i admit that Sylvester is not exactly the perfect messenger for a defense of authenticity, but this post shouldn't be overlooked: it's something of a cri de coeur in defense of musicians who work for years and years to capture something other than a major label record deal:
But I was really inspired by Merriweather Post Pavilion. These guys are only a few years older than I am, and the urgency of striking it big when you’re young is super intense, especially in New York. Yet they were patient. They knew they were onto something, but... They knew they would only get to this point if they worked hard. I echo every fawning praise for this album, which aims to re-imagine popular music, and the way it can sound, and the structures it might take, and the games it might play.
Step into the music, the lyrics, and you realize this album is about three thirty year-olds trying to figure out how not to become grups. They are fundamentally different from the parents, living totally different lives--and yet they love their parents, probably respect the jobs they did on them, want the same for their own. The clash between knowing how screwy life is, being relatively set in your ways, and yet still wanting to remain wide-eyed--open to new possibilities the way you were at age 9, 19, 29—this is what I hear in MPP. A big vulnerable theme, and I admire them not for their answers so much as their bravery to just fucking go for it like this.
Sylvester then goes after HRO itself:
The comedic engine of HRO is this, then: Nobody really likes something on its own terms. Tastes aren't one-way, they're reflexive--or rather, the things we like are reflective, mirror-like, ciphers in themselves. Most people out there aren't interested in the things themselves, or incapable, so much as what it means for them to like these things. Carles doesn't exclude himself from this predicament--he's just the only one telling it like it is. There is a lot of bullshit out there and yet people like it. Most people are (ta-da) hipster runoff.
then, sylvester tears carles apart:
There is nothing more annoying than people liking music for the wrong reasons? Not to pull a Chuck Eddy, but are there wrong reasons for listening to music? If blasting DMX out your Wrangler as you're pulling into some high school girl's driveway makes you feel awesome, makes you feel like a fucking bad-ass, is that wrong? If listening to metal makes you feel tougher, less insecure, is it my job to tell you that you are an idiot? You know when some people say "music is like a drug for me", this is what they're talking about: the simple act of listening to music makes them feel good. Imagine someone saying "You're enjoying heroin for all the wrong reasons." Are there right reasons? Is ‘empirical knowledge as to the effects heroin has on my body’ the right reason? I don't think so! Regardless of the myriad horrible reasons that might lead them to it, people probably do heroin because it makes them feel good.
I have this relationship with music. There is this cold and dizzy feeling that overtakes me sometimes, when a song or a passage of a song happens to gun it to my heart. And I am addicted to this feeling--I seek it out, sludging through days upon days of music, much of it very objectively "good", for those moments capable of the cold and dizzy. There are all sorts of biochemical and culturally normative/dictated reasons for what comprises these particular moments for me--but their deconstruction doesn't take away from the fact that they still happen. Their deconstruction doesn't cheapen them, at least not for me.
So you can understand my frustration with a blog that posits everything as "just" a pose, "just" a biochemical and culturally dictated" reaction. One of us is happy, the other is angry because happiness is just a construct, there is no happiness, there is no spoon, etc. But like I don't know this already! Like I'm the lesser man for seeing what you've torn apart, but putting everything back together again.
i've probably already excerpted too much; if you've been following all the heat surrounding Merriweather Post Pavilion, you should check out the rest of Sylvester's piece. Animal Collective is exploring a very different sound than i tend to gravitate toward, but the album is undeniably a piece of rich, mature sonic exploration put together by serious artists trying to forge new musical paths without a care for radio accessibility. their work is clearly resonating with listeners; they were goddamn number 13 on the Billboard 200 last week, which is crazy for an album full of compositions that don't fit any conventional definition of the word "song". anyway, it's always thrilling to read passionate musicblogging, and for that reason alone, you should check out the Sylvester article.
