Radiohead don't deserve the credit -- or, for that matter, the blame -- for
adding the cut-and-paste æsthetic of digital studio wizardry to the
recipe for a successful cutting-edge rock album. Sure, with the release last
year of Kid A (Capitol), the first of a pair of Radiohead albums that
incorporate both the sounds and the methodology of contemporary electronic
music, the band were embraced as pioneers, the musical equivalent of the first
baker to add chocolate chips to a batch of brown-sugar cookies. But beneath the
slick exterior of mainstream pop and even the rough and grungy surface of
alternative rock and its many offshoots, the digital revolution has been
transforming the way music is made from the ground up for well over a decade.
And Kid A was just the latest instance of an adventurous band going out
of their way to expand the boundaries of what constitutes pop. U2 attempted
something similar with their 1997 album Pop (Island), and back in 1989
the Dust Brothers helped push the Beastie Boys into the binary-coded future
with Paul's Boutique (Capitol).
More than anything, though, Kid A and its follow-up, this year's
Amnesiac (Capitol), reflect the challenges facing "alternative" artists
and their audiences in the post-alternative world. In the '90s it may have felt
as if it had all been done before, as if each micro-trend that appeared on the
cultural radar were a knowing echo of something from the past as everything
from '50s swing to '60s psychedelia to '70s punk and disco to '80s new wave
resurfaced in some guise. Now, though, we've reached the point where it feels
not only as if it had all been done but as if it had all been redone at least
once before. Which has only made it harder for those artists who've thrived on
opposition, originality, and/or rebellion of some kind, be it social,
political, or æsthetic: they're left with precious little room to
maneuver without bumping up against the next big thing or treading on
well-traveled ground. It's those circumstances -- not, as some have joked, a
loathing for stardom -- that have driven Radiohead to the outer edges of the
pop soundscape, a place with few recognizable verse/chorus/verse arrangements,
little in the way of rousing guitar riffs, and, for significant stretches, the
striking absence of their most potent asset, singer Thom Yorke's voice.
Radiohead aren't alone in the struggle to keep their fans happy and themselves
challenged. Former Sugarcubes singer Björk Gudmundsdóttir knows
better than to let the spotlight stray too far from the elastic, gymnastic,
infectiously playful voice that has always been her primary asset, but she's
also clearly not willing to settle for bland and easy musical backing or for
anything traditional. Early on in her solo career she discovered that the
freedom and spaciousness afforded by electronic musical backdrops (as opposed
to the backing of a band) were ideal for an hyperactive voice like hers -- that
musical subtlety can compensate for a lack thereof in the vocal department. So
she's been making avant-pop with the help of DJ types like Nellee Hooper,
Tricky, Graham Massey (808 Sate), and Howie Bernstein (Mo Wax) for almost a
decade (her Elektra debut, Debut, came out in '93).
StereoLab
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Like Radiohead, Björk too seems to have found herself pushed farther and
farther toward the avant fringe of pop as more and more mainstream artists have
begun to raid DJ culture for techno-based sounds. She's supplemented her
musical endeavors with acting -- she played a single mother accused of murder
in Lars von Trier's 2000 film Dancer in the Dark. And that role gave her
an opportunity to indulge in the last refuge of the artistically minded
commercial artist: the soundtrack. The result was the introspective
SelmaSongs (Elektra), a collection of compositions that served as a
bridge to more seriously toned songwriting for the once playful pixie.
Björk's still got plenty of pixyish playfulness in her on the new
Vespertine (Elektra). But the disc feels more somber, more, well, adult
than any of her previous solo outings did. (Indeed, on her upcoming tour,
she'll be accompanied by an orchestra and playing venues like Boston's Wang
Theatre -- you don't get much more "adult" than that in the pop world.) "I'm so
close to tears/And so close to simply calling you up/And simply suggesting that
we go to the hidden place," she pleads quietly on the opening track, "Hidden
Place" -- and in a sense, Vespertine is a journey into that private
place, or at least the soundtrack to the journey.
That sense is only heightened by the absence of bold musical backdrops. Mostly
we just get Björk's voice whining, crying, purring, cooing, straining,
scatting, and plucking melodies out of thin air. What subtle backing there is
provided by computer-generated loops of skittering rhythms, formless bass
tones, and gently swelling string arrangements -- her main collaborators this
time around are the San Francisco avant-garde programming duo Matmos, and
"Pagan Poetry" features harp accompaniment by another avant-gardist, Zeena
Parkins. When something resembling a normal dance rhythm surfaces on the 10th
track, the still subdued "Heirloom," it sounds almost rousing in contrast to
the light tapping and gurgling that's come before. And when Björk leaves a
little melodic flesh on the skeletal structure of "Unison," the disc's final
cut, the effect is like walking out into the brightness of a partially overcast
day after sitting for two hours in a darkened movie theater. As with
Radiohead's last two albums, you may be left wondering whether it was worth the
effort: for all its intimate charms, Vespertine is more impressive than
enjoyable, and a lot less accessible than it had to be.
Björk's labelmates Stereolab have been struggling to find a balance
between art and commerce since their inception, in the early '90s. Formed
around the nucleus of guitarist Tim Gane and the French-born singer Laetitia
Sadier and supported by a revolving cast of other players that of late has
usually included High Llamas guitarist/arranger Sean O'Hagan, the group have
unabashedly plundered both classic krautrock (especially the music of Neu! and
Can) and Marxist theory. Fortunately, their equal fondness for vintage analog
keyboard drones, chugging Velvetsy guitars, and driving 4/4 backbeats has led
to some propulsive rock moments, especially when you factor in Sadier's cooing
vocals and tongue-in-cheek touches of '60s lounge exotica. Yet the band have
often seemed too (avant-)guarded to explore fully the pop side of their musical
psyche. They've always been stuck somewhere between the simple pleasures of
Space Age Bachelor Pad Music and the abstract experiments of
Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements.
Butthole Surfers
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Not much has changed on the new Sound-Dust (Elektra). If anything, they
seem more stalled than ever, perhaps because this is the third or fourth album
in succession on which they've flirted with pop-music making without committing
themselves to writing one big hit song. Yes, there's an abundance of the kind
of easygoing continental pop construction that evokes the romance of reading
Proust or Marx while sipping French roast at some café Napoleon once
frequented on the Left Bank, and they make good use of O'Hagan's talents for
placing Bacharachian horn arrangements right where you expect them. So maybe
this is Stereolab's big pop move. The band certainly have curtailed their need
to include random bursts of experimental noise (as if it were necessary to
remind us that they're not your average pop band). And the songs are more about
regular stuff, like going on a date to a movie, than about socio-political
theories. Radiohead and Björk, take note: there's something impressive
about hearing an avant-garde band make enjoyable music, even if it ends up
being more accessible than they'd like it to be.
Next to maybe Black Flag, the Butthole Surfers are the last refugees from the
'80s American hardcore underground that you'd expect to find scoring a modern
rock hit with a little electro-pop ditty. But that's exactly what happened to
the Surfers in '96 with "Pepper" from Electriclarryland (Capitol). Then
four years passed during which Capitol apparently rejected a disc titled
After the Astronaut -- even though it had already sent out cassette
advances -- and the band rejected both their management and Capitol.
Well, the Surfers are finally back, with a new album, Weird Revolution,
on a new label, Hollywood/Surfdog. And sure enough, they've immersed themselves
in the loopy world of digital programming. The first single, "The Shame of
Life" (written by Surfer singer Gibby Haynes and Kid Rock), is a dark-hued
rocker with spoken-word verses, churning guitars, a driving beat, and only the
occasional techno-squiggle. The title track, however, is a Haynes rant put to a
beat and fitted out with what sounds like turntable scratching and sample
tweaking. Elsewhere, Haynes recalls what seems to be a bad acid trip in "Suit
like That" against a backdrop of hip-hopped upbeats, growling guitar, and more
electronic interference. In a lot of ways, Weird Revolution is the flip
side of the Björk/Radiohead coin -- as a rock band, the Butthole Surfers
were an avant-garde mess, but as a techno-pop outfit, they make remarkably
accessible music. If nothing else, it's proof that there's nothing inherently
obscure about digital technology: it's all in how you choose to use it.
Issue Date: September 7 - 13, 2001
