Monday, February 7, 2011

Aim for my skeleton, synthesizer!

For my birthday, Marisa got us two tickets for The Antlers/Local Natives show last Monday. We'd been talking about it briefly the week before; we both sort of wanted to go, but it's on a school night and the show is in Shibuya, and it's a foreign act so the prices are priced a little higher than they reasonably should be, and we'll probably cry all the way through The Antlers and who the hell is Local Natives anyway, oh yeah, that guy I met when I was waiting in line to take a shower at Fuji Rock was telling me how impressed he had been by Local Natives the day before, had he said that they were like a mix between Fleet Foxes and who was it again? I don't remember. Let's not go.

But she bought the tickets as a birthday present in an effort to force both our hands. As soon as she told me of this brilliant plan I was convinced. It was a brilliant plan.

Despite having been to numerous concerts around Japan during my time here, never had I before seen such a large number of hipsters in one area at one time as when I entered the venue. To be fair though, I should clarify that the room was filled with Brooklyn-style American hipsters rather than the Japanese hipster aesthetic which is both prolific and utterly different. I haven't quite figured out how it works, but I've surmised that it involves wearing Cosby-like Christmas sweaters and leggings beneath your jean shorts. I wore my turtleneck in an attempt to seem both existential and vaguely French, a wardrobe choice I thought would be appropriate for The Antlers set.

As the lights dimmed and the crowd hushed, I suddenly realized that I'd had it all wrong. It wasn't Local Natives opening for The Antlers; The Antlers were opening for Local Natives. I hoped that maybe it would be like the Mew/Flaming Lips Show with two 90-minute sets. It wasn't.

It didn't matter, however. They played 5 songs, and those were the only songs I was really interested in hearing anyway.

The Antlers are not one of my favorite bands. They had an amazing, amazing album in 2009, but why do I think that the album was so amazing? In retrospect, my opinion is based on the three or four songs from the album that I really like, songs with the lyrical intensity of a thousand suns. Musically, they're really quite mediocre, I think. They use a lot of melodic repetition and looping noise, which can be interesting but does not a good band make. The lyrics, on the other hand, god, the heartrending lyrics! How I feel moved by "Bear" every time I hear it, even two years later; how I can sing it at the top of my lungs in my house even when I'm all alone and feeling tiny. Listening to "Bear" on the train one day, I distinctly remember texting Marisa saying, "Please, never, ever get pregnant. Unless you mean to".

It was short, I had a beer and was extremely happy. I looked around, but it was impossible to tell whether anyone else had enjoyed it as much as we had. The room was full of bearded faces, arms crossed and indifferent.

Then, Local Natives. Marisa and I moved to the back of the room so we could have a better view. We didn't feel the need to be close to the stage, and evidently a lot of other people did. I eagerly awaited hearing something new, something that obviously had quite a following in Japan judging by the audience response before the show even began. They began playing. It was... something. They were certainly more upbeat, more energetic than the opening act. They did have that Grizzly Bear/Fleet Foxes-like harmony going on too. The five-piece band consisted of two guitars, a bass, a keyboard and drums. It was loud. I felt completely bored.

Moments of brilliance would occassionally shine through (a cover of Talking Heads' "Warning Signal" and the final song, a song that they introduced by saying that it had been written far before any of the other material we had heard that night and which was about working really hard on something and not being able to tell if it's garbage or not and how impotent that can make you feel as an artist), but overall I just felt bored. BORED.

This blog was originally started as a means for me to both keep track of and inform others about my activities in Japan. Part of that was because I've never felt like a good writer (or at least a person who could write anything good) and thus, it wasn't worth trying to extend its purpose beyond the pragmatic. Lately, however, I've felt that to just chronicle my life would not only bore others, but also myself. Also, I want to try to be a better writer (or at least a person who writes better than someone who doesn't write anything good). Okay. Tangent aside, my point is that I'm really writing this update because I want to talk about music and music criticism and why it's hard for me to think of a more unnecessary profession.

Music (and I think a lot of art, although not all art follows suit) is really not up for anything outside of personal criticism. I feel that this is especially true of music in that it's a wholly abstract art; there's no visual component (well, music taken alone anyway). No concrete base in an image. I know that there's music theory and that some major chords always sound triumphant and some minor chords will always sound sad, but all that aside, I don't feel that there's any specific formula for making music. Music doesn't have to be pleasing to be good, just like how no one would say that Duchamp's Fountain was aesthetically beautiful. Like John Cage or Alvin Lucier's work.

I am sitting in a room.

Using words to describe music is ultimately futile. Even your best approximation is too tainted by your perception of it. If it were a painting, even an utterly abstract one, you can still probably achieve a more objective representation of it through language than if it were a song. It has its basis in shape, color, line. With music, people fumble around, trying to describe the "sound" by comparing to another "sound". Hence, the stupid comparisons I've made throughout this post. After all, no one describes a song to someone by saying "Oh man, there's this great new song where the chorus goes A#, G, F, Cb!!!!" (Do music nerds do this? Someone let me know.)

When the crowd went crazy for Local Natives, I wasn't surprised. I just didn't get it. This became painfully evident to me when I met someone once who genuinely found the music of Taylor Swift to be moving. I don't get it, but I can't deny the sincerity of your emotion. You say tomato, I say tomato.

I said that I was going to do a "best of 2010" list or something a while ago, but forget that. It's a stupid idea in a self-congratulating, self-propagandizing sort of way. Instead, here's my favorite song of 2010.


Here's "Bear" by The Antlers, my favorite song of 2009:


Last, here's a song that I've just had running through my head this week:

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