Ignoring the 1,000-Pound Mediocrity in the Room

Rock journalism has never been the equal of the music, and rarely its competent scribe. “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” said Frank Zappa (or Elvis Costello, depending on who you ask). QWERTY can’t contain the music. To even keep it in sight, metaphors stretch, comparisons strain, and words pile up, as if to do it justice by sheer ecstatic accumulation.In America, we’ve given up trying. Here, rock journalism has grown cautious, chastened by false promise. Consider the peculiar spectacle of the Strokes’ new album. Four years ago, no language, however breathless, was ad equate to describe them. Now the most the American press – and the New York band – can muster is guarded optimism, even while acknowledging that it’s the group’s best album.The British are afflicted by no such doubts. In the absence of American bands to hyperbolize about, the British rock press has turned its hair-trigger acclaim and searching limelights on local offerings. In the last few years, the Music, the Streets, Franz Ferdinand, and the Libertines have all been hailed as generational talents. That they’ve failed to live up has hardly mattered; the British press makes a sport of finding new and ever more outlandish ways to cry wolf.Take the Test Icicles and the Arctic Monkeys, two British bands whose over-the-top treatment has reached new heights. This week and next, Domino will release their debut albums stateside, giving Americans (who haven’t already encountered them online) a chance to see what all the fuss is about.“Absolutely, effortlessly, frigging brilliant,” is how New Musical Express magazine (known as NME) described a song from the Arctic Monkeys’ debut album, “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.” “Just because they’re surrounded by a blizzard of absurd hype doesn’t mean they’re not worth every syllable,” the article continued. The record got a perfect 5/5 from NME and 10/10 from the Guardian newspaper, which wrote that “they look and sound unstoppable … the only surprise was that [they] didn’t turn up in the Queen’s Christmas speech.”In the case of the Test Icicles, this “blizzard of absurd hype” is slightly less absurd. NME wrote that the roar of feedback on the song “What’s Your Damage?” “hits you in the solar plexus with the power of a Cambodian guard delivering some private prison justice to Gary Glitter,” and concluded by asking, “Why aren’t all bands like this?” But judging by the other reviews in this influential music magazine, it seems that almost all bands are, in fact, “like this.”One would imagine the generations of great British bands that preceded these might temper the enthusiasm somewhat. But history is actually used to bolster the case. The Arctic Monkeys, NME writes, have “every touchstone of Great British Music covered: The Britishness of the Kinks, the melodicnous of the Beatles, the sneer of the Sex Pistols, the wit of the Smiths, the groove of the Stone Roses, the anthems of Oasis, the clatter of the Libertines.”This sets an impossible standard for any band, and certainly for this one. In fact, just the opposite is true of the Arctic Monkeys. Rather than dusty record collections, their sound derives from more recent retro-minded bands – like Franz Ferdinand, the Strokes, and the Libertines – who apply classic punk and post-punk guitar sounds to straightforward pop structures. The lyrics too have shallow roots. Like the Streets, their songs catalog the fleeting thrills and lingering resentments of middle-class British “chav” culture, a narrow world in which underage drunks taunt coppers for kicks and tarted-up girls with fake tans rule the realm. While clever and taut, the songs are hardly a revelation.Test Icicles, on the other hand, is of ten compared to popular disco-punk outfits like the Killers and the Rapture, but that is also just marketing bluster. With the exception of their single, “Circle, Square, Triangle,” which manages to behave itself, they’re closer in sound and marketability to the chaotic intensity of Whirlwind Heat, Refused, the Faint, and Atari Teenage Riot. If you don’t recognize those names, you won’t have to remember Test Icicles in a few years, either. Their blur of shattered techno instruments, unintelligible hardcore screams, and playful hip-hop reference, is fascinating – and violently uncommercial.In the end, of course, the British rock press’s coverage of both bands says more about itself than it does about the music. There’s always a feeling in rock journalism – particularly acute today – of having missed out on the golden age. In an era dominated by hip-hop, rock seems downright moribund. The shrill enthusiasm of the British rock press reflects this desperation. Unfortunately, this also does the musicians a disservice. As the Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner sings, “Anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment.” Groups as good as these can’t escape the hype of the British rock press, but they can’t live up to it, either.

Ignoring the 1,000-Pound Mediocrity in the Room

Ignoring the 1,000-Pound Mediocrity in the Room

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