“I work hard every
year/I seize my bread/I ain’t gonna let you women/Go to my head”
-
JD
McPherson, “Country Boy”
My past birthday, a
good friend of mine gave me a philosophy book, “The Sublime Object Of Ideology,”
which is theoretically related to psychology, my academic vice of choice. I say
‘theoretically’ because I can’t make heads-or-tails of the bloody thing. The
whole thing is just slightly beyond me, the language rendered impenetrable by
alien phrases. I don’t consider myself dumb, but this is a book that makes me
reconsider.
Though impressive
technically, the insight the book contains and the craft used to put it together
become pointless due to my inability to understand it. In the same way, most
art rock, high-level jazz, and other deliberately complex music tends to fall
on deaf ears. If people lack the vocabulary, the language, or, most
importantly, the interest, then even the most technically impressive piece can
be left deserted.
Pop hooks, past
successes, and press buzz can help alleviate this issue, bringing even
self-dubbed “art pop” into the #1 spot, but most of the time art music doesn’t
even get glanced at by the majority. It gets consumed by small groups of people
with scarves and far-too-large frames, as well as those of us who are always on
the lookout for new things to hear. Otherwise, exposure to art music relies on
word-of-mouth, blind luck, and lovely little bars and cafes willing to venture
outside of Pandora and Starbucks sampler CDs.
The fact that people
don’t like to seek out the kinds of music that often revel in their ability to
offend and distance the listener doesn’t surprise me, and in fact it doesn’t
even particularly bother me. All appearances to the contrary, I’m not enough of
a snob to insist that people immerse themselves in the heady worlds of bebop
and no-wave. Hell, even I don’t spend all of my time in those worlds, or even a
majority of it; most of my leisure time is spent listening to music I enjoy rather
than music that challenges me to decipher it.
There are few genres
that offer less of a challenge than rockabilly, the proto-rock genre that shook
up dance floors around the world and offered up Elvis Presley as one of the
first pop superstars. While other early pop stars like Frank Sinatra and Duke
Ellington grounded themselves in jazz, Elvis and other artists of his ilk were
beneath even the slightest pretention. Rockabilly took the energy of blues
musicians like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and stripped it of much of the
machismo that went along with it, transforming threat into titillation. The
sexuality of artists like Elvis may seem downright quaint nowadays, but back in
the 50s and 60s it was a revolution matched only in the quickly growing world
of R&B.
Rockabilly’s thrill
came from being quick, rhythmic, and formulaic. You knew what to expect when
you put on rockabilly music, with even the slow-burner songs in the field
offering up something predictable. That reliability offered up a solid hook;
audiences knew how to dance to the music thanks to its solid rhythms, and that
gave DJs and jukebox hounds something to fall back on if a given party started
to slow down. Before pop was transformed by The Beatles and The Beach Boys, the
charts were dictated by what folks could dance to.
In this, modern pop
is actually quite nostalgic, as the late-90s and early-00s saw a transition
from the chamber music of grunge and post-grunge to freer, looser music like
hip-hop and R&B. The seriousness of the grunge style evaporated, gradually
giving way to the franticness of modern EDM-pop. Nevermind that such music is
more tightly planned and arranged than any grunge song in history; the fact
that it’s geared toward getting people moving while staying as far out of the
way as possible supersedes that fact.
It’s a stark
contrast between the dance music of today, which is designed to make people
have fun, and rockabilly music like Signs & Signifiers, which sounds like people having fun. It’s the
old authenticity argument; JD McPherson and his band are making music where
every yelp, fill, and solo feels of the moment, while EDM, by design, has no
such freedom. Both genres follow formulas, but I stop caring about such things
pretty quick listening to this album.
In terms of my
earlier posts, Signs is roughly similar to albums like Holy Ghost!
and El Camino, particularly the latter. All three albums lack any real
pretention, and even if Holy Ghost! does often have a sound of dazed detachment
thanks to its electropop style, its lyrics share the personal style of the
other two. Where Signs differs in how little it cares about being
progressive or even particularly cohesive; the style remains the same but the
content changes with giddy recklessness.
Most of McPherson’s
songs adhere closely to the blues standard of songs about women the singer can’t
have, but this is far from a concept album like the classic Sinatra albums on
the same theme. As the page quote proves, Signs resembles classic
rockabilly in more than just sound; it carriers the same disregard for the finicky
album-sequencing that typified early concept albums and practically everything
released in the late-60s. The only theme McPherson is concerned with is himself
and the world through his eyes, which is just how it should be.
Alright, that’s a
bit of an exaggeration, I admit. Like I said, there’s no real through-line for
the album; “Scratching Circles” and “B.G.M.O.S.R.N.R” are both about another
standard rock subject, namely, how great dancing to rock music is. “Scandalous”
is a quick swing bit mocking the 1%, and the title track is a vague mood piece
suggesting an ominous future that “A Gentle Awakening” later describes.
The album’s main
consistency comes from its music. Signs is overwhelmingly a groove
album, with the drummer taking central stage and most of the instruments
following it in staccato lock-step. Even the requisite slow song, “A Gentle
Awakening”, has a solid rhythm to it, recalling Roy Orbison’s ability to put an
interesting rhythm behind even his slowest of ballads. The way the music is
presented recalls the excellent Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings album Naturally
in its retro flavor; although I have some issues with lo-fi work, the
production style of Signs fits so well with the music that I can’t bring
myself to complain. The only thing close to a modern sound on the album is the
opener to the title track, which sounds like it was ripped directly from a
Black Keys album.
What Signs
triumphs in is its exact goal: being a fun, accessible album that is difficult
to approach only in that it’s a step out of time. While his music differs from
EDM in its upfront humanity, I doubt McPherson would cause most dance-fiends to
recoil. Like current dance music, it’s heavily rhythmic and formulaic enough to
be reliable and predictable. The only difference is that I can listen to it
without picturing a neon dystopia with DJs on every street corner.
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