Gosh, listening to Emilíana Torrini’s new song conjures up images of plastic VHS tapes strewn across a carpeted floor, and kids riding on BMX bikes in the suburban streets outside. This is a track that wouldn’t be out of place in scenes of Daniel LaRusso being chased by karate jocks wearing skeleton costumes, or redolent of some cynical passage in a Bret Easton Ellis novel concerning disenfranchised young yuppies. This is a tune Athena poster shops would have played to enhance its retail ambiance experience; a song that a hairsprayed generation grieving about the ozone layer will have kicked back to. In short: Speedof Dark is a sublime throwback to 1980s synthesised pop music.
Though all the above references are distinctly American (exception of Athena being British), Emilíana Torrini is actually Icelandic. She has been residing in the UK and putting out records since 1999, though her output hasn’t made much of a dent even in our country. Her latest single is ever so brilliant that one hopes it at least stands a chance of being labelled a one-hit-wonder, if only because it perfectly captures the mood of a surprisingly balmy British summer.
Despite the fact that Speed of Dark has invoked so much in the way of memories and images, it’s nothing but deplorable for Rough Trade records not to have issued an official music video. It may get one in the next month or so, but this is too good to sit on till then. I adore it.
>>> Americans consider George Orwell to be the greatest cultural chronicler of the 20th century <<<>>> George Orwell never really did like Americans and thought them uncouth <<<>>> American band, The Orwells, love George Orwell so much he became their namesake <<<>>> America has shown very little respect to The Orwells, this despite MTV naming them one of the most criminally overlooked bands of last year<<<
Nonetheless, this Chicago group of kids that only graduated from high school this year may actually buck the trend of white guys with guitars being ignored by American music consumers because their new song is an explosive mix of youthful energy and alarmingly astute political playmaking. Who Needs You reflects the ideas of a bunch of boys growing up in an austere and militarily manipulated America, though the music they’re creating preserves the everlasting spirit of classic Americana rock 'n' roll. It’s good.
The notion of modern youth culture is not something that came about overnight. Nay, it was a hard fought and tremendously tumultuous journey to recognition.
Having just completed reading Jon Savage’s fascinating book Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945, it transpires that young people were largely ignored as complex beings for more than sixty years. More often than not, teenagers were abused creatures, manipulated by mendacious adult figures that would cajole them into fighting deadly wars or deprive them of liveable wages during austere periods (seems like we’re almost going back to square one there). Teenagers needed to create a voice that would acquire recognition and understanding, but the louder they yelled, the less they were heard. This was a global problem, with autonomous youth groups creating isolated units of collectivism, but these very groups would often form into either violent fascist organisations or decadent hedonistic revellers that burnt out within moments of starting up.
But it was America that lay claim to the truly relatable and identifiable image of the teenager. The precursor of the Hitler Youth movement in Germany perceived American popular culture as clownish and stupid, while British intelligentsia abhorred America’s unsophisticated youth identity, with George Orwell arguing that “up until 1930 nearly all ‘cultivated’ people loathed the U.S.A., which was regarded as the vulgarizer [sic] of England and Europe.” Yet both of these respective cultures eventually adopted the American teen image as the adolescent identity of choice.
Orwell was certainly no fan of America, but WW2 changed much of the scepticism targeted towards that
country. Without America’s militaristic participation during the war, Europe was destined to implode. American soldiers were largely handsome, healthy and looked like movie stars, while the British equivalent was an emaciated, bucktoothed loser marred by years of imposed wartime malnutrition and poverty. Americans had glamour and it was this vital ingredient that would forge its enduring hegemony on popular culture for the next century. To be young and American was to be prosperous. (There is also the actuality that America’s diverse social melting pot led to greater human cross-pollination which resulted in a more robust and dynamic gene pool; while centuries of marooned inbreeding gave the British islanders teeth that put the fear of God into the rest of the world.)
The truth is the modern teenage archetypes that youths’ aspire to be were actually facilitated by a female contingent. America’s monopoly on youth culture was thanks to girls buying into the then modern image of peer collectivism. For the first time teenagers were people that seriously mattered because they could now be quantified as a consumer market.Nothing signified this moment better than the arrival of Seventeen magazine in 1944, a publication that treated American teenage girls as quasi-adults, talking to them instead of down at them. Packed with features on beauty, fashion, music, movies, ideas and people, Seventeen mobilised the American teenager as the most unacknowledged consumer force hitherto unrecognised.
Ultimately, the salvation of American youth was its economic ferocity. Even back in 1944, a pre-launch ad copy of Seventeen advised potential advertisers that American youth had an estimated spending capacity of $750 million. Untold riches awaited all those wanting tap into this market. If the American superstructure had largely dismissed its youth as surplus to requirement during the Great Depression and war, it was now a tantalisingly formidable subculture purely on the basis that teenagers will buy products and lifestyle choices specifically targeted at them. Essentially, teenagers were nothing until a bunch of middle-aged people realised they can make colossal amounts of money off them. As with any lucrative market, a philosophy aimed at defending teenagers’ interests and lobbying for its welfare became tantamount.
And now we’re in 2013, a period in which the American teenage girl holds the most global cultural capital imaginable. The pop charts are awash with divas that teenage girls adore; the bestseller lists are festooned with YA books teenage girls respond to; and cinemas are governed by movies that court teenage girls’ adorations on the basis that this is a market loyal to both stars and brands. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of teenage youth culture is that of individuals beyond that age bracket still wanting to buy into it. Everyone is trying to perpetuate their youth, with most of us intent on preserving our sense of adolescence way past what was previously permissible. Teenage culture now belongs to everyone that can afford it. Teenagers are only important as a social demographic as long as its purchasing power remains intact. With economic gloom factoring into every element of modern life, it’s no surprise that the young have borne the brunt of this with widespread youth unemployment and exorbitant university debts. Trend makers have shrewdly expanded the parameters of what constitutes youth, meaning those that maintain ‘youthfulness’ via products and attitudes are more than welcome to buy into it. Youth has become less a period of time and more a state of mind, almost as if we grow old before we grow up.
So where are we right now? The American teenage girl remains viable as ever but her image has become mangled and benign. American cinema expertly satirised its female teenage contingent’s viscosity and emptiness this summer through two very well produced features. Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring and Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers revelled in depicting American youth’s meretricious antics, holding a mirror to how dangerous and pathetic its pleasure-seeking pursuits can be. We are presented with scenarios in which adolescents run wild in efforts to detach from reality and live in denial of who and what they are. Rather than reading about an unattainable celebrity lifestyle in the pages of magazines like Seventeen, the modern American teenage girl is willing to go to toxic lengths in order to live the dream. It is now widely believed that such aspirations are readily attainable just by pure want. The concept of hard work and talent is meaningless because one can have it for the taking. Just look at the plethora of disposable celebrities churned out by reality television shows that offer grating wannabes the opportunity of fleeting recognition for all the wrong reasons, only to have it mercilessly snatched away from them just as quick. The American teenage girl ceases to be a pillar of inquisitive development and has simply become a parody of our times.
The teenager has ostensibly come a long way since its precarious beginnings, yet it has not fundamentally changed in well over seventy years. It remains a client label, appreciated because its consistent consumer potency remains valuable as ever.
As Jon Savage acknowledges in his book, perhaps the most enduring and complex figure of adolescent girlhood remains Anne Frank, who was, ironically, incarcerated in Bergen-Blesen extermination camp the very week the New York Times published “A Teenage Bill of Rights”. Also, Seventeen had ran articles on how “Anti-Semitism” and “Anti-Negroism” were a menace to American society and must not be tolerated by its readership, but such intelligent discourse is perhaps considered too preachy by modern magazine publishers aiming articles of interest at teenage girls. Seventeen’s imploration of tolerance and equality came too late for Anne Frank, who had attempted to contextualise her own fears and complexities of being a teenager in her diary, aching to be understood by unfair and contemptuous social systems that subsequently slaughtered her for the most incomprehensible reasons. In that sense she remains the most important teenager ever documented: tragic, stoic and perennially promising in equal measures.
Teenage movements existed long before Anne Frank came into being, only those movements weren’t homogenised, commoditised and sold to the masses. In that sense, we are all allowed to be teenagers only because we’ve devalued it as a social status. It stands for little and advocates even less. It’s just a label that invokes not much more than marketing opportunities.
These things run in cycles and there is every reason to think teenagers in the near future may return to a more tangible and real system of connectivity. There is too much happening in our world which is littered with international terrorism and economic woebegone. Technology and distractions infiltrate our everyday sense of reality, which makes it harder to step back and see where we are as a society. When the dust settles, one can’t help feel that the youth may be compelled to take a long hard look at itself and force through a change. Youth history is riddled with such occurrences and a renaissance of honest teenage existentialism seems long overdue.
Catchy indie pop songs are like London buses. You wait ages for one to come along and then two arrive at once. It’s virtuoso when such indie pop songs are toe tapping in rhythm, totally befitting the buzzed-up summer vibe gripping Britain at present. However, as is always the case with British indie pop groups, the music videos for such songs often veer from inspired to downright pathetic.
Franz Ferdinand‘s Right Action
At a time when Glasgow’s Franz Ferdinand seemed to have slid into by the numbers indie inertia, pretty much everyone is taken aback by how energised and young their new song sounds. Right Action brings to mind the triumph of Take Me Out, which was an enormously successful breakout single taken from their eponymous debut album that seemed to win every music award going back in 2004.
Franz Ferdinand is that rare thing in modern music: a bunch of intellectual art students who mesh their adoration of cultural history with British pop music. The video incorporates cubism, Dadaism, Russian avant-garde and Monty Python surrealism, creating the kind of clip that will court raised glasses from pretentious culture vultures everywhere.
Hot Chip’sDark & Stormy
London’s indie electro maestros Hot Chip takes the art of music videos really seriously… at least they did till now. Dark & Stormy is a one-off single, a standalone effort made to mark the transition from their last album and whatever comes next. Therefore, it’s mightily disappointing that the group couldn’t even throw in a few rudimentary moving images to accompany what is a brilliant track. Dark & Stormy is some of the best music to have come out of Britain this year and deserves to have a heck of a video to do it justice. It’s at times like this one wishes I knew how to utilise the entry level editing software that came with the computer.
The problem with blogging about music videos often concerns the lag between songs airing on radio stations and music labels not commissioning relevant visual accompaniments till long after. This may, at times, result in a sage pop culture blogger like I moving onto other things and not bothering to check up on the progress of said old song.
Lucky for Joseph Coward that this blog takes its job very seriously and keeps track of stuff most others would deem passé. It’s also rather cool that Joseph Coward is, in fact, the Hollywood actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has gone all-method by relocating to east London and reinvented himself as an existentialist indie falsetto who croons in an affected British accent and all. He has duped all of us.
This will perhaps make greater sense to second generation British readers in that they are a demographic that often seems caught between two stools; cut off from the antiquated heritage Britain prizes so eagerly, while not able to fully claim complete identification with the backgrounds of their immigrant parents.
Britain is a nation of class and elitism. Most opportunities are open to anyone with a red passport, but as people of colour, it’s hard to envision ethnically diverse British people becoming part of the Monarchy, or even having a shot at being Prime Minister, or even being cast in Downton Abbey. That’s just not the way Britain works, and there seems to be a taciturn acceptance of such things.
In that sense, there is always a fascination with the motherlands of our respective heritages, constantly contemplating what music our parents’ listened to in their youths? What dance crazes were popular where they came from? Why did they give it all up for a life in ye olde worlde Britain?
It’s easy to take drum and bass producer Shy FX for granted, having consistently worked on the London jungle music scene for the last twenty years and produced as many hits as misses. SoonCome, his collaboration with Liam Bailey, is pure atavism on Shy FX’s part, harking back to a time and culture that seems so integral to whom he is, yet so distant to where he’s at. It’s magical, nonetheless.
Blimey, when I was a wee lad there used to be things called ‘event’ music videos. These weren’t the slapdash, five white guys in a basement playing guitars; these were huge undertakings that cost a fortune to put together and would be trailed on television weeks in advance to whet appetites. The internet wasn’t what it is today, so you’d have to call up friends (on the house phone) for an immediate response to what they thought, or wait till school the next day to deliberate and gage reactions.
Now the picture is way different. The music industry lacks funds to really splash out on music videos and kids are permanently wired to each other in entirely surreal ways. Also, the focus today is largely geared to pop music, which means the white guys with guitars have to set their sights even lower. Everything is just too damn expensive to do and the risks outweigh benefits. There is too much floating around in the ether which means to make a mark you have to go really exorbitantly big or get creative.
Access to affordable technology means that even indie bands can hire a geeky mate to sit at a laptop and create something which looks far pricier than what it is. Just look at these beauties for proof:
Young Galaxy’sNew Summer
This Canadian indie pop group have unleashed one of the most jaw-dropping action pieces you’ll see this summer, and a cinema ticket isn’t even required. Some will argue they’ve just pillaged the test effects B-roll from the Matrix movies, but it’s the way they’ve used it that whacks a punch. This is more poetically exciting than any blockbuster I’ve come across this year.
Foals’Bad Habit
At first I was convinced this video was alluding to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:39-46), but then I realised I don’t know what I’m actually talking about. Also, one wonders whether the inclusion of a completely naked model mitigates any sanctimonious intentions. Still, it’s big and has some nifty visuals to boot.
Melody’s Echo Chamber’sSome Time Alone, Alone
This slot was going to These New Puritans’ Fragment Two, but the song sends me to sleep even though the video looks pretty impressive. Instead, you get Melody’s Echo Chamber with Some Time Alone, Alone. The video looks like they made it on a swanky smart phone while out on a visit to Flamingo Land, however, this is far too gorgeous a song to overlook, and the clip very much suits the sound and feel.
Gosh, listening to Emilíana Torrini’s new song conjures up images of plastic VHS tapes strewn across a carpeted floor, and kids riding on BMX bikes in the suburban streets outside. This is a track that wouldn’t be out of place in scenes of Daniel LaRusso being chased by karate jocks wearing skeleton costumes, or redolent of some cynical passage in a Bret Easton Ellis novel concerning disenfranchised young yuppies. This is a tune Athena poster shops would have played to enhance its retail ambiance experience; a song that a hairsprayed generation grieving about the ozone layer will have kicked back to. In short: Speed of Dark is a sublime throwback to 1980s synthesised pop music.
