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Just some thoughts....."A Gap in the Music"

Louise Wener of Sleeper said in the film Live Forever that the music industry uses pop music as a default setting when nothing exciting is happening. She was referring to the period following the whole Britpop saga, when an influx of bubblegum pop was being offered up by the industry. What she said was absolutely true then but things might be changing a wee bit. I’m beginning to get the feeling that ‘exciting’ periods in music are happening suspiciously regularly. I put the word ‘exciting’ in inverted commas because we are now being told what to find ‘exciting’, especially when it comes to so-called ‘proper’ music. You might be thinking that this is gonna turn into some musician’s rant about the state of music. And it pretty much is. In the same interview, Wener mentions Robbie Williams recording ‘Angels’as the moment Britpop died. We are now going through a similar period in the post-libertines, post-Arctics euphoria. We are getting the music that blurs the lines between art and crap in the same way Robbie did.

Every young act these days has some story about their rise to fame, which mostly smack of over-excitedness brought on by too much orange cordial. And which are mostly lies- I’m looking at you, Sandi Thom. All you hear is “so-and-so has a 20 billion friends on Myspace, so-and-so is part of the wicked Bognor Regis scene, which you probably haven’t heard of unless you’re in the know”. Everyone is after the equivalent story of the buzz surrounding the Beatles at the Cavern Club. Due to the hollowness of it all, people are beginning to see through it.

This is the weirdest thing about the industry, in that it is one of the few enterprises which is not supply-and-demand. The music business tells the public what to like and what to buy, and it always has. This whole obsession with trying to portray acts as young, vital and buzzing is little more than an unecessary marketing ploy to make it feel like ‘our thing’. The music industry is trying to claim the concept of ‘exciting’ as it’s own now. Their aim is to be the sole custodians of exciting…they’re bringing exciting back.

Still though, life finds a way. The real deal will out. Any artist worth their salt will back up the hype with an album to match, like the Arctic Monkeys did- twice. Looking through all the end of year reviews in the music press, you don’t see many debut efforts in there. Most of the highly rated albums of the year are by artists on their 2nd album or beyond: Arctics, Winehouse, Arcade Fire, PJ Harvey, The Boss, Bjork, etc. What’s going on then? There must be more good music out there by genuinely exciting new acts who need a break! But look at who has been given the opportunity to put their records out - The View, The Pigeon Detectives, etc… these acts look and sound like what an indie band on Neighbours would look and sound like. They. Are. Not. Exciting. It’s just repackaged versions of stuff that already exists… so maybe we’ll have to wait another year or so for the cycle to come around again. Maybe the next roll of decent artists are already here. This author knows of at least one fantastic band.

None of this is a sound thing or even really a fashion thing. PJ Harvey, in many of her interviews this year, reiterated that her motivation for making music was not to add to the plethora of samey stuff that already exists, whether it is good or bad. For something to be vital, there needs to be a degree of uniqueness about it. Something that you can’t get anywhere else. That’s exciting.

Will Hanson (PROXY)