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Pretty In Punk
By taking a more sophisticated musical approach, have some bands lost their edge?
By Chris Parker
Page 2 of 2
Undoubtedly, some of it has to do with the aging of the members of the alternative-rock scene. Musicians who came up making loud, aggressive music have had the time to grow up and out. Meanwhile, the underground audiences have continued to nurture them as their vistas have expanded with their sound.
"A lot of us who were punk rockers were music lovers when we were young, but so much of what we listened to was dictated by either politics or fashion," says Beulah frontman Miles Kurosky. "I think when you get older, you don't worry about those things as much. You become more comfortable with yourself and with what you like and what you don't like, and you're far less apologetic about it. And as you become a songwriter and grow within your own skin, you become more ambitious. And the fact is that to set ambitious or lofty goals, you're certainly not going to keep making punk rock."
Certainly for artists who've already been down the punk rock road, there's little incentive -- or desire -- to keep covering the same ground.
"If you were in a kind of a loud, quirky guitar band, and you were doing that, but [after a while] it wasn't that rewarding, why the f--k would you start another one? Why would you eat the same food over and over again?" asks Bachmann.
For Davey von Bohlen, who played guitar in pioneering emo bands Cap'n Jazz and Promise Ring, the symphonic sounds of his new band, Maritime, were a chance to explore an approach he had only just begun on the final Promise Ring record, Wood/Water.
"It's like you're denying yourself intelligence if you don't realize the depth of human emotion as you get older," says von Bohlen. "When I made that Wood/Water record, I think it was the first time I realized that -- though usually generated by pace and volume -- intensity is a vast world that can be accessed through many different avenues. It's challenging to harness all that. It's just not something you'll see a lot of teenagers do. Rebellion is always raging against whatever in your youth.
"Which isn't to say you're not angry anymore, but I think you have to use those emotions in different ways."
The emotional sophistication conveyed by this more intricately arranged intensity can be painstaking to actually convey. Punk rock is simple by definition and necessity. To move above and beyond it requires a substantial amount of work, according to producer Dave Fridmann, who's recorded several of the best baroque pop albums of the past few years, including the Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin and the Delgados' Hate.
"For a band like the Delgados or the Flaming Lips, it's all about the sonic detail. They will spend a lot of their time on a song getting from 94 percent done to 94.5 percent," says Fridmann.
"There's something about when you start adding all these other instruments that gives it more of an intellectual edge that wouldn't necessarily be there simply because of the sonic equation," concurs Tim DeLaughter, leader of the 22-person rock orchestra the Polyphonic Spree and formerly the leader of the rock outfit Tripping Daisy.
But there's another way age and maturity factors into the pretty rock music being made today -- a nostalgia for preadolescent immaturity. One consistent thread throughout most of this music is a sonic link to the luxurious pop sounds many of the musicians were surrounded by when they were growing up. "The bands that influenced me the most as a kid are the ones that I think are responsible for the Polyphonic Spree," DeLaughter says. "When I was first discovering music as a kid, orchestral pop was happening in the 70s. You had the Phil Spector sound, which mixes rock and symphonic orchestration; you had the Walt Disney storybook records, in which all their stories were told with symphonics; the Fifth Dimension was mixing pop with symphonics. Burt Bacharach, Percy Faith, and Wings. A lot of your rock bands were using symphonics and harmonies. That's where I stuck my head in music, so to speak, and was affected by it. It's where I learned an appreciation of melody. It's like I've reverted back to a 6-year-old, and it's awesome. It's taken 32 years to get back."
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