affected and pretentious

I e-mailed this to a friend of mine a while back, always meaning to turn it into a blog post. This will probably have an extremely narrow audience, but that’s obviously never stopped me before.

I’ve been listening to both Beck’s “Guero” and Iron & Wine/Calexico’s “In the Reins.” Strange as it may sound, I think the two can reasonable be directly compared and contrasted.
I think it’s reasonable to assume, judging by both Beck and Beam’s recorded outputs, that they write and compose songs on an acoustic guitar. I tend to think of Beck as a songwriter more than any sort of genre-hopping, sound-colliding, robot-boy. And Beam, despite his affectations, is still a 4-track bedroom artist at heart.
Where I think the difference can be drawn is the relative effectiveness in which each incorporates other sounds. It seems that Beck makes more of an effort to compose using non-acoustic elements, and at least attempts to “write” a song using such elements as record scratches, samples, and laser noises. I would argue that this is very effective, because you can totally hear how these sounds still can carry a song, complete with sounds that even function as chord progressions. This is why I think “Hell Yes” is the best song on “Guero,” by far. Dig the echo that trails the beeps, as if the beep was recorded in a studio. That’s fucking bitchin.
Iron & Wine’s songs, on the other hand, seem affected by the added instrumentation. For nearly every song he’s put on record since the first album and EP, I can still hear the hushed, acoustic roots of each song through the layers of banjo, percussion, piano, and other piled-on instrumentation. Because the roots are so visible (audible, I guess), it makes it tough to buy into the full-band thing he seems to be wanting to do more of lately. It seems really affected and pretentious (in the literal sense), and as such, it kind of annoys me that he wants to hide his songs behind all this extraneous sound. I think all the extra instrumentation masks the emotional impact his songs carry. Can you imagine “Bird Stealing Bread” or “Over the Mountain” with like 6 extra instruments on top of it? They wouldn’t mean a thing.
I should probably state for the record that I do think that the two carry wildly different goals in terms of the way they approach instrumentation and arrangements for their songs. My point is that coming from such similar acoustic backgrounds, Beck is much more effective in integrating these new approaches to fundamentally simple songs.
Anyway.
No, wait, not “anyway” yet. I have more to say about music. Specifically, The New Pornographers. I’ve had lengthy conversations with Annie about this band, and why I’m giving up on them. I’ll grant that I’ve devoted far too much mental effort to thinking about this question, which may fairly have been redirected to something more productive, like how to get myself out of debt, or actually finishing a single book about European history, both of which have eluded me thus far. But I think the fact that they’re so blatantly a pop band, combined with their status in the indie world, is why it bothers me that I can’t seem to like them. They’re a band that I feel should be right up my proverbial alley. And it should be fairly obvs that I have no problem whatsoevs with “indie-pop.” However. First, I think they’re wildly, wildly overrated. I think they’ve been over-hyped by the burgeoning indie hype machine, which starts with MP3 blogs and P-dork, and moves on into Spin and Magnet and other indie-er local free ‘zines. They’re a decent indie-pop band, with an outstanding occasional lead-vocalist (Neko), and a handful of otherwise horrible singers. And I do think that aside from Neko, the NPs are really terrible singers. I think “The Bleeding Heart Show” is a good example. Newman starts out singing the typically angular vocal melody, and the rest of the group chimes in at the end for the “hey-la” section, tripping and stumbling over each other, as nobody seems capable of holding a note in tune. Neko, though, blows them all away, and elevates the song to a whole nother level. It’s notable, though, that no NP songs, from their entire catalogue, can reach such a high unless Neko is vocally present. The lack of a strong vocalist on every track prevents the songs from becoming more than mediocre indie pop. The hooks that Newman puts so much effort into just don’t come through.
The second thing that bothers me is the presence of Bejar. That guy’s songs are just awful. They’re annoying diversions from what would otherwise be fairly cohesive (if weak) albums. I’d compare them to the tracks that other band members wrote on Wilco’s “A.M.,” or even to “Little Darling” on Summerteeth, or to those songs on the Songs:Ohia record where some random comes in to sing about chickens, and then Cat Power’s cousin or whoeverthefuck chimes in with some bullshit. That “Jackie” song from the first record sounds like someone holding their nose while coughing. It’s a horrid song. And I frankly don’t see what’s so special about his alleged production genius. In fact, I’d call their tracks underproduced, in that the songs could benefit so much from some guidance from a strong producer that whatever it is that Bejar does only serves to distract from the songs. What I’ve heard of Destroyer is more of the same, if you axe me. Undercooked melodies that can’t stay in one place long enough to make any impact.
Which is probably the main problem I have with the NPs. They’re lauded for their supposed pop sensibilities, but seem to spend so much effort on indie-fying their songs that they lose the impact that pop can have. Compare a band like Olivia Tremor Control, which is similarly jam-packed with ideas, but much more effectively presented. It’s like a poorly-imitated Aaron Sorkin show, all patter and no substance. The NPs’ songs are all left turns, but for a left-turn to have any impact, you have to go straight for a while. And they never straighten a song out. Further, what makes “Electric Version” such a terrible album is that it’s all left turns, and all the melodies are so annoying to begin with. Compound that with vocalists that can’t carry even those short snippets of tune, and you got yourself a disaster stew going. At least “Mass Romantic” and “Twin Cinema” have melodies that don’t grate, however furtively the band commits to them.
To be clear, I think that some of the songs could be actually good, given better vocalists to carry them along. In that respect, the remind me of the Grateful Dead, a band whose songwriting is sometimes underrated, as they are obscured by piss-poor singing. A great pop band needs a strong vocalist to bring the melodies to the forefront.