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Volume CXXXII, Number 23 |
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Fever to sell: the hijacking of rock
SEAN TURLEY
COLUMNIST
Eventual negative reactions are inevitable. Too many apples and the flavor's gone. Too many free movie rentals and you get too lazy to cash in. It all has to start fading sometime right? Well, maybe not. As of day 622 after buying the Strokes' Is This It?, the album still sounds just as dandy sweet as it was on the third listen (nothing's perfect the first time through) on October 17, 2001.
The album's tense riffs, intelligently adolescent lyrics, superb bass lines, and barreling vocals unite into, bar none, the best album I've ever been fortunate enough to hear (of course, this opinion is from the perspective of an angsty, apathetic, and disenchanted college kid).
Little did I know then that this quintessential expression of early life's disillusionment would spawn, or at least exemplify, an explosive rock revival. Unfortunately, the movement would suffer the same fate as the apples: the whole movement has gotten really old, really rotten, really fast.
It started off so auspiciously. Soon after the Strokes came Black Rebel Motorcycle Club with their psychedelic-noir, reverb heavy masterpiece, BRMC. Then, in 2002's early winter, the White Stripes blossomed out of their candy-coated lairs in Detroit to bring us the raucous, velvet-touched, and perhaps a tad too long fire and asphalt assault of White Blood Cells.
Rounding out the early trifecta is the Moldy Peaches' self-titled debut. Their juvenile brilliance, spliced with porn references and a super-poorly recorded guitar, made The Moldy Peaches an asinine, fun, and dirty anti-folk album.
Even the second batch was fantastic: the Vines (Highly Evolved), the Hives (Veni Vidi Vicious), and the Warlocks (Rise and Fall) released stellar, diverse albums. Sadly, these summer releases were the inevitable zenith, the beginning of the decline, the backlash, et cetera for the supposed rock revival.
The success of these albums obviously alerted someone upstairs in a BIG label to flood the market with derivative "garage rock" bands, start up the hype machine for every little "indie band" in the northern hemisphere, and hijack yet another underground movement, killing any creativity and inventiveness in the process.
Bands that profited (or suffered, depending on your outlook) included the mind-numbingly boring Mooney Suzuki. Rather than creating a unique sound or fusing their influences into some unstoppable rock and roll juggernaut, the band simply rehashes old R&B songs that are devoid of any melody whatsoever. They flail around onstage, hoping someone out there is so enamored of their derivative stage act that he or she will buy the album. Even their recent opening act at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City, The Raveonettes, absolutely kicked their ass musically just by coldly gazing into the audience and playing distorted, abrasive rock gems.
Another group to lose its once sweet flavor is the White Stripes, whose Elephant is slow, tedious, and pretentious-sometimes all in the same song.
The forthcoming Strokes album will be the ultimate criterion to decide if this decline is a mere rotten spot on an otherwise ripe road to rock and roll supremacy or an insurmountable fall. Until then, the movement can only be defined and judged by its newest release, the most recently hyped-beyond-recognition entry into rock and roll. That album, my friends, is the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Fever to Tell.
Sadly, it seems that the rock revival's fall from infallibility will continue at a fevered pace. Don't get me wrong: Fever to Tell certainly isn't a bad album, nor are the YYYs an unexciting band, as their Master EP demonstrates. But on Fever, they fall quite short of realizing the expectations Master sets. After a promising keyboard opening in the frantically pulsing, Faint-esque "Rich," the album takes a turn towards the simply dull. The first five tracks blend together in a monotonous mix of off-key screeching, start-stop rhythms, and (luckily) a plethora of catchy, angular riffs. Not until "No No No," the eighth song out of only eleven on the disc, do the YYYs seem to find something they've apparently misplaced in the earlier tracks: melody. This foundational element to every great album is almost completely absent from the first 20 minutes.
Even the last three tracks cannot redeem Karen O's early forays into cliché hip, holier-than-thou, art chic, off-kilter scream attacks that completely muffle Nick Zinner's excellent mutated blues riffs. Fortunately, there is a bright side: the last three tracks, "Maps," "Y Control," and "Modern Romance," are a promising omen for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' future.
Fusing Velvet Underground minimalism with simple melodic female vocals (slightly reminiscent of Moe Tucker's occasional singing for the VU), spastic keyboard parts, and short repetitive guitar riffs, these tracks show the YYYs exploring new territory, a trait not often seen in these revivalist bands. When Karen sings "Wait/they don't love you like I love you" in "Maps" for the first time she actually sounds sincere, in contrast to her uninteresting delivery in the opening songs.
The YYYs' Fever to Tell certainly isn't the death null for rock's refashioning; rather, it just signals to a continuing nose dive. I hope The Strokes will set everything straight again this year. Then again, maybe not. Maybe rock is doomed to fall again as another victim to overzealous profiteering and mind-corrupting hype extremes. Someone save our rock and roll once again please!
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