Jack White's planning a solo LP.
i have to say, i admire his devotion to the White Stripes aesthetic. he's clearly felt constrained by it at times, but confined his musical sojourning to outside projects because he wanted to stay true to the idea of White Stripes as a totally stripped-down two-person garage band. it indicates a real seriousness about the music he's trying to make.
i'm sitting here listening to Veckatimest as i type this, an album made by similarly serious-minded musicians who are trying to hone their aesthetic more with each release. i've been thinking about how the artists i'm most drawn to, like Grizzly Bear and White Stripes and Jack himself, are self-conscious about their artistry. by which i mean, they believe themselves to be artists, and they believe that there is an audience for artistry in rock music, and their music reflects those beliefs.
music (and art in any medium) is ultimately an expression of the values of the creator. with any decision that any musician makes, something else is NOT chosen. the chords a musician chooses, for example, may seem to reflect only the taste of that musician, but there is usually more to it than that; we choose sounds and notes and chords based on how they make us feel, what we may associate with those sounds and feelings, and ultimately, how much those sounds and feelings represent what we want to put out there and express to the rest of the world. this is everybody, from Justin Timberlake to Jeff Mangum: Justin's first solo release was full of sounds that evoked early Michael Jackson, even self-consciously so ("Rock Your Body" and most of the Neptunes' work in general on that LP), and similarly, Jeff Mangum chose sounds on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea to self-consciously evoke everything from Bob Dylan to Nirvana to punk music to amateur musicians making music in a local living room As They Did In The Olden Days. with all these choices, the artist is saying, these artists and sounds represent ME. the cultures they evoke are the cultures i identify with. because the truth is, we like music for all kinds of reasons, and many of those involve culture. when we talk about mixing genres, we should really be talking about mixing cultures, because that's what musicians are really doing. so, someone like Jack White believes in the values of the music that he is trying to emulate, if that makes sense. he believes that the garage aesthetic is important, and he believes in the culture and values surrounding the garage band movement. he also seems to believe that in creating music for people who are similarly serious about that culture, he couldn't just turn round and make White Stripes into a band with another set of values. think about what happened when Bob Dylan -- another artist who made self-conscious choices about the values he wished his music to express -- went electric. the part of the folk culture that believed in acoustic music written in older styles as an aesthetic which represented their personal value system were pissed off. he seemed to anticipate this, and took his famous licks for it, but his picking up an electric guitar was a values choice as well: he's said that he thought rock music wasn't serious music when he first started performing; obviously, he began to take it more seriously at some point and wanted his music to reflect that. (he wasn't wrong: the 60s rock pioneers are currently inspiring a 2nd wave of 60s-style art rock from the aforemetioned Grizzly Bear and a ton of others right now.)
this post got a little rambly, but it's something that i've been really pondering lately with my own music: what values am i communicating with my music and the artists that i am emulating? why am i drawn to those values? what are the cultures surrounding the artists and sounds and genres influencing the musical choices i'm making? why am i drawn to those cultures? why do i want to be identified with them? what do those choices say about me and my values? how can i make sure to effectively communicate those values, and how do i identify those parts of my music that conflict with the values i'm trying to express? when an artist trying to think about Who They Are As An Artist, this is really what is meant. if Jack White put Pharrell-style synths in Get Thee Behind Me Satan, for example, a different set of values and cultures would have been evoked. that's an extreme example, but even the little choices make a difference. recording just a vocal and acoustic guitar is a values choice. adding a bit of slapback delay to that recording is a values choice, and changes the cultural association that the recording draws upon. adding a drum machine as opposed to a live drummer would be a cultural and values choice. trying to capture a "human"-sounding performance is a values choice, as is using Auto-Tune in an overt way. and on and on.
h/t to stereogum.
