Gang Gang Dance, TV on the Radio Wear Indie Emperor's New Clothes

I’m a pretty open-minded guy when it comes to music – sometimes probably too open-minded. But there’s a certain alt-rock sensibility that I feel like I’m largely immune to. I’m not sure what you’d call it; “middle alternative” (as in “middle of the road”) might work. Basically, I’m talking music that’s removed enough from pop pleasure or rock propulsion or metal vulgarity to seem extremely avant-garde to casual fans who’ve never delved deeper than commercial radio (a demographic that continues to shrink), but not so weird that you’d expect people who actually listen to music for a living to be all that impressed by it – confounding thing is, they regularly are anyway. It’s not too hooky, but not too crazy, in other words, and preferably vague and unformed and tentatively artsy enough that professional tastemakers can project any zeitgeist they pull out of their hat at it. At the moment, the two mildly interesting but widely acclaimed bands that seem to be benefiting most from this tendency – both from hipster central in Brooklyn, both touting their second-or-third-or-fourth album depending which demos and EPs you count, and both allegedly now incorporating all sorts of dance-music influences that somehow manage not to translate as tangible rhythm – are Gang Gang Dance and TV on the Radio.

Gang Gang Dance I’ve fallen for before in a small way; 2004’s self-titled album (which I’ve only ever seen on vinyl, and which nobody ever seems to mention much) and 2005’s God’s Money sounded fairly refreshing within the rigid realm of indie rock at the time. The self-titled one, especially, had some real bracing sections that suggested a young Yoko Ono fronting Chrome or Einstürzende Neubauten, plus enough fake tribal polypercussion to keep things rolling. But I had no idea the co-ed trio was gaining critical momentum in years since. Now, in the tradition of diverting-local-footnotes-turned-irritating-indie-groundswells like Animal Collective before them, I’m noticing where people who'd ignored Gang Gang Dance’s first couple of releases are suddenly claiming the band’s new Saint Dymphna as one of the best albums of 2008. Which, sorry, is a joke, even if the album is named for a possibly imaginary seventh century Irish patron saint of mental illness (not to mention an excellent little Irish bar on St. Marks Place in Manhattan).

GGD’s Social Registry Records hypesheet claims the group is now soaking up Aphex Twin, reggaetón, Timbaland, Brazil, you name it, and they may well be. But what I mostly hear is reams of addled dream-state atmosphere interrupted by weedily mannered Björkish vibrato that comes off too cutesy for its own good. “Bebey” kicks things off promisingly enough, surrounding semi-pornographic yelps and quacks with a science laboratory’s worth of electronic gadgets and doo-dads, but the clanks dissolve into the ether before long. I don’t mind how a Yellow Magic Orchestra-style electro-Asian melody gives way to Star Wars effects in “Vacuum.” And Tinchy Stryder ’s generic grime toast in “Princes” has some energy, though no more than the grime toasts on, say, the widely unacclaimed Dub Pistols album from this year. But the album’s still all in one ear out the other, and way more piddly and subdued and less surprising than what Gang Gang Dance were doing in noisier and dubbier early days, when nobody much seemed to care.

Tastemakers have seemed to care about TV on the Radio, by contrast, almost since the beginning, but I’ve never been one of them; sounding like a less catchy version of mid ‘80s Peter Gabriel never struck me as all that exciting a proposition, especially from guys who’d apparently thought it clever to name their 2002 demo OK Calculator after a Radiohead record I also never cared about. Not that my skepticism or the band’s snooze factor kept TVotR’s 2006 Return to Cookie Mountain from scaling critics’ polls OK Computer-style, of course. And now (speaking of chemistry experiments), we’ve got Dear Science.

I’ll give the album this much: I don’t hate it. Those Jesus and Mary Chain-as-Ramones-as-Beach Boys ba-ba-bas in “Halfway Home” are almost sprightly for a few seconds, and the synth swirls emerging out of the so-what indie-rock of “Shout Me Out” have a bit of ‘70s Eno (or is it Genesis?) in them. And that line about “in the days of old you were a nut" amid the clunky MC 900 Ft. Jesus-via-electroclash quasi-rapping (plus stuff about Axl Rose and newspapermen and watching where you put your dancing shoes) in “Dancing Choose” is a blatant reference to Beck’s “Loser,” right? See, told you I listened. Other parts sound like the band is aiming for ‘80s Talking Heads (“Red Dress”) and/or Bowie once he ill-advisedly started limiting his singing to his draggy low register (“Crying,” “Golden Age” which is no “Golden Years” let me tell you), which at least beats when they aim for ‘00s U2. There’s also sundry lyrically impenetrable and vocally incomprehensible nonsense recited by Tunde Adebimpse with an emotional detachment that communicates more or less nothing.  Plus holding patterns – plenty! A definitive statement for this historical season of mortgage foreclosures and African-American presidents, don’cha know. Not that anybody who makes that claim will ever be able to convincingly explain why they think so.

Comments

[radio station]

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