A quick message to the indie-rockers, the psychedelic folksters, the underground garage punks.
Some of you are ridiculously talented. Some of you write beautiful music that the pop machine will neither accept nor embrace. Some of you are lovely, vulnerable things that speak unique languages. Some of you are Indie now, but you will soon be well-known with good representation and a huge fan base if you continue your work and continue improving your craft.
Some of you.
To the others:
It is not good music to sing off key. Your voice is an instrument. Even when letting loose or screaming, you should still be in control of it. Also, harps, auto-harps, flutes, cellos, accordions, and other instruments rarely found in bands do not automatically make you talented. You have to be able to actually play the instruments. It is not enough to half-ass being a flutist or a pianist; if you suck at the toy piano, do not pull it out onstage.
It is not always clever to use your instrument in a way it was not intended. Plucking piano strings one by one may be different, but it takes a long time and I am not here to watch you try to remember which string is which. And please, no more dumping water on toy pianos. I have seen enough water-covered toy pianos to last me a life time. I do not know who started this trend, but it is a stupid one. The piano doesn’t sound aquatic or denser when submerged or covered in water. It only sense softer.
On volume: it is not achieving an artistic point of view to sing so softly that I have to pump my speakers up to the max. That is called you need to stop whispering and learn to use your freaking diaphragm. Soft is okay (when called for), but inaudible is not pleasing to the ear. It’s just inaudible. Conversely, do not just scream. Bjork could scream well (especially in her very very early days). The Beatles could scream well. Part of their success in screaming was in using it sparingly or in contrast to something else. Think about why you are screaming next time.
It is not fun for us to listen to you when you adopt a thick (and fake) accent. You are not a faerie, you are not from
Lyrics. Your lyrics: they are important. They are part of the music vehicle. Please stop singing incomprehensibly. It only makes me think that you could not come up with a good lyric and are now mumbling your way through things to hide the poor writing. If the eight cellists backing you up are drowning out your lyrics, then maybe you should lose a few cellists.
As for presentation, never, never, never play your sets completely or mostly naked just because. The human body is a complete miracle of nature, but I am here to listen to your art, not see your naked body. It is distracting. Do not dress in random fruit, vegetable, animal, or monster costumes. Hellogoodbye did it, and they were amazing for it (seeing Santa, Satan, an Apple, a Shark, and a Kangaroo battle onstage was awesome), but they sort of broke the mold, and it is time for people to stop trying to rip them off. Anyway, you aren’t probably as charming as Hellogoodbye’s four-man-power-synth sound. Not when you’re copying them, at least.
Finally (this is the hardest part for me to say), there is a reason Indie bands are Indie and Pop bands are Pop. Indie means Independent, as in no label or no major representation. Pop means Popular, as in yes labels and also major representation. Pop bands are popular for a reason: because they are put together (usually) and honed. Indie bands that stay Indie forever are Independent for a reason: they are bad (in some way) at what they do. It could be their image, it could be their sound, it could be their attitudes, but they are definitely not accepted into the mainstream music world for a reason. If you are over fifteen years in the making and still Indie, it is not solely because your sound is different: it is because you are doing something wrong. Please stop blanket-blaming the music industry for your own deficiencies as a performer. If you want to make it, you have to be a mercenary, so stop crying over it.
Fondly,
A listener of all music,
Kyle
2 comments:
LMAO. Holy crap, too funny... I couldn't agree more. I dig some of the indie stuff, but the whole uniqueness for it's own sake is now as incredibly old in music as it has been in postmodern art for years. Well said.
I agreed laughing until the very end. I certainly think that your conclusion is true of bands that *could* be popular, but some great bands are just too different (Animal Collective and Panda Bear come to mind). I'm also skeptical of indie-for-its-own-sake, but sometimes the general public just isn't artistically mature enough. I mean, look at what's popular. The indie bands that make it are usually the worst ones (like Death Cab for Cutie). Great post, though. (I followed your post on Brad's blog btw, which I enjoyed also.)
-ryan
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