other ephemera

Pitchfork finally chimed in with their Julie Ocean review today, nearly a month after their taser coverage, and it’s yet another piece pontificating on the cliches of power pop and anonymity of bands that play the genre.

Stephen Deusner writes:

Despite its effusiveness, power pop is a highly conservative genre, favoring a minimum of elements: infectious hooks, tight harmonies, driving tempos, and bittersweet brevity. A very few artists, such as the New Pornographers, can successfully tweak that formula without losing the immediacy of the form, while others, like Fight Songs-era Old 97s, distinguish themselves through their lyrics. But most power pop bands do it just well enough to risk becoming anonymous, following the formula so closely that they neglect to include themselves in their songs.

Remember, this is the same publication that said Weezer came along and changed power pop, making Matthew Sweet irrelevant. Yep, Weezer is apparently a power pop band. Thanks, guys.

What drives me crazy about this is that when we talk about power pop, what we actually mean is poppy rock music. To call poppy rock music a genre with staid conventions is essentially saying that a four-piece rock band that plays catchy songs is a staid convention, in which case 90% of the world’s bands should just call it a day. And, of course, this same standard is never applied to other genres. Fleet Foxes, who I do like, are doing nothing more than aping a lot of late 70s British psych-folk bands (Pentangtle, Fairport Convention, International String Band, etc.), playing to the conventions of that genre. The post-punk art crowd, who they have always loved, is doing nothing more than aping Wire, Gang of Four and PiL, as well as a few thousand early 80s indie bands who did the same, but somehow most critics never bother to complain that this is in essence the third time around for this exact sound.

So why the constant talk about clichés and formulas with catchy rock music and not with the five million other genres out there? Why am I supposed to credit Abe Vigoda for sounding like the second Orange Juice record or No Age and Times New Viking for sounding exactly like the Swell Maps—a trick Pavement beat them to back in 1989—and at the same time discount Julie Ocean for sounding like Small 23?

And that of course gets to the last point: Julie Ocean are not a power pop band, at least not as I would define that term. They are an indie pop band, an aggressive one, which is one of their huge strengths, but still an indie pop band. They sound like a band on Sarah records, recalling early Primal Scream and a lot of other early indie jangle bands, or, even more head-on, like any number of early 90s American indie bands. Hell, if you had first played me the album and told me it was a Chapel Hill band from 1993, I would have believed you. And I mean that as a compliment. A big one. That’s a great sound, and if someone can find something new and interesting in it, that’s incredibly worthwhile.

The true value in music comes from melody and from songwriting. If a band plays in the conventions of a particular genre, that doesn’t mean they are derivative, it just means they have a source to draw from. Their originality comes from their songs. Radiohead isn’t interesting because they play around with Can and Faust influences, they are interesting because they have really good tunes. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters. This is Jack Rabid’s argument, but if a song still sounds amazing on an acoustic guitar with just the signer, then it’s a great song. If it doesn’t, then it isn’t. I don’t care that The Tyde sounds a whole hell of a lot like Felt; I care that I love their songs.

So engage with the music, please, critics. Is that too much to ask? And if you listen to Julie Ocean and hear the Raspberries, I can only assume you’ve never listened to the Raspberries.