Eagles live as it was about consuming the impossibility of seeing the Eagles live. Reunions demand performers assert themselves in a new age of popular culture, and re-contextualize the nature of their entire existence. For the Eagles, this meant emphasizing the unlikelihood of a reunion after a conspicuous fourteen-year absence (a length of time, one would assume, long enough for hell to freeze over). When they reunited in 1994, the band was not relevant enough to comment on popular culture, nor were they irrelevant enough to not sell concert tickets. Essentially, the Eagles became hyper-relevant. Their fame no longer required any explanation – they were famous for the mere fact that they existed, no additional background was necessary.

Reunion tours demand performers reconfigure themselves according to the confines of the event’s cultural parameters. Sometimes bands embrace this notion and other times, not as much. A few weeks ago, Black Francis dropped this bomb when discussing the possibility of another Pixies reunion:

"We're interested in anything that's going to earn us a fair wage. It's not to say it's not about art, but we made that art fucking 20 years ago. So forget the fucking goddamn art. This ain't about the art anymore. I did the arty farty part. Now it's time to talk about the money." (The Quietus, Feb. 18, 2010)

I think this offended people. It probably offended lots of Pixies fans. This, I feel, was probably the least offensive thing Black Francis could have done. It’s not as though Black Francis is a jaded, money-hungry grump. He is simply addressing the fact that reunions cannot function as art because, technically, they seem to function more as traveling conventions of nostalgia. As a member of the reunited Pixies, Black Francis assumes the role of a scripted performer presenting his past achievements for present audiences. The parameters of his performance are limited, and very much unlike those of a typical indie-rock frontman. Getting paid only vindicates Black Francis in participating in an otherwise humiliating event.

Reunions are celebrations of confined collective memory. Nothing new and exciting is supposed to happen at reunion shows, and when it does, sometimes we rather it didn’t. For instance, on the Smashing Pumpkins twentieth anniversary reunion tour, they opted to play as much new material as they did old hits, prompting noticeable displeasure from fans. This, of course, made little sense to frontman Billy Corgan, who spent the entire tour mouthing back at his fans. Corgan’s essential problem was that he mistook his own hyper-relevance for actual relevance. Rather than committing to the conditions of his role as a hyper-relevant performer, Corgan performed new material as a means of insisting on a new cultural position separate from the parameters of the reunion. These notions inevitably conflicted, leaving fans upset and Corgan frustrated.

Corgan failed to realize that all his fans actually wanted was to participate in the sort of experience they hadn’t been able to since the “official” breakup in 2000. Reunions must function as culturally static experiences in order to be successful. They are never about art – the success of the event is predicated on the assumption that an audience will derive pleasure from the experience despite its cultural deficiencies. As pointed out by musicologist Frederick Stocken in Musical Postmodernism Without Nostalgia:

"No-one is under any obligation to perform music written last year or before. It is not like a building which will be there until we make the effort to knock it down. We have, on the contrary, to make an enormous effort to perform a piece of music. We do it not for the sake of duty to the past, or for historical research, but because in the act of performance, which necessarily exists in the present, the music is able to speak to a modern audience." (Stocken, 536)

As Stocken emphasizes, the performer assumes no obligation to perform any piece of music at any time. Live concerts occur because there is a belief that the music will resonate with an audience; it is because audiences exist that live concerts have any significance at all, and it is these audiences that define the parameters for enjoyment. With reunion shows, audiences expect to see faithful references to the past. In other words, the intentions of the performer take a backseat to the expectations of the audience. The possibility for art is limited because the content of reunion shows are necessarily confined to these expectations.

Considering the sorts of constraints reunions put on performers, it seems unusual that a band like Pavement would ever reform. Pavement cultivated an entire aesthetic based on their deliberately contrary approach to popular culture. Essentially, their ‘don’t give a fuck’ attitude was what made them endearing in the first place. A reunion would only undermine these sensibilities, as it necessarily requires they pander to the demands of their audiences. One would assume that their ability to faithfully communicate with audiences would be damaged by the event itself.

For these reasons, it is surprising the Pavement’s transition into a reunion band has been as graceful as it has. This is because, rather than rejecting the reunion’s cultural implications, Stephen Malkmus and co. have dutifully accepted the task of re-contextualizing the nature of their fame. On Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’s ‘Gold Soundz,’ Malkmus shouts, “you can never quarantine the past.” Yet, their 2010 greatest hits compilation, Quarantine the Past playfully contradicts the lyric. Pavement wants us to know they’re in on the gag – they recognize that reunions are both superficial and unnecessary. Their solution has been to play up the absurdity of their reformation and embrace the limited parameters of their new, hyper-relevant existence. If anything, Quarantine the Past is their Hell Freezes Over.

The Pavement reunion tour is not about art, simply because Pavement are no longer the trailblazing 90s band capable of expressing poignant, contemporarily relevant cultural messages. As a reunion band, they will follow firmly in the footsteps of bands like the Eagles, shamelessly discarding the sanctity of their legacy in favour of the calculated conditions of their reunited existence. This should not be disappointing, nor should it discount the strength of their recorded output. Much like the Hell Freezes Over-era Eagles, the two formations of each band are incomparable, as one simply is while the other pretends to be. Issues only ever arise when this division is not made apparent, as it happened with Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins.

Of course, you could probably argue that a Pavement reunion and their releasing a greatest hits compilation is massively gimmicky, or that it equates to them selling out. Sure, this could be valid. However, it still says nothing of the fact that Pavement really have no bones about who they are now what they’re doing on this tour. They’re Quarantin-ing the Past for audiences everywhere (including Toronto on Saturday). They know it’s not appropriate for one of the most outrageous and contrary bands of the 1990s to be headlining a massive Broken Social Scene-curated festival in 2010. But will I still enjoy seeing them kick out the jams during Trigger Cut? Yes. Fuck YES!

Comments

• June 17, 2010, Cluff Billiards writes: You are the father to my sister of thought.

The dance clubs create the space through which such consumption can occur. The confines of dance clubs encourage the collective connection with rhythm, uninterrupted by the distractions of the outside world. The architecture of dance clubs is reflective of the ideal method for consuming such music. Whereas live bands may play in bars with tables and chairs that facilitate drinking and relaxed enjoyment, dance clubs are built around a central dance floor meant to steer individuals towards dancing and active engagement with the music. By nature of the relative confinement of their spaces, dance clubs operate within their own unique culture. Within these self-contained environments, the most popular music is that which corresponds to the club’s social function, relating to the space within which it is consumed. Its danceable rhythms are not mere aesthetic choices, they are reflective of the music’s essential use – to stimulate engagement through dance within a space designed for such an activity. As dance clubs demonstrate a consistency in their physical characteristics (the existence of a dance floor), the music, in turn, assumes the task of constantly establishing and re-establishing the sort of activity that will take place within the physical space.

Swim seems to operate in direct contradiction to dance music’s optimal uses. True, Swim would certainly not seem out of place within a dance club. However, many of its features demand engagement beyond its danceable qualities. In recent interviews, Snaith refers to his latest record as ‘liquid dance music,’ acknowledging both his music’s electronic aspects as well as its diametric opposite – water. Water restricts movement, but also provides an alternative space of physical navigation. Swim highlights these alternative parameters of movement with his songs of human expression atop definitively danceable beats. “Bowls” for instance, deliberately expresses its human presence through the sound of Snaith physically hitting several brass bowls. While the track maintains its seemingly digital groove, a noticeable human element floats atop.

In addition, identifying water as the album’s central reference point establishes an environment that demands its listeners travel beyond its functional rhythms and examine the other uses the album may take on. When Swim was finally released, a friend of mine recounted how listening to the album while jogging in the rain created a particularly poignant experience. Such an experience did not take place on the dance floor, but during an entirely separate movement-based activity. For the record to be titled Swim identifies the notion that the record is as much about dancing as it is about finding rhythm in seemingly unrhythmic places. When swimming, the individual must configure themselves to the water’s alternate gravitational parameters, which force the individual to perceive their immediate environment differently. While the dance club creates an environment comfortably rooted in day-to-day existence, the swimming pool presents the potential for alternate movements foreign to land-based activity. The direct contradiction between the swimming pool and dance club demonstrates Snaith’s attempt to extricate dance music from its architectural confines. While Swim may function comfortably within dance club culture, its strength lays in its ability to locate alternate parameters of use and therefore, alternate environments for consumption.

Discussing whether or not we can adequately classify Swim as dance music is to limit its potential appeal. Swim aims to encompass all that refers to human movement. While this certainly overlaps with dance music, confining it to such a genre negates the possibility for the album to resonate with the broader aspects of human existence. Swim has as much to say about dancing as it does about jogging and swimming. In short, it makes apparent the inseparability of dancing from human movement and the reasons such things are not mutually exclusive.

Comments

• May 17, 2010, nicolai writes: very dope monsieur.

Photo courtesy of nytimes.com

We just played, did the best we could and that was that.
-Alex Chilton

When I began writing this article I thought it would be best to kick it off with a quote that would effectively characterize the late Big Star frontman, Alex Chilton. In the end, this seemed like the ideal choice. Though it was from one of the last interviews of Chilton’s life, he reflects on his Big Star career with overwhelming indifference. Then again, when comparing Chilton’s body of work to his overwhelming lack of success, its no surprise that even Chilton himself had nothing remarkable to say. When Chilton passed away on March 17, 2010, most publications also struggled in discussing the legacy of such a ‘cult icon.’ His significance, however, goes beyond the records themselves. Reflecting on Chilton’s legacy requires an understanding of how Chilton’s work was able to transcend the traditional notions of pop success by sustaining its worth nearly forty years after Big Star’s demise.

During their brief run in the early 1970s, Big Star produced three albums (1972’s #1 Record, 1974’s Radio City and 1978’s Third/Sister Lovers), all of which failed commercially at the time of their release. Big Star didn’t so much break up as they did disintegrate: co-songwriter and guitarist Chris Bell departed after #1 Record to pursue a solo career, while bassist Andy Hummel quit the band in 1973 to pursue a college degree, the result of frustration, apathy and general discontent. Regardless of their dismal sales and lack of notoriety, Big Star are often credited as pioneers of the power-pop genre. This classification, however, still appears problematic, as it associates Big Star with a level of success contingent on audience participation and consumption. Essentially, it is impossible to call Big Star pop since they were, in fact, unpopular.

The trouble with clarifying Big Star’s significance is their undeniable aesthetic ties to both pop and rock n’ roll music, despite being wildly out of touch with both. No doubt, Big Star sounds like a typical AM radio rock n’ roll band. Unfortunately, by the time #1 Record was released in 1972, rock n’ roll’s rebellious elements had gone corporate. The counter-cultural overlap between audiences and performers was now dead in favour of a more definitive division between virtuoso producers and wild consumers. In his article “In Search of An Audience,” Lawrence Grossberg points out that

"Rock n’ roll is inseparable from its audiences. Consequently, every interpretation of the musical texts also interprets their audiences, as well as the relationship among them" (Grossberg 153).

Much of the reason for rock n’ roll’s early success was its ability of its artists to mobilize young audiences, which Grossberg describes as “dedicated to the pleasures of fun and raw energy” (153). Rock n’ roll provided a way for young people to express themselves in a pessimistic, post-WWII society. This rock n’ roll sound was more or less the result of its inseparability from its audiences, who demanded loud electric music through which they could dance, party and vent their frustrations. While the Big Star sound seems to embody these rock n’ roll sensibilities, their disconnect from the era itself allowed the band to approach rock n’ roll as a singular aesthetic rather than an aspect of a particular social movement.

In transplanting the rock n’ roll aesthetic into a definitively un-rock n’ roll time, Big Star stood in a position to create music that did not have to fulfill any sort of social mandate as outlined by its audience. In the audience’s absence, Chilton’s writing reflected his own isolation that in turn succinctly considered the new conditions of youth culture characterized by suburban confinement and a post-Woodstock haze. Though his music should have resonated, listeners in the 1970s were preoccupied with using popular music as an instrument of escape into the mythological and spectacular (via Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd). The last thing youth culture was looking for was Alex Chilton, a young songwriter content to write songs about the new ordinary teenaged world of sitting in the back of a car or hangin’ out down the street.

Yet, these are the sentiments that demonstrate Chilton’s appeal. It’s not that he was a pioneer in any particular genre, his brilliance came from his ability to reapply the original parameters of rock n’ roll and its audiences. Chilton’s perspective is one that uses the familiar rock n’ roll aesthetic to address the new conflicts of a developing youth culture. It’s not that Chilton was preaching a new political bent, he simply just wrote songs about what it meant to be a teenager in the 70s. In a sense, Chilton built upon the notion of rock n’ roll as communicative tool for youths. Despite Big Star’s disconnect from their more popular contemporaries, Chilton’s understanding of the communicative aspect of pop songwriting creates an appeal that remains timeless in its ability to grasp the nuances of teenage life. This is probably why a Big Star song serves as a better theme for That 70’s Show than those 1970s artists who were actually popular. While the prog-rock giants of the 1970s live on through nostalgic appeal, Chilton’s approach is the one that most sustains rock n’ roll’s communicative aspects. It’s just a shame no one cared to listen to it.

When Chilton reflected on his Big Star career, its no wonder he spoke with brevity. Even when his death was reported the following day, many struggled to locate his cultural significance. In a sense, Chilton’s legacy was his lack thereof. His significance lay in his constant attempts to resolidify rock n’ roll’s social basis in the face of a new, socially unstable youth culture. In doing so, Chilton solidified pop as an aesthetic by creating definitively youthful music separate from audiences. With Big Star, rock n’ roll could sustain itself in hyper-corporate musical landscapes by creating a rock n’ roll relationship between the listener and the recording rather than the audience and the performer. Though Chilton is so often referred to as a ‘cult icon’ following his death, he is anything but. His conceptualization of rock n’ roll is one that transcends pop success and continues to find itself of the music of anyone inspired enough to start a band, cut a record and keep the cycle alive.

Jeff Magnum | Courtesy of dewdoobrefhugmachine.wordpress.com

You know the old cliché: sensitive singer-songwriter, foot of the bed, softly strumming on an old acoustic guitar. The mood is quiet -- but the sound of the apartment bleeds through: old wood floors, maybe traffic outside. There is a conscious understanding of where the singer-songwriter is. For the listener, this is an open door into the artist’s immediate space of recording. The music is not simply a particular moment in time, but a brief aural snapshot of a performance setting. So many albums get dubbed “bedroom projects” because the image alone evokes an environment that is homely, quiet and above all, intimate. Such a tag suggests the listener is not only listening to music, but is transplanting one’s own self into the small space in which the music was performed.

Music that appears to convey intimacy is, more or less, effective at communicating an experience within a specific time and space. In his essay on experimental music, John Cage points out:

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make silence, we cannot. For certain engineering purposes, it is desirable to have as silent a situation as possible”  (Silence 8).

Often, music creates the illusion of intimacy by manipulating an environment to achieve the desired characteristics of silence. But a room is never totally devoid of the potential for noise. Sometimes walls echo, sometimes they absorb sound. The manipulation of silence, therefore, constitutes the conscious removal of the spatial element of sound. A record like Cat Power’s You Are Free creates the illusion of intimacy by eliminating any sounds external to the instruments and voice. The record is no longer a product of time and space, but only time. Though its quiet demeanor presents the illusion of an intimate environment, the record is founded upon a canvas of painted silence that attempts to extricate itself from human presence.

A record that aims to engage the listener through its intimacy is contingent upon the characteristics of the recorded space. This is why live records are so appealing: they communicate the intimacy of the environment and the circumstances of the performance so effectively that the songs adopt a new meaning. Live recordings consciously include crowd levels in the mix and are deliberate about their spatial characteristics. They signify intimacy by communicating the performance as well as fan affection. A studio allows the recording to be more ambiguous about its spatial characteristics, which in turn encourages subjectivity of the listener. The communication of space, then, is as much of a signifier as time. Outside of external documentation, we can never know when a track was actually recorded; therefore space must be used as the signifier for both space and time. While the silent backdrop of You Are Free may appear to communicate moments of both space and time, it pacifies the physical characteristics of its environment.

Can recorded music ever really communicate genuine intimacy?

The moments of intimacy are the most apparent when they deliberately acknowledge the setting of recording. In a studio setting, spatial elements are made apparent through a demonstration of the idiosyncrasies of the recording space. In your typical “bedroom project” record, this is the sound of the old wood floors or the traffic outside.

Although I recognize that we probably don’t need another article that romanticizes the mythology of Neutral Milk Hotel, this example was too perfect to pass up: at the end of the track ‘Oh, Comely’ on In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, someone in the studio yells “HOLY SHIT!” after the take. This recording exemplifies a moment of intimacy through the communication of time and space for a variety of reasons:

a) The “HOLY SHIT!” is tremendously deep in the mix. Whoever yelled it was not in direct proximity to a microphone. We can assume that he was in a separate room watching on. Therefore, we can also assume that though this performance probably took place in a studio, there existed opportunity for others to view the performance. The recording suggests that the artist was not in total isolation because there was an immediate audience with whom this song deeply resonated.

b) The “HOLY SHIT!” could have been edited out entirely but was consciously kept on the recording. The artist did not wish to remove the room from the recording, but to enhance the room to better communicate the circumstances. From here, we can assume that this circumstance must have been truly extraordinary if it elicited a “HOLY SHIT!”

c) Intimacy in recorded music can never be communicated through total silence because total silence assumes a lack of human presence. Cage points out that “try as we may to make silence, we cannot.” The “HOLY SHIT!” merely proves that the recording is trying to translate a particular moment on record. Rather than use silence to achieve transcendence, the “HOLY SHIT!” establishes the dynamic of the physical space that allowed the performance to flourish.

Space is the blank canvas. Even through its expression of nothing, space still says something. When we think of music as expressing intimacy, such music must reconcile its performance with the audible characteristics of the space. An intimate performance is the moment bound to space and unidentifiable in time. It reflects every characteristic of the circumstances of the performance within a space and does not attempt to detach itself from this.

Conceptualizing a local music scene in the contemporary cultural landscape is plausible, but it seems to romanticize days when local communities were actual physical communities. I don’t mean to say that the Internet is crushing all our hopes for face-to-face community interaction, but it is impossible to ignore the effect that digital interaction is having on popular music. It’s easy to get caught up in romanticizing places like Seattle, or CBGB’s, or Greenwich Village. These places were crucial in fostering particular attitudes specific to artists living within a particular space. Confining them to geographical locations often allowed these communities to develop on their own terms, without the influence of external factors.

With an expanded digital reach, it’s easier to find communities more tightly wound on message boards than in coffee houses. Not that this affects the quality of the musical output from individuals, but it leans toward negating the possibility for local communities to develop artistic conventions unique to a particular space. Traditionally, the Western world has valued these local developments through our frequent consumption of diasporic media. As we access music through a wide digital stream of distribution, community boundaries dissolve into one, all-encompassing digital sphere. This sort of reach accelerates the globalization process and grants us greater access to expand our individual musical palettes. Yet, in the process, we lose sight of the unique characteristics embedded in local music communities.

The redistribution of local sounds is already taking place with bands like Vampire Weekend or Dirty Projectors through the references to African sensibilities in their work. In a backwards way, the same is taking place with the musical project The Very Best, a band who infuses their sounds of frontman Esau Mwamwaya’s home country of Malawi with the electronic sensibilities of the Western popular music. Such work overcomes the restrictive nature of local scenes and locates the exotic output of foreign cultures through an extended digital reach. No doubt these developments are exciting, but in the process, foreign cultures appear as exotic sonic diversions thriving on their difference from Western culture. They function through cultural reference rather than cultural experience.

It is not that these developments are making local cultures extinct, it is that musically they no longer thrive on the unique characteristics associated with their self-containment. Globalization seems to facilitate the breaking down of these socio-political boundaries in favour of a culturally amalgamated expression. Sure, notions of community still exist in a virtual sense, but these concepts are more imagined and less tied to physical space. Any possibility for indigenous music yields to a larger virtual community comprised of distanced users rather than intimate and local collaboration. While this obviously extends the borders of musical possibility, it sacrifices face-to-face expression unique to a tightly defined time and space.

That is not to say that globalization destroys the notion of a musical community, rather, it often facilitates a musical connection between geographically separate communities. However, using the Internet as a primary vehicle for such global collaboration is dangerous as it removes the aspect of physical contact and therefore, any notion of local collaboration. One of the reasons Paul Simon's Graceland was such a powerful record was because it encapsulated the artist's visit to South Africa and the subsequent collaborations that took place there (half of the record is co-written by local artists, and the entirety is recorded in South Africa). Graceland thrives because it locates and unites two smaller, more local cultures and reconciles their seemingly disparate musical sensibilities (the choice of 'Graceland' is also compelling as it reflects the overwhelming American-ness of Elvis).  Such possibilities often lose their way in the globalized digital world, as the reach to foreign cultures requires far less labour. Locality succumbs to cultural appropriation as it enters the global sphere of ideas.

While the artistic possibilities of this expanded reach are no doubt exciting, they seem to reduce the possibility for music to express something unique about a particular place in time. One of the reasons Sufjan Stevens’ "Fifty States" project was so endearing was that it attempted to re-colonize American spaces through music. Sufjan chose to examine the often overlooked local cultural boundaries in an attempt to foster a new conception of Americana. However, when Sufjan denounced the project entirely in 2009 he claimed the whole project was ‘a joke,’ stating:

“I think maybe I took it too seriously. I started to feel like I was becoming a cliché of myself” (Paste Magazine. Nov. 2, 2009).

Perhaps this was because at some point, Sufjan viewed his project as an attempt to examine a cultural space that no longer exists. The differences between Illinois or Michigan are worth examining, but no longer seem to clarify any notable cultural separation. The characteristics that normally distinguish local cultures from one another now seem to offer nothing exclusive as they become more and more susceptible to outside influence. Perhaps for Sufjan, creating large musical compositions about these spaces was leading him to conceptualize boundaries that had become culturally superfluous.

As the digital world allows our reach to extend, locality becomes an illusion rooted in artificial political boundaries. Though it’s fun to attempt to recontextualize the music of a local community, if there exists a specific lack of characteristics that distinguish it from other local music spaces, then the project runs a terrible risk of imploding in favour of novelty music destined for cliché consumption. If the project were to continue, the album’s most compelling component would likely have shifted from the ambitious subject matter to the artist’s own personal development. In that case, why should Sufjan focus on subject matter that would force his artistic development into the confines of a seemingly inconsequential concept?

Its no wonder that Sufjan’s latest project focuses on something more definitive and concrete: the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. The appeal of such a space inevitably lies in one’s fleeting experience with it. The sentiment of The BQE lies in its inhabitability and its function as a transporter of separate alienated travelers. For Sufjan, it presents the antithesis of his former work; it presents a place devoid of the seeds of community and history. Said Sufjan in a 2009 interview:

“I intended to create a non-personal, non-narrative piece. I tried to reduce my own personal investment as much as possible, and I refused to incorporate one of my strengths, which is the song” (The Herald, Scotland. Oct 2009).

The BQE seems like a logical step forward for Sufjan, as it liberates him from community-driven music to a more confined personal expression. Though The BQE is itself a physical space, Sufjan finds solace in the traveling experience it creates. While The BQE is a particularly famous stretch of highway, its appeal is not predicated on a particularly unique American experience. Everyone understands highway traveling and in those moments when you may find yourself on the road - excited, desperate or just plain bored - the highway is a constantly emotionless path. Though rooted in history, The BQE presents nothing to the community of arts. It executes its essential purpose and strives for nothing more.

In denouncing the fifty states project, Sufjan proves that community-oriented music cannot be documented and reconceptualized by those viewing from the outside in. Sufjan’s first state project, Michigan, was remarkably effective because its subject matter was reflective of Sufjan’s bleak and sometimes hopeless experiences actually living within a struggling Michigan state. Illinoise, on the other hand, tends to overemphasize its subject and reads more like an observation of an unfamiliar place. Illinoise creates an exotic and exciting experience, however, it is one that reflects Sufjan’s inability to fully conceptualize a local space that goes beyond scenery and the history books.

For these reasons, The BQE and Michigan demonstrate remarkable similarities in the execution of their concepts. Both are not so much about the physical space themselves but the universal experiences one may find unique to a place. It is the same reason that a record like Post-Nothing­ by Japandroids is so fucking good. In short, it’s an album about love, despair, and partying in Vancouver. Post-Nothing is not specifically about Vancouver, but its identification of a specific geographical space allows the album to justify its emotional traits by locating them in local experiences. Though the music is definitively invested in the community’s culture, its appeal transcends its local roots by highlighting the universal emotions that have taken place within a given local space.

By not defining itself as specific place, Post-Nothing succeeds where Sufjan struggles. Post-Nothing does not strive to create a comprehensive description of its geographical space in question, yet its aesthetics carry enough emotional resonance for me to safely conceptualize their version Vancouver on my own. Illinoise, though exciting and ambitious, can become less engaging, as its effectiveness is predicated on a pre-decided narrative that forces us to judge the album based on how effectively it achieves its goals.

As a result, Post-Nothing emphasizes the significance of local cultures in one’s own personal experiences. Much like Michigan or even Graceland, Post-Nothing­ recognizes that music with a specific locality is effective not because of how well it translates a particular space, but how well it communicates emotion and experience as defined by that locality. Though digital technology facilitates expansive global interaction, it is never fully able to negate the local community experience. Albums like Michigan, Graceland and Post-Nothing boast their local characteristics as a means of translating their universal human experiences. While the internet’s lack of boundaries may seem to equate all music under one all-encompassing digital space, music will always originate from someplace tangible and therefore will always reflect the experience of people making music within a physical space.

This is anti-autotune, death of the ringtone
This ain’t for Itunes, this ain’t for sing-along
This is Sinatra at the opera

In D.O.A. Death of Auto-Tune, Jay-Z makes his stance clear: he opposes how far technology has infiltrated music production and distribution. I would argue his connection to ‘Sinatra at the opera’ is rooted in more than just ego. Sinatra sang in an era in which crooners depended on microphones in order to highlight the subtleties of their voices. Similarly, Jay-Z’s persona reflects the ethos of the modern MC in which the artist utilizes the microphone as an amplification instrument that communicates his words across mass audiences. For both Sinatra and Jay-Z, technology is an aid to their authentic human qualities. The microphone is as an extension of the performer as it acts as a mediator between the performer’s vocals and the audience.

Consider the aforementioned verse again. The first line of D.O.A. finds Jay-Z stating that he is the “only rapper to rewrite history without a pen.”  So then, we can safely assume Jay-Z is referring to his tremendous grasp of the spoken word. For Jay-Z, all that is essential to the recollection of history is his human voice. Though the microphone aids this process by allowing his voice to reach large audiences, it does not impede on the quality of his voice or the message within it. Jay-Z distances himself from auto-tune because heavily treated vocals, he would argue, lack the aesthetic properties that base his work in an oral culture such as hip-hop.  It is not that auto-tune is or should be dead; it is that auto-tune should have nothing to say about the human experience. Artistic appeal in the music of both Jay-Z and Frank Sinatra lies in the transmission of the authentic human voice.

Auto-tune, as the name implies, is more than simply digitizing vocals. The idea of running vocals through auto-tune suggests a method of music production geared towards heightened efficiency. The very practice reflects the notion that vocal mistakes can be digitized into perfection rather than embraced in order to capture a spontaneous moment of authentic human expression. Auto-tune strives for a level of perfection that the human is incapable of. By nature of this very principle, auto-tune identifies a space in our world in which oral culture can be relieved of its human imperfections. As a result, auto-tune does not oppose oral culture; it views human vocal qualities as an impediment to the machine.

Though Kraftwerk were heavily into notions of mass production and dehumanization in their work, much of their music makes a conscious effort to maintain the qualities of the human voice. Their 1977 output, Trans-Europe Express, features untreated human vocals that are delivered as though they are devoid of emotion. Though the cover of Trans-Europe presents depicts the band in strikingly human poses, the members of Kraftwerk seem to appear as glossy, packaged products. With Trans-Europe, Kraftwerk create a space that reflects the principles of auto-tune by considering the existence of the superior being within the human.

Jay-Z’s declaration that auto-tune is dead is not merely an aesthetic opposition. His stance represents an opposition to the infiltration of a superior being into a world in which his talents stand at the height of popular appreciation. If auto-tune is supposed to impose its digital hierarchy on the world of popular hip-hop, Jay-Z lies on the outskirts. His vocals are those of a talented human who embraces mistakes and turns them into strengths. This is of no concern to the superior being, who achieves perfection rather than thrives in the pursuit of it.

The declaration of auto-tune’s death, however, is irrational. Though its practice exposes the imperfections of the human voice, its existence in the sphere of popular music allows for an understanding of the human condition that considers the machine essential to our very being. Daft Punk, for instance, replace their human bodies with robotic figures in order to emphasize the human’s connectedness with the machine. Their music demonstrates how the use of auto-tune does not always threaten to supplant the human. In Daft Punk’s case, the music wishes to acknowledge the fact that in our increasingly digital world, humans must consider the possible existence of a superior digital being.

Much like the microphone for Jay-Z and Sinatra, auto-tune is an instrument that requires human regulation in order for it to achieve its full potential as a possible mediator between artist and audience. While the microphone could have rendered the acoustic singer obsolete, instead it was able to enhance popular music by allowing singers to project their vocal subtleties onto large audiences. Though auto-tune may suppose a threat to traditional notions of oral culture, it also opens the door to an oral culture that includes the digitization of voices.

Looking back, the success of the LP record in the latter half of the century proved that music fans were okay with paying for music and asserting some sort of ownership over their records. Music fans have been able to overcome this apparent loss of ‘aura’ or simply do not subscribe to Adorno’s beliefs. The tangible qualities of the record itself do not undermine aura, they reinforce the notion of music as cultural artifact. Think of The Velvet Underground & Nico, in which the banana on the album’s cover can be physically peeled and removed from the cover entirely. Or America Eats its Young by Funkadelic, which actually folds out into a giant American one-dollar bill. These records draw attention towards properties external to the music and force user engagement with elements outside the music itself. They want to establish the notion of the vinyl record as an experience of multiple senses. The digitization of music has not made the album obsolete, but it has challenged its elements as a both a physical and audible experience.

Digital music reflects an experience of a lack of physicality and transplanted sense of ownership. Undoubtedly, these characteristics thrive in our massively space-biased, postmodern world. Digital forms seek to liberate the listener from the confines of the album and open up new possibilities of customization.

We are the creators of our own playlists.

There need be nothing tangible, because here in the palm of my hand I own everything. It is not the album one must purchase in order to hear music; it is the playback device, the digital mediator. Adorno feared that the culture industry would equate all commodities according to their exchange value. He believed that capitalism’s all encompassing nature would prevent the production of meaning outside the realm of capitalism.  While capitalism thrives on the ability to commodify goods, the Internet thrives on its inherent lack of value. When Smashing Pumpkins (Machina II), Wilco (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) and Radiohead (In Rainbows) began releasing albums for free online, their point was not that music ought to be free from the constraints of exchange, it was that music was essentially valueless. While Adorno believed that culture could not exist outside of capitalism, these bands suggest that nothing exists outside of the Internet.

So if nothing exists outside of the Internet, the next logical step for the record format is to embrace this apparent lack of thingishness and move towards something that thrives on virtual perception and intangibility. For the album format to sustain itself, it must transcend physicality and suggest that the physical album is redundant rather than obsolete. The digital copy will no longer lack aura, it will create a new digital aura.

With an album like Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective, there exist a few elements that suggest we are moving in this direction. The cover of Merriweather is pretty mesmerizing, but only on the computer screen. In its physically packaged form the cover is massively underwhelming as it attempts to recreate the virtual experience. Here we have an example of the album’s virtual experience providing a superior experience to that of the physical album. It seems as though prior to such an album, the digital version always attempted to replicate the physical experience, even when iTunes began to allow users to include cover art with their digital albums. Here, the digital world is acknowledging the physicality of records, but providing only a sub par representation of this physicality (the cover of the Beach Boys’ Surf’s Up looks much better in vinyl sleeve than its puny pixilated version on my iPod).  With Merriweather, this gets spun around, placing the virtual representation in the optimal position of consumption.

Merriweather presents the listener with the opportunity for a fully mediated experience. More so than In Rainbows or Yankee Hotel, Merriweather strives to capture aura by emphasizing its appeal in the digital world. Their use of the Internet was to liberate music from the constraints of physical commodities and exchange value. Merriweather strives to place itself under the umbrella of all digital experiences.  In a way, Merriweather adopts Adorno’s belief but with a more optimistic spin. Yes, everything on the Internet is valueless, but sometimes it can also be beautiful.

Comments

• December 15, 2009, Devon writes: Monsieur Reynolds! Welcome to the fold... or the bunch of bananas... or something. :-) Good article. Though I do hope I exist in a world outside the internet... and that said world continues long into the future. Best, D.
• December 15, 2009, Kimberley writes: I still buy records. I like to think I am more concious when I am purchasing something now - after learning of alfuenza. I look at 1) packaging, 2) the music on it, 3) if I actually have the money, 4) how bad I want it, impulse shopping is forgivable. Even more so when the record is actually good. Downloading is a brilliant advantage. However as you stated it does not garner the satisfaction that buying a record does. I share a lot of ideas that Bradford Cox does - he said somewhere that you lose the joy of anticipation, expectation and excitement as you would waiting for a release, it's almost a fetish. Additionally, downloading is poisoning the music industry in a sense too - where the entire Deerhunter album was leaked against the artist's wishes... So naturally they followed it up with an additional record. Total tangent. As a student I have to download because I simply can't own EVERY album I want to listen to. I sure do try though.
• December 16, 2009, James Chow writes: Dang, I never thought of Merriweather Post Pavilion's artwork this way. I still love my hard copies of albums but your article gives me a lot to think about and a theorist to add to my arsenal. I look forward to reading more of your work.