A BLAST! Gaga has covered Madonna’s first decade in a tenth of the time.
No, it’s not your imagination: things are getting smaller. Or at least, it seems that way in the funhouse-mirror world of modern music, where the semi-demise of the major-label factory has colluded with the anti-star obsession of the underground to produce a chasing of microgenres into mazes of musical self-selection. The result? An ever-narrowing list of stadium-striding superstars as we replace our pop demigods and worship at the altar of thousands of obscure deities, each with its own bizarre rituals and rites. Granted, the ridiculous excess of the rock-and-roll era was one whose time may have come. After all, it’s hard to build a mythology of trashing hotel rooms and other assorted debaucheries when you’re Twittering the whole thing. But are we all really ready to let go of the whole music-biz machine and adorn our teenage walls with the likeness of any minstrel who managed to shift a few thousand virtual copies last week?
Even with their mastery of both hooks and hype, newer acts like MGMT (this year’s Best National Act) must be all too aware of the already crowded market they’re entering. That said, the overcrowding is also a by-product of the music biz’s growing efficiency — bands no longer need to stagnate for years before hitting the big time. Both MGMT and fellow National Act nominee (and Best National Album winner) VAMPIRE WEEKEND were barely ideas in their members’ minds half a decade ago. Now they’re blowing up stadiums, just like rock’s royalty of yore.
Speaking of marketplace hegemony: this year, we threw a bit of a curve on the ballot by creating the category “Best Pop Shit,” but you, dear readers, in your infinite knowledge, understood — correctly — that this was not a pejorative and rushed to do the right thing. Thus, Best National Pop Shit: LADY GAGA. A mere two or three years ago, she was just a struggling NYC boho playing piano bar, but since then, in just a tenth of the time, she’s condensed Madonna’s first decade — pop hits and fashion bits alike — into a blast on the popular consciousness. And let’s not even get into the strange career of Adam Young, a/k/a OWL CITY (National Pop Shit nominee), who took just two years to turn his basement synth-pop project into a #1 single and album — and all by pilfering the sound of the not-yet-cold corpse of the Postal Service.
So the underground is now the mainstream, with its domination in metal (Best National Metal winners MASTODON, and indeed all of the runners-up, are decidedly non-Ozzfest material) and rap (MOS DEF and the runners-up: “Jay-who?”). And few acts in recent memory have gone as far with as few concessions to what’s expected of an above-ground rock sensation as the dour, minimalist xx (Best National Breakthrough).
So, as the old gods are unmasked and made human thanks to 24/7 technology and splintering genre wars, we must come to grips with a change in scale in our pop mythology. Sure, you could put together all the outrageous rock-star antics of ALICIA KEYS (Best National R&B Act), WILCO (Best National Roots Act), and KINGS OF LEON (WFNX Song of the Year), count them on one hand, and still have some fingers left to play “Use Somebody” with. But in the new economy of pop, those old antics just don’t have the same currency. And if the concern is that everything is getting smaller, rest assured that it’s also getting far weirder than even the fevered psychedelic dreams of previous generations. Here’s to facing the strange for years to come.
Best National Act: MGMT
“You’ll never be as good as the Rolling Stones” is an actual line from “Flash Delirium,” the lead single from MGMT’s new headscratcher, Congratulations(Sony). It’s an odd moment of self-depreciation, but you’d be forgiven for having missed it, since it gets whispered atop the distorted bleats and aggressive zaps of the song — which proved to be as purposely inscrutable as the rest of the hotly anticipated follow-up to 2007′s Oracular Spectacular. Perhaps most of the votes in this category come from fans of MGMT’s earlier, peppier singles, like “Kids” and “Time To Pretend,” which were hammered into our skulls by commercial radio and movie trailers for a good two years. But even when they try to be the opposite of what people want, MGMT’s talent for a sharp hook and a jaunty mood unzigs every zag they try to pull. So they win the crown despite themselves.
Runners-up:
2. The Decemberists
3. Vampire Weekend
4. Phoenix
Best National Electronic/Dance Act: Hot Chip
Machine-made music designed for dancing often plays down the real-live-flesh artists behind the scenes. Which means that those who hang on long enough to assert their individuality often wind up shedding the very electro/dance trappings that made them notable in the first place. Such is the case with Hot Chip, who’ve turned quite a few heads with the success of One Life Stand (Astralwerks) — a collection that sacrifices the giddy whumping pleasure principle of older hits like “Over and Over” and “Ready for the Floor” for the vulnerability and seriousness of “Thieves in the Night” and “Take It In.” As the evolution of the genre pushes onward and outward, it’ll be acts like Hot Chip — with memorable tunes and demonstrable heart — who’ll rise to the top.
Runners-up
2. La Roux
3. Four Tet
4. Fever Ray
Best National Female Vocalist: Neko Case
Cast your mind back to a time when it was commercial poison to put a female voice on the radio, and contrast it to now, when female artists are everywhere. And yet, at least according to you all, none of those newcomers could dethrone the force of nature that is Neko Case. Last year, she had just released Middle Cyclone(Anti-) when she took this category. Since then, Ms. Case has been touring and riding a wave of accolades for that song cycle, which has seen her branch farther from the roots rock of her past into torch songs, pop, and pure banshee weirdness, all with the same confident grace.
Runners-up
2. Annie Clark [St. Vincent]
3. Florence Welch [Florence and the Machine]
4. Victoria Legrand [Beach House]
Best National Metal Act: Mastodon
Mastodon might seem an unlikely act to be sitting atop the metal heap, what with their arty leanings and un-metal concept-album approach. Then again, their brutal reassemblage of the best moments of the discographies of Neurosis, Melvins, and assorted stoner/sludge-rockers amounts to a realignment of what is considered good metal after the doldrums of late-’90s/early-’00s nü-metal. Like Vikings hitting virgin shores, the bearded burly-men of Mastodon have been rampaging through the world of metal, taking the aggression of more underground acts and polishing it to a sheen in a way that endears them to year-end lists — as well as the car stereos of heshers worldwide. The result is a band who can rock international stadiums without having to wear stupid top hats or dress like clowns —thus earning the gratitude of serious metalheads everywhere for elevating the genre to within a fraction of respectability.
Runners-up
2. High on Fire
3. Sunn O)))
4. Baroness
Best National Pop Shit: Lady Gaga
Kings of Leon and Black Eyed Peas both scraped their way to the top through a long process of refining their appeal — but neither has captured the lightning-in-a-bottle combination of weirdness and newness that is the international pop-shit phenomenon Lady Gaga. At this point, her two-year campaign of shock and awe is beginning to wear out even her most faithful followers — but that only means that she’s dug past the topsoil into the deeper ground that is the casual music listener. Last year, said listeners were snapping their fingers inattentively to a radio hit; this year, they’re dressing up like maniacs and following her around. Eventually, the world will tire of her unbounded need to impress — but that doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon.
Runners-up
2. Kings of Leon
3. Black Eyed Peas
4. Owl City
Best National Roots/Americana Act: Wilco Truth be told, Wilco haven’t really played anything resembling the standard idea of “roots” or “Americana” since their 1995 debut album, but their unpretentious, low-key demeanor has defined a new post-alternative roots movement. Americana for a more . . . suburban America, perhaps. In any case, last year’s typically understated Wilco (The Album) (Nonesuch) kept fans flocking to their shows and celebrating the band’s rep as a formidable live act (with the crucial involvement of guitar hot shot Nels Cline). Perhaps BMP voters recognize that this Chi-town act have a certain fondness for our area — their North Adams Solid Sound Festival is coming in August, with not only multiple Wilco (and Wilco-side-project) sets but a line-up that offers, uh, pretty much everything but roots and Americana.
Runners-up
2. The Low Anthem
3. Avett Brothers
4. Monsters of Folk
Best National Video: Lady Gaga feat. Beyonce: Telephone
Two years past the demise of TRL, you’d think that today’s kids would be tugging their parents’ apron strings at the sight of this category, asking, “What’s a ‘video’?” Except, that is, for this thing called the “Internet,” which is currently rewriting the rules of the form, encouraging boundary pushing in a much more exciting way than MTV ever did. Gaga’s collaboration with Swedish professional oddball Jonas Åkerlund is a match made in video-weirdness heaven: nearly nine minutes of iconic images that introduce the proverbial Peoria newb to the world of Matthew Barney–lite. Whether it’s a pair of sunglasses made from lit cigarettes or a revved-up Beyoncé visually stuttering along with the song’s glitches in a homicidal rage, the video pushes arty buttons that people didn’t know they had.
Runners-up
2. Bat for Lashes, “Daniel”
3. Girls, “Lust for Life”
4. Raekwon, “House of Flying Daggers”
Best Local All-Ages Act: A Loss For Words
All-ages, a/k/a pop punk, could be the most disrespected genre this side of contemporary country. Meaning that when a band stick around in the all-ages trenches for years and years, they will inevitably have to reach for respectability. For Abington’s AL4W, that meant following up the success of 2009′s The Kids Can’t Lose (and touring the record with a grueling trek around the States and then through the UK, Russia, and Japan) with a new EP of Motown classics called, uh,Motown Classics (Paper + Plastick) that is nowhere near as ironic-pop-punk-cover cringe-worthy as it might sound. Whether they achieve said respectability remains to be seen, but throwing a spirited run-through of the Jackson 5′s “I Want You Back” into their otherwise moshtastic set of slamming, fun-time sweat inducers can’t hurt — unless you get landed on by some XXL crowd surfer.
Runners-up
2. Boys Like Girls
3. Four Year Strong
4. Vanna
Best Boston Rock Club Night: Born Of Fire (O’Brien’s) Metal fans in Boston are tired of getting the proverbial shaft — reading the regional listings and seeing all the sickest metal shows skipping the Hub in favor of Wormtown and (boo!) Connecticut is enough to make your average Slayer acolyte retire his filthy denim vest. Fortunately, the past year has seen the explosion of Boston metal that is the Born of Fire night at O’Brien’s. The brainchild of erstwhile headbanger Zack Wells, BOF has brought us pairings of the region’s slaytanic best twice a month — so you no longer need to drive an hour or more each way to get your fix of Howl, Rat Corpse, and Sexcrement. This town is already a hotbed for some of the region’s (and the nation’s) top metal acts — it’s about time they got to play a club show in their own town.
Runners-up
2. Primitive Sounds at River Gods
3. This Is Why They Hate Us at Alchemist Lounge
4. Rescue Nite at Model Café
Best Local Metal Act: Converge Converge had a great year. Their latest LP, Axe To Fall (Epitaph), found them breaking through to a more mainstream metal audience, thanks to the massively heavy thrum of walloping killdozers like “Slave Drive” and album opener “Dark Horse.” It’s actually been a top-notch year for metal in general, and that’s made the competition at the top even more insane. But “insane” is the environment in which Converge thrive, whether it’s the room-exploding fury of their live show or the claustrophobic intensity of their music (not to mention the howling screech of lead heckler Jake Bannon). The band’s relentlessly racing tempo is almost un-metal in its punk zip, but the arch weirdness of guitarist Kurt Ballou’s chugging ax is far too pained and brutal to be anything but capital-M metal. As long as Converge are still stalking the earth, it’ll be a tall order for any other band to take this category.
Runners-up
2. Doomriders
3. Gozu
4. Big Bear
Best Local Punk Act: Razors In The Night The past decade has seen the myth of working-class Boston explode onto the national consciousness — be it through Dennis Lehane’s novels or Martin Scorsese’s films. Boston punk has been a similarly popular export, with its peculiarly trad take on disheveled anti-authority, and Razors in the Night have the attitude and the songs to represent their city. Vocalist Troy Schoeller would be an intimidating neck-vein exploder if he weren’t fronting such a fun band, with every glottal scream backed by anthemic gang shouts and catchy guitar melodies. Although Razors might seem somewhat reined in by their worship of early ’80s UK Oi! punk (their name itself is a song by street-punk legends Blitz), they find ways to mix up their sound, whether it’s the whiplash fury of humorous thrashers like “Hipster Holocaust” or catchy fist-pumper anthems like “Carry On.”
Runners-up
2. Dead Cats Dead Rats
3. Kominas
4. Refuse Resist
Best Local Roots Act: Kingsley Flood
If you consider rootsy Americana to be a dour yoke worn by groups of dreary Luddites afraid to cut loose and join the modern world, then you haven’t heard Kingsley Flood. Their roots cred owes to the masterful fiddle and mandolin playin’ and the whiff of Appalachia found on their debut, Dust Windows, but the music’s sheer exuberance is beyond time or genre. And though they’re capable of quiet introspection and moments of majestic solemnity (as on the organ-heavy “Cathedral Walls”), their fans ticked the ballot for the hip-shaking enthusiasm of their more boisterous moments (imagine a shotgun wedding gone off the rails). Lead Flooder Naseem Khuri has the authority in his voice to keep the whole thing from coming off like po’-faced creative anachronism, and the band’s boundless giddiness is enough to make you never want to hear a synthesizer again.
Runners-up
2. Joy Kills Sorrow
3. Tim Gearan Band
4. Tony the Bookie
See the rest of the winners here: http://thephoenix.com/BMP/Boston/2010/
Listening to the new MGMT album requires similar preparations to those for a prolonged psychedelic experience: you may want to leave some time in your daybook for unexpected detours, and it’d be wise to erase previous experiences from your mind for fear that heightened expectations may not be met and mass bummerage will ensue. Once you’ve got your supply of water, and the “Do Not Disturb” sign is hung on your doorknob, and the mood lighting is just right, you can listen properly and ask: what the fuck is up?
What did I say about erasing expectations? Anyone putting the needle anywhere on this disc had better forget about waiting around for “Electric Feel 2: Electric Boogaloo.” Instead of repeating their recipe of wan, vaguely Prince-y dance-tasm moods, wunderkinder Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser create a lighthearted collage of jaunty surf jangles, snappy and irreverent paeans to Brians Eno and Wilson, and trailing plangent piano chords. There are harpsichords and flutes and recorders and reverse Mellotrons that disappear down unseen corridors, and notes and sounds that just hang in the air — if this album had a sustain pedal, there’d be a cinder block on it. Closer “Congratulations” sounds as if someone in the dorm next door were blasting “The Weight” so loud, you could hear the bass through the wall. It all ends with the polite spittle of golf claps; the ephemeral evaporation of the whole experience compels me to repeat it, again and again. Do I even need to tell you? It just gets stranger each time.
X FACTOR: In a fractured pop-culture scene, is there really that much difference between Coldplay (below) and Animal Collective?
There’s an old saying — and I’m paraphrasing here — that if music criticism meant anything, then your average Joe would love Built To Spill as much as the Beatles. (So, maybe it’s not that old a saying.) This owes, of course, to the condescending view that critical favorites are too good for the masses, but it also speaks to the perceived divide in pop between “conservative” and “radical” forces, as a wave of outrageous upstarts attempts to topple the apple cart of lame-duck superstars. Pop culture has hit a fractious crisis point, as genres dissolve into dilemmas of identity and/or assimilation. In confusing pop times, how can we tell where the edge is? It’s kind of the same deal as porn: what counts as fringy may be hard to define, but you know it when you see it.
Take MGMT and Kings of Leon. The former bested the latter for National Act by a mere couple of votes. Kings of Leon may be the arena-rocking traditionalists and MGMT the kids who fashion youth anthems out of ringtones while donning war paint. But they’re both big major-label pushes. Both have radio hits. Hordes of (the same) people buy, steal, and blast records by both bands every day.
Pop songs are now judged less on their alleged universality than on their ability to hook listeners one by one. Right now, the music biz cares a lot more about your personal MP3 playlist than it does about those ever-tightening ones cobbled together by radio stations. So what’s the difference, really, in potential audience between Coldplay’s stadium-readyViva La Vida (Capitol) and the bugged-out headphone psych of Animal Collective’sMerriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)? Both records are filled with trippy deep-focus studio touches; both labor to hoist up hooks. In what could be seen as a role reversal, Coldplay worked with Brian Eno to try to get as out-of-it as possible, whereas Animal Collective stuck it to the jam-festooned underground by conceding to things like melody and brevity. Are Animal Collective finally making music to be played toward the cheap seats of the title Pavilion?
Mainstream love for the freaky-deaky isn’t confined to psych-pop, either — even a cursory listen to mainstream-pop radio will reveal more bizarre beats and barrages of fuzzed noise than at any time in pop history. You voted luddite folky Bon Iver as Breakthrough Act, and they deserved the honor; but runner-up Lady Gaga snagged more votes in that race than Electronic/Dance winners Cut Copy got in theirs. There was a time when you might have needed to concede to mainstream blandness in order to find chart success. Now, up-and-coming stars of underground electronica have to compete with similar pre-sets and beats already pattering away in cubicles everywhere.
This strip-mining of the underground may actually be goodish news. Perhaps in this post-music-biz world we listeners can actually get what we want, no matter how specific or idiosyncratic that may be. More important, the gloves are off in terms of juxtapositions and appropriations: if pop music is how we explain ourselves to ourselves, then we can count on our weird times to yield strange bedfellows leading every splintered genre and topping each inadequate chart. Usually, of course, the fall of old rules just means the rise of new ones — as Coldplay sing on their winning album’s title track, “The old king is dead, long live the king.” For the time being, if you can’t discern the dead center from the very edges, it’s probably safest to follow your ears.
Best Act, National: MGMT
Sometimes we’re so busy looking for the next big thing to appear in the form of the last big thing that we miss those crucial behind-the-back baton passes that happen in pop culture. Which explains to some degree how a few years can turn a couple of upstate dorm-room knob-twiddling dorks into MGMT, the global hit-making factory that now has Paul McCartney begging for a shot at a collaboration. Mega-viral smash “Kids” sounds like childhood dredged up and filtered through late adolescence, its ringtone chirps and cresting waves of kiddies at play somehow reigniting the satisfyingly deep wisdom of your first brush with inebriation. It’s hard to tell whether this is MGMT hitting a stride or enjoying a Peter Pan moment — the question now is whether the world will let them live in Neverland forever.
Best Hard Rock Act, National: Mastodon
With the release of Crack the Skye (Reprise), the deep-fantasy maniacs of Mastodon marched the fine line between relentless thundering barrage and ridiculous high-concept pretense. (You have to have some pretty bitchin’ flame-retardant stage backdrops to sell Rasputin, astral travel, and Stephen Hawking’s wormhole theories to metal’s great unwashed.) As it turns out, either the competition is really thin or the intelligence of Metal Nation — especially its recently ascendant D&D faction — has once again been cruelly misunderestimated. That would explain why Crack the Skye debuted at #11 on the “Billboard 200” album chart, and why Mastodon duly ax-slapped both Metallica and Iron Maiden in our poll. As long as the grooves are deep, the bass is bowel-looseningly low, and blastbeats reliably rise and fall in the mix, even brainiac wizard metal can find a way to trump the old masters in the hearts of the faithful.
Best Male Vocalist, National: Caleb Followill, Kings of Leon
Anglophile-rock enthusiasts have always favored male voices that can soar anthemically over the fray. Thing is, the UK-first mega-success of Caleb Followill’s Nashville family band Kings of Leon can seem like a real headscratcher at first, if only because the music he and his kin make is so bloody ’Mur’can. But the Followills have learned a thing or two about their foster fan base, and they’ve finally hit paydirt at home with their fourth album, Only by the Night (RCA), wherein all sorts of synthy tricks are deployed in their relentless effort to reach the punter at the very back of the footie stadium. The result, especially on worldwide smashes like “Use Somebody” and “Sex on Fire” and barnburner “Notion,” sounds not unlike, ohhhh, Steve Perry channeling Ronnie Van Zant while fronting the Killers. Whether you take that as a harbinger of doom is irrelevant — it’s evident that this pond-crossing spit swapping is here to stay.
Best Punk Act, National: The Gaslight Anthem
If a band can state unequivocally that (a) they prefer speedy tempos, (b) they accept abandon as an MO, or (c) they subscribe (at least in part) to a strain of musical conservativism that keeps the proceedings lean and stripped down, then said band will be “punk” to someone. New Jersey’s Gaslight Anthem satisfy all three of these maxims while somehow owing a greater debt to the Boss than to Dag Nasty or the Exploited. Then again, at a time when punk is nothing more than anachronistic dress-up to some, it’s refreshing to see a band rock hard while still looking switchblade sharp. Penning songs with a legitimately swingin’ ’tude that tips its fedora to fintail gas guzzlers as well as to the drunk punks who steal them to race over cliffs is no small feat. If that sounds like your kind of retro-punk, then, as the band sing, “Here’s Looking at You, Kid.”
Best Roots Act, National: Bob Dylan
One has to wonder, deep down, what Robert Zimmerman thinks of his status as the 600-pound gorilla in the room anytime someone investigates roots in America. The new kids (even scraggly wizened ones like Steve Earle) can try any new tricks they like, but with Dylan cranking out new works like Woody Allen lately, and with his Never-Ending-Tour moving way past the point of being a victory lap, anyone even thinking about nodding toward the Old Weird America has to do so in his shadow. That said, his legacy will always be more vital than his current output: the zydeco-meets-Chess endurance test that is his most recent, Together Through Life (Columbia), will probably never rate on most Zimmophiles’ top 30 or 40 favorite Dylan discs. Doesn’t matter though: whether you’re an oddball eccentric like Chan “Cat Power” Marshall and Will “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy” Oldham or a Muscle Shoals traditionalist like Drive-By Trucker Jason Isbell, trying to elude categorization with an unexpected zig or zag just further classifies you as Dylan-esque. When it comes to mixing profundity and inscrutability, the Bard of Hibbing will always have everyone beat.
I grew up in central New York, and I can confirm that anyone who grows up in upstate who wants to do something interesting or awesome usually winds up doing it somewhere else — New York City being the obvious default. Mercury Rev, in largely remaining an upstate band, have put themselves in with an odd assortment of like-minded travelers and musical visionaries who have called the Empire State home. Here’s a few of their psych forebears, contemporaries, and protûgûs.
TONY CONRAD | A pivotal figure in the late-’60s avant-garde, Conrad (who has for several decades headed Media Studies at SUNY-Buffalo) introduced the concept of “eternal music,” experimenting with amplification, duration, and pitch. He’s probably best known as a member of the Dream Syndicate (not to be confused with the Steve Wynn band, and also known as the Theater of Eternal Music), a late-’60s collective that included La Monte Young and John Cale. Conrad has continued to be a mainstay in the international world of experimental music and film.
TEO MACERO | Beginning his association with Miles Davis on 1959′s beyond-classicKind of Blue, this Glens Falls native and composer went on to produce the experimental “jazz-rock” albums that followed, from 1969′s In A Silent Way to Bitches Brew and A Tribute to Jack Johnson. Working with long takes of collective improv, Macero wielded a heavy hand in the editing process, fashioning the endless jams into stunning through-composed final tracks. His influence on modern producers, from Brian Eno to Mercury Rev’s own Dave Fridmann, is enormous.
THE DARELYCKS | This short-lived group from Fairport, a suburb of Rochester, accidentally came up with the perfect soundtrack for a bummer: 1966′s “Bad Trip.” Breaking up soon after to go to college and war, they at least left this killer 45, whose sputtering jangle and moan keeps getting interrupted by a sireny guitar that sounds like Godzilla dragging a police car along the pavement.
BRASS BUTTONS | Hailing from Rochester, the Brass Buttons rode a friendship with Rascals guitarist Gene Cornish into a record deal that spawned at least one early-psych classic. A pastiche of Rubber Soul, droning and pulsing guitar bounce, and then-fashionable “evil woman” lyrical tropes, “Hell Will Take Care of Her” could be a Spinal-Tap-from-the-’60s outtake.
THE WALLMEN | Legendary in Syracuse for bringing insane and inane Butthole Surfers–esque mayhem to an otherwise placid and hair-metally ’80s upstate scene, the Wallmen released a torrent of cassettes until they caught the attention of Mercury Rev–er Dave Fridmann, who produced a number of their mind-bending platters, starting with 1994′s Bar-None release Not Too Long Time Sound.
MGMT | Although they formed at Wesleyan University and blew up as a Brooklyn band, this currently hip pop-psych duo have two important upstate connections: Ben Goldwasser is from Westport, a far-north town near Plattsburgh and not much else, and their current album, Oracular Spectacular, was given much of its magical shimmer by producer Dave Fridmann at his Buffalo studio. You can take the kid out of upstate but you can’t take the upstate out of the kid!
