Pretentious as it sounds, rock is dying.
Maybe it was the dominance of radio playlists by the '70s, which killed much of the appreciation for avant rock. Perhaps it was the lull period during the eighties when early goth rock and new wave operated under the assumption that everything that could be done with a guitar had already been done. It could have been that indie-rock implosion around the time of Kurt Cobain's death, when the alternative sound homogenized and most of the really fertile bands, the Sonic Youths and the punks, seemed to homogenize with it. Maybe it was the flash in the pan swing and club kid music. Maybe we're just out of ideas.
But whatever the cause, rock 'n' roll is dying.
The drunken, swaggering Strokes, long held as the saviors of rock, are not advancing the music, but exploiting it with a wink and a smile. And however great the Strokes sound, a piece of music dies each time it's played. The Darkness, while brilliant, are only brilliant on the back of the glam rock they satirize.
We are a generation without an icon of innovation. We are 40 years without a Beatles, and 10 without a Nirvana, themselves a post-facto legend more famous after ending than they ever were alive. We've reached a point where the cutting edge of rock is a revival of the great places rock has already been.
Maybe it was Brit-pop was thriving until Radiohead killed it. Blur's greatest single, \Song 2,"" and the last gasp of Oasis fame, Be Here Now, both hitting stores during the same 1997 when Radiohead released the album that still stands as their best. But was not just Radiohead's crowning achievement, but also so far ahead of the Oasises, the Blurs and Ashes that the '90s Brit-pop sound vanished into its wake. It became a genre of Verves and Blurs, embracing an electronic sound miles away from rock 'n' roll. Alternative music as a whole seemed to burn out around the same time.
Brit-pop is gone, and so are grunge and noise rock. Punk became a pretty boy genre, ska was exposed as the novelty it is, Sadcore died with Elliott Smith. There are progressively fewer bands trying to sound like Mogwai, Fugazi and Wire.
What's left is a hearty throwback rock scene, a growing number of bands who try to sound like the MC5 and Iggy Pop. Some, like Jet, The Dirtbombs and the White Stripes do a good job at it. But where can a culture of revival music possibly lead? What can possibly be next?
Five years ago, the answer seemed pretty simple-the bands of the future would sound like post-riot-grrrl band Sleater-Kinney. With aggressive, disorganized and damn near dissonant guitar and base leading in melodic choruses, it appeared Sleater-Kinney was both abrasive enough to appeal to art-rockers and feminine enough to appeal to the more daring of the mainstream. 1997's wasn't just a great sophomore album, or merely one of the best albums of the '90s, but was also a blueprint of a vibrant sound. Sleater-Kinney's label, Seattle's Kill Rock Stars, seemed to think so too, banking on an array of their clones, like Mocket. But Sleater-Kinney based genre never seemed to take. Mocket broke up and rock 'n' roll went unchanged.
Similarly, spacey albums from The Flaming Lips and Longwave don't seem to have affected the state of rock. While building circular melodies around an ambient sound is nothing new bands like Air and Massive Attack have made careers out of this approach to dance, and Joy Division seemed tobe an expert at it 20 years ago, atmospheric rock seems to have a lot of unexplored territory. Kelly Joe Phelps brought it to the blues last year, and Wilco's dreamy ""I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"" brought it to alt-country. But even in the height of Yoshimi chic, the sound never could fully cross over from electronica. In a time when simple is popular and heavy production is on the way out, a complex, studio heavy sound doesn't stand a chance.
In the end, the only thing throwback rock has to look forward to is more throwback rock. Jack White has decided that Lorretta Lynn will be popular next year on the strength of her older work, and the most anticipated new band in America is TV on the Radio, an amalgam of doo-wop and garage. And everything will sound fine. But sooner rather than later, rock will run out of a past to exploit.
Rock 'n' roll is dying.
E-mail Joe at jhuchill@wisc.edu.
