It was my considerable surprise and joy to see a small handful of musical developments on my year-end best-albums list that were actually something along the lines of popular rock, if you will. Now, of course, this in no way obviates that those bands are or will ever actually become “popular” — I’m simply referring to the style of steady, measured rock music being dispatched within pop song structures, a thing many had thought, and that many had perceived to be, a bygone entity.
Among these notable releases, anyway, were Britain’s The Vaccines. The Vaccines belt out proud, straight-ahead, slightly punk-fueled alt-fare, not too unlike The Gaslight Anthem, and, believe it or not, probably not as full of schmaltzy idolization of women. Their last album, Back in Love City from last year, has a song called “Heart Land,” which singer Justin Young has dedicated to America: “Favorite bands and Spider-Man / America… I’m not giving up on my love for you / America”.
Young, I think, is reminiscing on a day when “favorite bands” were still something anybody embraced and toted around, in light of how these words are juxtaposed with the declaration of “Still remember falling in love with you”. As most people know, we’re living in an age today where some adult people are actually incapable of naming any song (I apologize if this comes as a shock to anyone but I actually had a class with this girl of 19 or so who completely failed when asked to name any song at all).
The truth is that “favorite bands” just aren’t in the lifestyle here anymore, at least typically. It’s with great fondness that I remember two people out in Colorado who named Radiohead as this vaunted bastion. I personally snag Wilco as mine, on the narrow strength of their last record, the down, lugubrious and glorious Ode To Joy, with Califone having held that title before that particular release. There just seemed to be a distinct feeling in the air, anyway, when these individuals would voice this opinion. Neither one made fun of Radiohead or themselves for liking them, immediately after mentioning them, thereby stalwartly evading what seems to be a crushing force in our society compelling people against high self-esteem. The man, sitting across from a woman probably 20 years younger than him, the other who’d slotted Radiohead as the favorite, called Thom Yorke’s gesticulations in live performance “riveting.” In general, the whole thing was like something that stood apart from our default, everyday mode of interaction, which is typically faster-paced and full of a lot of general mocking of the self and of whatever else happens to stand in the path of the speaker.
Granted, this took place out in Colorado, a place where the exchanged discourses have the potential to be, I’d say, more ingenuous, or less the simple product of general popular culture. But insofar as your favorite band is naturally the one you listen to the most, it makes sense to me, in a way, that their particularization would actually denote a distinct lifestyle, or at least a notable and in some way traceable permutation on the formerly sovereign lifestyle gathered by the masses. Great art should affect us, obviously, and in doing this, theoretically, it can’t help but catalyze change, at least in some way, even if it’s just giving someone the courage to get up and dance, if they otherwise wouldn’t have.
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