In 1970, under the auspices of reviewing Fun House by the Stooges, Lester Bangs emitted a prophecy that I have quoted several times, including somewhere on this very blog:
Personally I believe that real rock n' roll may be on the way out, just like adolescence as a relatively innocent transitional period is on the way out. What we will have instead is a small island of new free music surrounded by some good reworkings of past idioms and a vast sargasso sea of absolute garbage.While the argument about whether that "new free music" ever arrived (hip hop doesn't quite seem to qualify) may continue until the seven seals are opened, the rest of the prediction has turned out to be cannily accurate. Every decade rock finds a way to re-invent itself, and every decade it does so by picking up and polishing off an older style and gussying it up with some more reworkings, until its hard to tell what era a band really hails from.
Take, for example, "garage rock." Back in the late 90's, when the rest of us were puzzling at the simultaneous popularity of Marylin Manson, Limp Bizkit, and Creed, a bunch of midwestern kids reached back into the old Nuggets playbook and found their inspiration in the first loops of scuzzy feedback from the mid-60's. Some of them, like Mooney Suzuki, believed that mere retro styling would be sufficient to sustain them in the national spotlight. Others, like the Von Bondies, were so dedicated to the grandness of their noise that they overproduced the hell out of it and ended up sounding like nothing so much as a boring version of Alice Cooper. But a couple had an aesthetic sense of what they were doing and why doing it was worth doing. Of these, the White Stripes have made the biggest pot of money for themselves, and naturally in doing so have drawn the biggest targets to their tri-colored backs (ultimately, we critics are an envious bunch of bastards). And conversely, the Black Keys, by not being as famous, have drawn the more recent plaudits.
Which brings me to Attack & Release, Auerbach & Carney's 2008 offering, featuring uber-trendy DJ Dangermouse behind the soundboard, the pianos, and anything else they'd let him play. The record began, according to Filter, as a collaborative conception featuring the band backing up rock n' roll godfather and feminist icon Ike Turner, but when Turner died before the project could be completed, the rest of the collective labored on without him.
The first thing to understand is that you've heard this kind of music many times before. There's guitar, there's drums, there's some very spare keyboard sitting in the background, and there's vocals. That's Jack White's formula to a tee, but it sounds nothing like the White Stripes, who have always, despite Jack's paeans to Son House et al., have always been carried plenty of Zeppelin and the Stooges in their kit. The Keys are far bluesier, in temperament and tempo, and whatever thundering rock riffs they crush out, the true pleasures of them are found in the space, the soul slapping, the pain, lies, and lust that's been what the blues have always been about.
Whatever "expansion" Danger Mouse brough to the Key's sound -- the flutes on "Same Old Thing," the bells on "Oceans and Streams," the two versions of "Remember When" so radically different that really only the lyrics are the same -- the center of the album remains Auerbach's guitar, which is as loud and effected as any fan of the electric six-string could desire, and his vocals which are brusque and clear.
And again, nothing you haven't heard a thousand million times. This is the the 21st century, and gutbucket-blues have been played for longer than the Soviet Union existed. And it's not done, not done by a long shot, because every generation gets, through re-workers like the Black Keys, to discover again why it's good. Pain, Lies, and Lust aren't something the record companies made up to move product; they're the human condition. Maybe when those seven seals are opened, and we discover that all we really did want was someone to treat us nice and kind, we won't want to sing the blues. Until then, you've got your blues, and I've Got Mine.
Grade: L
No comments:
Post a Comment