Death Cab for Cutie

The other day I was listening to one of the college radio stations here in Chicago and heard an old Death Cab for Cutie track. The song took me on a brief time warp back a few years to when the only people who knew that name were the indie-kids who accidentally stumbled on the band in some dimly-lit venue in Seattle. I remember how big a deal it was when they went on tour with Pedro the Lion. The big time!

That all changed of course when the eardrums of an entire generation of teeny-boppers were invaded by Benjamin Gibbard’s distinctive croon. Death Cab was propelled from localized indie-rock esteem to international stardom. The album peaked at 95 on the Billboard 200 and was certified Gold shortly thereafter.

The success of Transatlanticism sparked an avalanche of indie-rock favorites showing up on popular TV shows and movies. Bands like the Shins were relative unknowns until their music was featured in the film Garden State. Music directors suddenly became some of the most influential new tastemakers in town.

The ‘Lateralization’ of Market Cycles

TV wasn’t the originator of this mass migration of underground music to the mainstream – Death Cab and the others were simply riding a cycle that has been around since the advent of rock and roll. A new scene pops up locally, gains traction regionally and eventually has the potential to blossom into a national trend. When a popular TV show suddenly declares something cool that was previously just for indie kids or geeks, that can be enough to tip the scales and complete the cycle. The national trend that began in some faceless kid’s garage is the new mainstream.

Of course, at the end of the cycle a void is left in the underground. Some new sound or style has to emerge to provide an alternative to mainstream music and culture. Historically that has always happened pretty quickly. Look at the electro movement of the early 00′s.

Market cycles like this tend to follow distribution cycles. The faster that new albums are produced, manufactured and released the faster a particular flavor of music is likely to reach maximum exposure and grow stale.

In the digital age the distribution cycle of music has been flattened. Little Jimmy can stream a cool album on Last.fm, record something just like it, and release his new-ish creation unto the world in a matter of weeks. Multiply that by the number of artists and would-be artists with access to cheap recording software and you can probably see where I’m going with this.

The Freelance Whales

The flattening of music’s distribution cycle has created an environment where new sounds and styles come and go much more quickly than ever before. For example, I was stoked a couple of weeks ago to discover a promising unsigned band called Freelance Whales only to read yesterday that they are already one of Stereogum’s ‘Bands to Watch!’

“Trends aren’t transmitted hierarchically, as they used to be,” explained Martin Raymond, co-founder of The Future Laboratory, in a recent interview with the Independent. “They’re now transmitted laterally and collaboratively via the internet. You once had a series of gatekeepers in the adoption of a trend: the innovator, the early adopter, the late adopter, the early mainstream, the late mainstream, and finally the conservative. But now it goes straight from the innovator to the mainstream.”

What does this mean for underground music?

Well, it means that there isn’t any, really. Everybody knows everything everyone else knows, thanks to the real-time web and social media platforms like Twitter. To quote the Independent article again, “If a global scenester starts wearing their underpants around their neck in Sao Paolo tomorrow, by next week boxer shorts would be sold out in Berlin.”

I can see two possible side effects of the obsoletion of the underground. The ‘laterilization’ of trends may force more frequent innovations. In order to stay ahead of the curve artists will have to operate in a constant state of mold-breaking and envelope pushing. These innovations will likely be incremental – even marginal at times – but consistent.

Alternately, innovation may actually be stifled by the constant and almost instantaneous recycling of previous musical styles and trends. We’re already seeing this quite a bit. Instead of coming up with something truly new or groundbreaking, artists will take a little from here, a little from there and pass it off as fresh and new.

There’s a fine line between incremental innovation and “pick-and-mix” recycling, but I would argue that the latter is a poor substitute for the former. Real innovation – however minor – represents progress. Recycling by nature represents a gradual degradation of meaning, perhaps even leading eventually to regression.

Can the underground be stopped?

It remains to be seen if the internet will be enough to kill underground music or render it obsolete. I’m hopeful that it won’t. I believe that it’s in the nature of an artist to look for alternatives. There will always be those who want more than the status quo, even if it’s a constantly moving target. The same dissatisfaction that led Kurt Cobain to reject the theatrical hair-bands of the 80′s will eventually lead us to something new again.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we can simply sit still and wait for someone else to do it for us.

What do you think? Does music need an underground or is the underground already dead?

The Fireside Bowl before a show

As a music listener, what is the most important factor that determines whether or not you like a particular song, or album, or artist? The last couple of posts I’ve published have produced quite a few comments that seem to consider innovation to be the litmus test. That doesn’t surprise me at all, and I’d probably give the same answer. But why? Why is innovation so important? Can’t a piece of music be judged by more practical standards like arrangements, instrumentation, recording quality, etc.?

First of all, not every innovation has to be the genre-busting, game-changing capital ‘I’ Innovation of Kid A, Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper. If every decade has one defining sound, then every two or three decades have that kind of true Innovation. So, while that is certainly a goal worth striving for, we’d run out of music if we disregarded every track that fell short.

Thankfully, even innovation on a smaller scale can be enough to catch a listener’s attention and create a memorable experience.

I remember all of the pretentious conversations my early band mates and I used to have at shows. We could always find something wrong with the other acts (it was hard being perfect.) Yet despite trying desperately not to be, there were a few times when we were genuinely impressed.

One Thursday night my drummer Mike and I went to the now-defunct Chicago institution the Fireside Bowl [pictured top]. I don’t even remember who we had originally come to see. Appleseed Cast, maybe? It’s irrelevant because second band to perform that night overshadowed everything that came on before or after. Our interest was first piqued during the transition when there only appeared to be two members in the band. A tall, lanky drummer and a blonde woman busy setting up a Hammond B52. Looking around, everyone else seemed to watching the stage, too. “What the hell is this?” somebody said too loudly.

The drummer counted in the first song with his sticks over his head, and the room was hit with a wall of thick, analog sound from the organ. The man and the woman sang together for most of the first song. It sounded as if they had taken music from the NES and added drums and tight pop harmonies. They spent the entire time staring deep into each other’s eyes.

My first thought? This is ridiculous. It was just too different from the moody, guitar driven indie rock I was used to. Yet, by the time they had finished their fourth song Mike and I were completely hooked. Who were these guys and where do we get their CD?

Mates Of State performing

The band was Mates Of State [pictured left], and I did end up buying their CD, My Solo Project. They’ve since gone on to find a decent amount of success. And while Mates of State’s music may not be groundbreaking, I still remember the fun of being challenged by something new. I was even willing to overlook some of the flaws that might have been more glaring if they were just rehashing something that had been done dozens of times before.

There were other bands experimenting with new sounds and styles – Anathallo comes to mind. The Dirty Projectors and The Fiery Furnaces more recently. I’m sure you could all name dozens of better examples (please don’t, unless you just can’t help yourself!) The point is simply that while this kind of smaller-scale innovation happens a lot more often than it’s elusive, better-looking cousin Innovation, it can still have a profound effect on the listener. A visit to the local indie-rock dive is transformed into a memory still fresh several years later.

What about quality? Innovation is great, but what if something is just put together really, really well? Quality is certainly important. Your music can be Beethoven’s 9th, but if you cut a trashy recording nobody’s likely to listen. Again, not everybody has to reinvent the wheel.

Yet, in many ways the world doesn’t seem to care as much about quality as it used to. We live in a society where a video shot on someone’s phone can get hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. It’s grainy, the sound is terrible but fewer and fewer people seem to mind. This isn’t completely new to the music industry – look at the punk movement. For many the attitude was what was important, who cares what it sounded like?

The bottom line is that you can be successful without innovation, but in order to be great you have to be willing to push the envelope. The average music fan will go to about a dozen shows this year. They’ll probably remember two. Many of those acts will put on a good show, but the ones that will imprint themselves on the minds of their audiences are the ones who have taken the time to explore new possiblities.

What do you think? Do you agree, disagree? What is important to you when searching for new music?