If you would have asked me around 2009, I would have told you the coolest sound you’d find on radio would be the static, the type that could be sonically assimilated with guitar feedback. I kept my CD book and Discman with me on every bus trip, as I did on my trip from Colorado, where I was staying, back to my native Midwest, for the Lollapalooza ’09. I’m not going to front, though: seeing those mountains again was always a trip, and I still remember pumping Dinosaur Jr. – Beyond and Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix from my Discman, for the bus ride from the airport back to the Broomfield bus stop, from which I’d walk the half mile back to my Broomfield apartment, down a dusty, desert hill, under crisp, crystal-clear August skies.
I choose those same two albums for tonight. And why not? They cater to my reality, which is apparently the only reality I need for right now.
Any fan of indie rock in the 2000s decade will know the obvious advantage of listening to full albums. It was the era when Pitchfork journal really meant something, and full-length LP’s all seemed sovereign in their ability to furnish a dynamic but cohesive set of songs.
And all of this spoke to us sensitive souls who had lived through the brutal, bellicose George W. Bush administration. In this way, the indie rock revival worked as a full “player” in itself — pretty much all I listened to was bands from Sub Pop, Matador, Merge, Fat Possum, Polyvinyl, Dead Oceans, Carpark, Kranky, etc. This droll rock music, unencumbered by the corporate dollar and always rendered with clear, no-frills production (deaf to radio, in other words), always seemed to speak to me and deliver me everything I needed, save for the occasional listen to Pearl Jam, Led Zeppelin, Outkast or Eminem I’d pepper in about once every few months. There was soft music, hard, crazy music like No Age and Liars, and it all seemed new, and original, while also weaving in influences enacted by former bands, like a conscious continuation of the canonical rock-and-roll right brain.
Almost seeming to fall into the antiquated, but saved by relentless energy, original lyricism and great emotional variety, Beyond still plays as a timeless ode to garage rock. Is this music that any high schoolers can make in their mom’s basement? Well, sure, provided they have enough self-deprecating perspective to issue lyrics like “Hate to say it but you told me so”. Late-album ballad “I Got Lost” is still is haunting and disarming as ever, the primary track I wanted to include on the soundtrack to the movie I never made about a girl getting off work serving at Applebee’s, going home and getting high on opioids.
Neither of these bands played the Lollapalooza 2009, but Phoenix’s spirit seemed to be looming over the proceedings, being probably the band most included on t-shirts of spectators with the one exception of the venerable No Age. And, to be sure, Phoenix would have fit right in at this festival, with their focused, expedited rock songs more tailored to swanky grocery store satellite radio than stale old corporate broadcast syndications. This album finally becomes a sort of critic’s nightmare because there’s so little you can authoritatively say about it — it exemplifies the artistic stratosphere of the craft, with staggering emotional genuineness oozing in to fill the cracks of the professionally rendered, magnetic chord progressions and song structures. Perhaps singer Thomas Mars said it best in album centerpiece “1901”: “It’s not a miracle / We need it”.
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