Let me be the first to say that Bruce Springsteen beat Sasha Frere-Jones to the punch by a few weeks and with a more concise (and certainly more rocking) testimony about the lack of rhythm in indie rock, and went further in his pursuit of a solution. Frere-Jones lit up the blogosphere with his New Yorker essay, "A Paler Shade of White," in which he wrote, "I’ve spent the past decade wondering why rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, underwent a racial re-sorting in the nineteen-nineties."

What he is getting at, taking 3,500 words to do so, is that some indie rock bands (read: Arcade Fire), don't have much if any soul to their sound, thus rendering them "white." Other bands (read: LCD Soundsystem) have some rhythm and swing to their sound, thus rendering them, according to Frere-Jones' word-of-the-day calendar vocabulary, the spawn of musical miscegenation. Frere-Jones wants to be able to dance at an indie rock show, it seems, but isn't willing to venture out to see anyone not already approved by -- mindblower coming -- Sasha Frere-Jones. While he heaps praise upon the angular and disjointed art rock of countless acts -- Arcade Fire among them, though the praise is less "heaped" than "grudging" in this case -- it seems he doesn't really like to listen to them and wishes there were other bands that had a bit of beat to their sound.

Even if one limits things to the hipster-approved indie band list curated virtually by Frere-Jones and his ilk, there is plenty of rhythm to be had, and, despite Frere-Jones' admonishments to the contrary, risks being taken. Spoon, Of Montreal, the Hold Steady, Joe Henry, Chuck Prophet... OK, those last couple aren't getting much ink for their fantastic new discs, but they certainly have everything Frere-Jones finds lacking elsewhere: "a trace of soul, blues, reggae, or funk." Ah, but they aren't as hip as Battles, so they don't count, do they, Sasha?

Though he isn't indie, Springsteen seems to be the elephant in the room here, because many acts these days draw inspiration from his music. Springsteen, original though he may sound to most, essentially found a way to bludgeon R'n'B bar band sounds into submission with his own wall of sound. On his fantastic new disc, Magic, he returns to that sound after nearly 25 years away from it, and offers what I see as pretty pointed commentary on this issue, even if his intent was miles away (and most likely self-referential). On the lead track, "Radio Nowhere," he sings:

I was trying to find my way home
But all I heard was a drone
Bouncing off a satellite
Crushing the last lone American night

A literal reading would suggest that Springsteen was in the car and could only find post-rock on his Sirius Radio (is there a Tortoise channel?). That wasn't what he wanted, and it was seriously harshing his mellow.

He goes on to ask "Is there anybody alive out there," and proclaims himself to be "just searching for a world with some soul," before getting to the true hook of the song where he shouts again and again, "I just want to hear some rhythm." Funny how Springsteen's take -- advantage though he might have thanks to the bass and drum (as opposed to bass 'n' drum) thump behind him -- is so much more soulful than Frere-Jones' pasty whine. He is willing to go back to the start of the recorded history of rock 'n' roll, singing that he is "searching for a Mystery Train," which could be both a shout out to the work of Greil Marcus and, more likely (tongue taken out of cheek here), a nod to the original popular musical miscegenator, Elvis Presley.

The Boss doesn't stop here, of course. As if on some spooky parallel with Frere-Jones, he opts to do more than pen a strongly worded letter to the editor about the situation and takes guitar in hand to help solve the perceived problem by bringing the aforementioned offenders, Arcade Fire, on stage with him to show them how to add a bit of backbeat to their sometimes fussy sound (If Frere-Jones can't dance to this, there's no help for him).

So while Frere-Jones admittedly makes some strong and interesting points about the fact that there is significantly less cross-pollination among musical genres -- missing a real culprit by ignoring the narrow focus of what has evolved to become a truly awful mainstream radio environment -- he over-generalizes to the extent that he undercuts his own argument at nearly every turn. Meanwhile, Springsteen puts his money where his mouth is, betting big on the 2 and the 4, offering a way out of the pale white and back into the dark.

Labels: criticism, music