My cd player has been broken for weeks so while it's getting repaired I've been listening to my large, if old, vinyl lp collection. Specifically records by local Boston bands from the 80's.
And one thing I couldn't help but notice was that even though they may have been crudely recorded or lack technical expertise, they all rocked like crazy. Bands like the Neats, Lyres, Del Fuegos and Scruffy the Cat played with a passion I often find lacking in younger, hip, bands of today. These bands may not have been the greatest musicians, but they more than made up for it in sheer exuberance. A combination of punk's do it yourself attitude mixed with a garage rock aesthetic, it's loud, fast, often sloppy, but with an urgency that rings true. It sounds like rock and roll.
Compared to some popular bands of today it feels like night and day. Whereas a lot of new bands have greater technical and recording chops, they seem to have drifted away from anything resembling rock and roll. As if musicians get their training now studying music theory, philosophy or poetry and then turn around and write maudlin songs based on entries in their 'journals'. It sounds so precious and cloying that I want to scream. Someone gave me a recording by Jack Johnson a few years ago and all I could think of was a guy strumming a guitar in a college coffee house trying to get laid with songs based on his bad poems. It was so self consciously sensitive (and awful) that it was a cliché.
Grizzly Bear is another band that makes me want to throw myself out a window. Given the cd Veckatimest (say what?) as a gift, I tried listening to it a bunch of times and could never get through the entire thing. At around 30 minutes into it I would shut it off so my screaming wouldn't disturb the neighbors. It was awful. Like a bad version of the Beach Boys meet choral music. I don't know what it is but it's not rock and roll. It couldn't be any more pretentious.
The thing that bothers me about this music is that it feels so disconnected from the origins of what created rock and roll. If you listen to it you hear nothing resembling blues or country or rhythm and blues, or rockabilly or soul or swing or funk or surf music or punk or anything. It doesn't make you want to dance or yell or have sex or cry or get into a fight or feel you're alive. There is no emotional component (aside from naval gazing self pity) so for me, it doesn't resonate in the least. It's soulless, like a lot of postmodern art. Something created in an insular environment that has little or no connection to everyday experience. It's a completely interior monologue. Technically proficient and theoretically based, it tries to be perfect but it lacks the emotion necessary to make it real. It's so perfect it's lifeless.