I have been puzzling at the T5 indie rock summit last Saturday. Girls, Real Estate and King Krule. It wasn't a bad nights music by any stretch, I gave all three acts solid "B+"'s. But having said that, I have never seen such a bunch of distracted performers. Between the lot of them, I don't think they said ten words to their audience.
I wonder why.
I wonder why so many "serious" rock bands, so many Phish's and their elk, don't try and just speak to their audience, about their music, about what's are on their mind.
Are they shy? They're in the wrong profession if they are. Do they feel, like Suicide Dolls, that any stopping of momentum kills the atmosphere? I cans see that with Suicide Dolls because they play, what amounts to, one long sound modulation. But the three acts on Saturday sing songs and Girls for one, prides itself in the variety of songs they play. So why this "failure to communicate".
Among the many things a concert is, one thing a concert certainly is is is the chance to step out from behind the curtain of publicity, studio, gossip, and meet their fans halfway. To say, hey folks, here I is. I saw Hole on her first tour after Cobain's death and whatever you wanna say about Love (she was brilliant but that's not the point), she used the opportunity to cut away the the worlds separating her from us and just talk to us. About Kurt. About Reznor. About how things were going. She asked our advise about whether she should take the opening slot on a tour, which she had recently been offered (We said no, she nodded her head and agreement and didn't)
It was an excellent concert but it was more than that. All these years later I remember it because it was more than just an excellent concert. It was an excellent experience: it was musically powerful and it was a personal subjective connection between a woman and her audience.
I don't expect that every show I see, but I do expect the band to in someway break through my barriers. Odd Future were lousy in many ways when I saw em last year but in oneone they were great: they spoke to me. I wasn't a nameless mass, I wasn't a, in Chris Owens words, a dog barking while the caravan moves on. If neither Chris nor Martin having ANYTHING they want to say to me, why are they singing to me. What do they wanna do. They want me to consume em and then leave them alone while they muso out.
I see this so much in indie rock it is an epidemic. I've had a similar complaint about everybody from Spoon to TV On The Radio to Pavement to Dirty Projectors to Panda Bear… Really, all of them. A Titus Andronicus is a serious exception. Nobody wants to jump the divide, they want to stand on the stage enveloped in their world of music.
Bob Dylan, who is also way too quiet on stage, once called himself a song and danceman. If the Real Estates and Girls kept that in mind, perhaps they'd put on a show that was more than very good.
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