I remember first hearing the band Franz Ferdinand — my immediate critique was that “They sound like they’re trying to be The Strokes” [1]. Interestingly, anyway, there’s never really been a band, at least that I’ve heard, trying to do what the Franz does, which of course would be those four-on-the-floor, high-hat-up-beat, disco/techno drum beats.
And, of course, you can’t count Modest Mouse, despite the mastodon radio hit “Float on” boasting something similar, because these guys already laid claim to it with “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes”; the strange, eerie masterpiece emotionally anchoring what’s in my opinion their best album by far, 2000’s The Moon & Antarctica. I was thinking of bands that could have catalyzed a movement toward this sort of disco beat and nothing much came to mind. The Dismemberment Plan got sort of funky on “What Do You Want Me to Say?”; from 1999’s Emergency & I, but the drum beat is still pretty backbeat-oriented. You’d have to go back to XTC, I guess, and their tune “Generals and Majors” from Black Sea (1980), to find these sort of shennanigans.
So, I mean, reviving it after 20 years might not constitute a complete revolution, but it certainly entails some serious investigative journalism, and, probably, enough artistic merit to hold some sway with your record label, the kind of enterprise not typically, in the early 2000s, very keen on early-’80s post-punk. What’s more, their tenaciously derived alteration, if not advancement, in style, would pay dividends galore, as “Float on” does employ a disco-like drum beat, as I mention, in addition to “Fly Trapped in a Jar” and “Education”; two funky gems positioned on side B of the still-perhaps-underrated We Were Dead before the Ship Even Sank, from 2007.
Ultimately, I guess, it’s kind of an “if-you-know-you-know” type of predicament, but I’d just like to applaud the thick, potent, rancorous tension being fostered on “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes”; a hate song for Middle America and for the natural, capitalistic current toward marketability and commercial popularity, in the arts. It’s a song about how much touring across the country sucks, so it’s not as noble as, say, R.E.M.’s “Departure”; which manages to make all the travel obligations seem glorious and interesting. It is funny, though, the way a lot of Modest Mouse songs are funny, proffering a sort of end-of-the-world triumph of evil over good and squalor over bounty: “We’re goin’ down the road / Towards tiny cities made of ashes / I’m gonna hit you on your face / I’m gonna punch you in your glasses”; “I’ve just got a message / That says yeah He** has frozen over”.
Of course, another irony of this tune is the apparent sarcasm of the lines “I’m gonna get dressed up in plastic / Gonna shake hands with the masses” actually presaging the band’s immediate turn to cleanly produced radio rock, starkly removed from the indie-SOUNDING “Tiny Cities”; even though, yes, we know, Moon was released on Epic. Call “Tiny Cities” their indie precipice then — part of them knows they’re destined for success, but they also feel askance before abandoning the small, sweaty concert venues, and the garages-turned-studios, emblematic of the indie rock aesthetic from which they’ve sprung, with The Lonesome Crowded West, et. al., and which they will continue to extol, most likely, even upon commercial success, later in their careers.
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[1] For the record, I don’t necessarily retract that statement today, I just acknowledge that they have way more personality than I originally estimated.
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