Do you like Siouxsie and the Banshees? Then you’ll love Savages!*
*Subject
to terms and conditions. Savages do not accept responsibility for
listeners feeling that they are trapped in a nightmare reality where
they are doomed to listen to music that sounds like a carbon copy of
music their parents listened to, and that they live on an exhausted husk
of a planet which has nothing new or surprising to offer any more. If
symptoms persist consult a doctor. Side effects of medication may
include but are not limited to: Nausea, loss of appetite, feelings of
hopelessness, lack of awareness, dizziness, shallowness of breath,
compliance, apathy.
Funnier thing, though, is Tendenzroman is this dude Curtis I had an interesting dialogue with a couple of years ago about Retromania, in which he took dispute with its thesis (before having read the book!) and in fact one of his arguments was that postpunk groups had been often quite derivative and retro-pastiche oriented. (Actually the dialogue was me responding to an earlier post of his).
I disagreed with that "postpunk just as retro argument as music today" naturally (as I vehementally disagreed with people who tried to make out that the Beatles and the Stones were derivative and "retro"). When postpunk groups were derivative it was a second-division group copying a first-division one (eg Red Lorry Yellow Lorry vis Joy Division). And retro-eclectic Orange Juice and The Specials were the bridge out of postpunk into New Pop aka postmodernism aka the Dawn of the Era of Retromania.
But it does raise the question of what is it that makes the leading postpunk groups's relationship with their precursors and inspirations (in Banshees's case, glam, Krautrock, Doors, Velvets, I would say a bit of Jefferson Airplane, etc) different from Savages-type bands's relationship with their precursors/sources/inspirations? Is it something to do with a narrowing of the musical gene pool, or a degree of precision that makes the effect more replication than evolution? How much is it to do with the spread of the notion of curation, which is not a self-conception that postpunk groups would have had of themselves?
What takes place, in terms of actual musical practice as well as guiding outlook/approach/sensibility, that results in the former (postpunk) being so much more generative than the latter (neo-postpunk)?
Because Siouxsie and the Banshees were literally genre-ative - they gave birth to Goth, a huge and longlasting musical-style movement-subculture. Savages are not going to lead to anything. In the same way that the early-2000s neo-postpunk wave - Interpol, Franz, Rapture etc - hasn't led to anything.
At the same time, Banshees were not averse to showcasing their influences in a vaguely postmodern way, although truthfully really in a glam way (in 1987 they did that whole, rather dispiriting treading-water album of covers, Through the Looking Glass, in the mode of Bowie/Pin Ups and Ferry/These Foolish Things). But very early on they covered "20th Century Boy" by T. Rex, and their biggest hit was "Dear Prudence" off the White Album.
But a cover version made from a position of aesthetic strength (the state of having already innovated) is different from the disavowed cover versions, the all-but-a-cover-version of the Savages-type bands, who write putatively new, "original" songs in an older, other's style. With the Banshees (or Ferry), it's s just a gracious tip of the hat to ancestors that you have in some sense equalled, pulled up alongside in the pantheon. It's saying to your fans, "you want some more greatness? Go check out what nourished us when we were just fans too, like you".
“In making this most recent show I’ve begun to actually think about
music politically. The thing that fascinates me most is just how stuck music has
become. And I love music, I know a lot about pop music, but it is now
completely reworking the past, almost archaeologically”--Adam Curtis, talking to FACT about his collaboration with Massive Attack
“I know everyone loves Savages but if you listen to Savages, they are archeologists! They are like those people in pith helmets who used to dig up the bones of Tutankhamun. Savages have gone back to the early 1980s and unearthed a concert of
Siouxsie Sioux or The Slits and literally replicated it note for note,
tone for tone, emotion for emotion. It’s like some strange curatorial
adventure. They’re not new. It’s good to go back into the past and take
something and reinterpret it and use it to push into the future but
they’re not doing that – they’re like robots.”
From which he concludes, worriedly and worryingly:
“Pop music might not be the radical thing we think it is. It might be
very good and very exciting and I can dance to it and mope to it, but
actually it just keeps on reworking the past. If you continually go back into the past then by definition you can
never ever imagine a world that has not existed before. I think true
radicalism…comes from the idea of saying this is a world that has never
existed before, come with me to it.... Music may actually be dying at the
very moment it is everywhere. There comes a moment in any culture where
something becomes so ubiquitous and part of everything that it loses
its identity. It will remain here to be useful but it won’t take us
anywhere or tell us any stories. It won’t die in the sense of not being
here but in the sense of not having a meaning beyond itself. It will
just be entertainment."
A lot of interesting things in this interview - similarity of punk and Thatcherism as promotion of absolute individualism, and this bit on emotionalism as trap, or as FACT phrase it, "the modern demotion of
music as means to simply titillate– a kind of emotional masturbation".
Curtis: “I love emotions, I’m a very emotional person, but how
limiting is it to live in a world where your relationship with music is
just emotional? It’s appropriate at certain times like when you go
dancing or you’re lonely and home late at night, but the idea of being
emotional in everything might actually be trapping us into a very
limited view of what we are as human beings. The focus on our own emotions comes from the central ideology of our
time: individual freedom. But what this ideology really says is that
what you feel and what you think is everything. Well, actually,
human beings can be far more than that. In other circumstances you can
lose yourself in something grander, whether it’s for an idea or for
love, when you surrender yourself to someone else. These things actually
liberate yourself from your feelings and it may be that this
idea that your emotions, which this modern music is encouraging to
reinforce, might actually be part of the problem because it’s trapping
you just with yourself and if you’re trapped within yourself you can’t
lose yourself in something grander. It’s not only limiting – it stops
the world changing, because it’s only when we are together that we’re
powerful.”
This relates to a thought I had listening to songs on the radio full of emotion-melody blasts and those chorus-uplift rushes that Dan Barrow calls the Soar. The songs are meant to be super-emotive, but it's all too hyper-real to feel. It struck me that as well as compression in the audio sense (the loudness wars, brickwall limiting -- the flattening out of volume dynamics, so that it's at max impact all the way through, no dips in the levels) there was something you could "emotional compression". The emotion levels aren't allowed to fluctuate; the verse is like the chorus in terms of intensity. But it's also on the micro-level of every single line, every single word sung. The melisma. All the extra tremulous twinges you can work with a voice using AutoTune and other FX. It's like every syllable has been injected with emotional collagen.
Including this review "Against Music's Reductive Obsession With the New"
Of course, what Tom Hawking really means is, "Against (Some) Music Critics's Reductive Obsession With the New"
Because, for those critics (whoever they are!), the problem is precisely that Music isn't Obsessed with the New... that in fact Music, most of it anyway, is overly comfortable with being not-new....
(that could have been the Retromania subtitle, actually - Against Music's Unproductive Obsession With the Not-New)
Savages, eh?
Good name
Like the band's manifesto, as daubed on the cover, and incanted at the start of this video
(Although, ironically, far from instilling "silence" they have managed to add greatly to the din of discourse. They are the proverbial hot new band making a lot of noise)
and the wo-manifesto falters with the bit about "an angry young tune" -- it's like, after the build-up, THAT's what you're brandishing? A tune?
Now, part of me thinks:
look - Malaria
sound - Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
it's WAY too early for a Post Punk Revival Revival
Another part of me thinks:
well maybe it's like Elastica or PJ Harvey, the form fairly familiar, the content new and fresh, the energy and urgency undeniable
(and the parallel there would be the trans-gender shift: Justine F's Hugh Cornwell impersonation, or Polly Jean insisting all her role model were male - Nick Cave, Beefheart, etc)
The pro and the anti reminds me of the debate-flurry earlier this year re. Peace and that NME rave review by Eve Barlow:
The narrow-minded reckon their experience of history can’t
be surpassed; that there’s no point in drawing inspiration from the past
because it was better IN THEIR DAY. They murder people’s vibes because they’re
buzzkillers. They criticise young people for being unoriginal and lazy because
58 years after Bill Haley And His Comets’ ‘Rock Around The Clock’ charted,
idealistic, rebellious teens haven’t evolved beyond simple pleasures like first
crushes, guitar strums, pop hooks and leopard print. This disappoints
buzzkillers immensely.
Buzzkillers will use songs such as Brummie quartet Peace’s
‘Lovesick’ – about reckless abandon and skipping school – to lambast
uncomplicated singers like Harry Koisser for cooing “I don’t wanna make no sense”
over an updated version of the refrain from The Cure’s ‘Friday I’m In Love’.
They’ll demand something more sophisticated – a unique way of saying “I love
you”, perhaps. You can safely assume buzzkillers are no longer in love, detest
romantic gestures and are cautious of hype bands with hippy names....
Those with one foot in the past may view Peace with
scepticism, finding them over-familiar. Alright, the psych opener ‘Higher Than
The Sun’ reminds us of The Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ as guitars swirl
through a Technicolor wash of dirge. Admittedly, the grunge ‘Follow Baby’
blasts off like My Vitriol or Mansun before hammering a Gallagher lyric of “We
gon’ live for-evaaah”. Yes, ‘Wraith’ is laced with Herculean drumming and
could’ve been by The Charlatans. Indeed, ‘Toxic’ is one-dimensional, employing
riffs that fizz like sherbert Flying Saucers. Totally, you can sing Blur’s
‘There’s No Other Way’ over ‘Waste Of Paint’’s feral chorus. BUT ENOUGH WITH
THE BUZZKILLING.
So long as teenagers exist, there’ll be eternal value in
rock’n’roll this spectacular. It has no sell-by date... Peace are intoxicated by their
own youth, and all that matters is that they’re happening NOW....Point is: music can reflect the past and still be valid.
Some may see it as history repeating itself, for others it’ll be brand spanking
new... As Britain suffers from
youth unemployment and economic crisis, our greatest currency is the chime of a
golden tune. Peace have delivered 10 of them. So what if they’re a bunch of
pirates and not pioneers?This is their time.
Quite a few people of my generation found risible both the band and Barlow's review (a sort of defensive-aggressive paean). (It's interesting that so many of these 'let the young have their music' articles are couched as defences - Hawking's piece above is subtitled: A Defense of Savage. Whereas actually self-evidently new music never needs an apologia or a justification -- it is proclaimed, exalted, the trigger for a manifesto or a sermon).
Here's a great tirade from only the other day by Neil Kulkarni that picks up from a taking-the-Peace Facebook discussion some of us were involved in April. He points out this this advance-apologetics tone of so many Peace reviews, preemptive defensive maneuvers against an imagined (and largely non-existent) army of curmudgeons.
The rhetorical stance taken by Barlow I actually thought was fine (in fact it reminded me of stuff David Stubbs wrote in his Melody Maker end-of-year 1988-Best-Year-For-Rock-Ever essay, the below-the-belt but brutally effective tactic of basically dismissing naysayers with "don't listen to them, these people are old")
What I thought was interesting was that Barlow seemed to be writing on behalf of an imaginary new-to-music teenage fan of Peace et al (while her own, better-informed, twentysomething viewpoint is clearly cogniscant of the abject derivativeness of Peace)
Now as it happened, as all this "blew up", I was in the UK, spending time with a non-imaginary 13 year old and her mother, a very dear and old friend, who I often stay with when I'm in London
Her daughter, who I've known since she was a baby and is almost exactly the same age as my son, is crazy about indie music
She is learning guitar and wants to be in band.
(And, what is hard to get one's head around, but I suspect is both quite common and indicative of something -- she and her mum share similar music tastes -- both adore the Smiths -- and often go to shows and festivals together)
Of course this girl looooves Peace and a bunch of others from NME's current batch of young hypefuls
Confronted by such enthusiasm up-close, all of one's heard-it-before cynicism melts away
So when she played Parma Violets, Foxygen, Temple, I couldn't help trying to hear it from her viewpoint, trying to see what could be loveable about them...
Okay, Parma Violets do a good Echo & the Bunnymen (better than Mighty Lemon Drops anyway, who I made allowances for in '86, until I interviewed them) while other songs echo The Clash, J&MC, Britpop. (Many of these comparisons were actually made by the
13 year old herself, so it's not like she's unaware of the debts and
derivations). Foxygen are, what, Zombies-like or something? Temple: can't be arsed to identify the precise template but they are the most classicist and period-formalist of the bunch. I was struck by their incredibly fastidious recreation of Sixties psych, especially the drumming and the cymbal sound. .
When all is said and all is done, though, it is undeniable (contra Barlow's "this is their time") that these bands fail the test of their time.
One just wishes the ardour of young people (like the daughter of my friend), this excitement and joy of discovery - always beautiful to witness and, up to a point, unarguable -- one just wishes that there were objects far more worthy of their passion.
