Album Review: The Strange Boys ...and girls club

I almost feel like this has to start with "The First Time I Met The Strange Boys was..."

It doesn't though. I'm going to skip all that, and also basically skip talking about the record.

I have been thinking a lot about rock and roll lately, as I sometimes do, and one thing I have decided for myself is that the bands and the scene that exists now is like a fulfillment of early rock. I think I get to be the first to say it (hopefully, I'd like the distinction...maybe someone else has already) but the band that this Strange Boys record instantly reminds me of is The Monks. The Monks were a fabricated band, much like many other bands of their time period. I'll skip the history lesson, just go rent the documentary, its great. But they were doing it sort of for fun, like, what crazies consider fun, and on some level, it just happened to be art. This Strange Boys record sounds fun, in the same way the way the cover art looks fun, and in the same way as long as you don't whine about it life is really fun, but the art element is all them, completely unfabricated, and because of that, its brings a very organic consistency to the whole record, and I think this is what people refer to as a "timeless" quality. Because people are always interested in other people...the journey outside the self so to speak...something basic to the human experience.


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Some people will tell you there is no progress in music, like since the dawn of time, that it is just different. Some people think there will never be a band better than The Beatles (these people usually make me sick). Some people will say music is only relative to the society at the given time that it is created.

I may be the minority opinion, but I disagree with all of this. I can never seem to prove shit to the nihilists, but I use humanism as my definitional benchmark of what rock and roll ideally stands for, and I think we have come a long way. I also think that music is for the past and future. Its a comment on the past, and meant to be listened to in the future. Even on a microscopic level, how good a song is at any given moment is related to the form of the song aka, the immediate past and future of the song.

I think for the most part, American music is getting better, and that must mean there is something in American society getting better. I think the broad historical circumstances that would lead to this are pretty much a matter of record at this point....meaning, punk--->80s DIY---->rise of indie labels--->cheap recording---->internet/myspace booking etc. etc. etc.. That is not meant to be an exhaustive list. And I don't think that is going to revert, short of the apocalypse. ...I think the DIY community is going to continue to grow and strengthen, and lead to more great bands per capita.

At this point, its almost hard to believe a band used to need luck and/or connections to seriously pursue being a recording artist, and even then they still might not hit. DIY is so easy now. You may never get to the point where you can support yourself financially off what you do, but that is such a false idol of a goal in my opinion, anyways. Why do you want to support yourself financially off your music? So you can get wrapped up in this mental cycle where you think you need to continue to live off your music indefinitely, aka appeal to a market, in order that you can dedicate your whole time to music? It's an easy fallacy to fall into, but I think less common with the current DIY set than with previous incarnations of the national music scene.

This is all to say that the bands are better. The bands can focus on what they do as art, and can function in society that way. Like the name of an old Strange Boys song, it can be "Art For Art's Sake."

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Incredible...

...the way you can watch these things as they are happening. This is a rant, so it will inevitably include leaps of logic and easily misunderstood language. Be prepared. It's a little piece on how the music industry works, which is something every citizen in America should be aware of, IMO. It's a case study, and the source material is The Vivian Girls.

Pitchfork just reviewed the new Vivian Girls record and started with this line:
"In a year when Brooklyn buzz travels around the world at lightspeed, you can probably count on one hand the number of new bands that, when the hype settles, are more than inconsequential collections of postures and exhausted second-hand styles."

I have a one word answer to that: Yes.

You could read the rest of the review, but to me, this first line reads as "you are going to accuse us of this, and we are going to let you know we are aware of your forthcoming accusations, and use them as a straw-man argument to debunk them as they pertain to this band, even though that's not the sort of thing you can really debunk in a record review."

It realy strikes at values, I guess, but I have a number of theories involving this "Vivian Girls explosion" (which i'm calling pitchfork best new music a culmination of.) Before I continue any further, let me say I don't think they are bad. The point of this "article" doesn't related to how good or bad they actually are, outside of the fact that they are not IMO that super fucking awesome. And i feel comfortable saying that as someone who has only seen their live material on the internet and hasn't heard their whole record, given partially to the fact that what i saw of them live wasn't interactive in a way that would suggest the experience live is different than the record really, and also due to the fact that their "LP" is TWENTY TWO minutes short, so having heard their myspace tracks, and from the live footage, its possible I have heard their whole record.

The point of this article for me is more why "The Vivian Girls" instead of The Strange Boys (also on In The Red), The Barbaras (In The Red/Goner), or The Oh Sees (just to name the bands that off the top of my head I think are better, doing a similar sound for longer, been working harder for longer, and not immediately sucessful in the same way)? This is not to mention the bands that have done the garage sound recently who I'm not familiar with, but know I should be, a list which would include Reigning Sound, and I know there are some others that I should be able to think of and just can't.

the short answer:
1) The Vivian Girls are from Brooklyn, where the music media industry literally lives, works, and breaths.
2) There are 2 hot girls in the band.
3) They have a good single, with an accompanying music video.
4) There are certain elements of known quantities about them: they will be able to sell records (see items 1-3), they play a sound that has an established national scene, and they have buzz, which is related to items 1-3 and also a considerable about to the first half of item 4.

what is buzz? Buzz is when a bunch of people see a band and say to themselves "this band is going to be a much bigger band than they are currently." not "this is a great band that no one knows about!" If 95% of people in the music industry literally did not know the difference between good and bad music, they would be saying the same thing about Yellow Fever, starting, oh, 9 months ago. I think Yellow Fever is going to be fine (from an "industry standpoint" to totally seperate the commercial side from the art side...im literally rolling my eyes as i type this)

I should also mention, another reason this example in particular strikes a chord with me has to do with the fact that its garage, which is a) not that hard to do a shitty job of, witness the wave of shitty bands inspired by The Black Lips and then again I've been told by Jay Retard, and b) this current garage revival has created its own circut which it is possible will now become infested with money-grubbers and kill a lot of creativity, and also, even though it may have only been a matter of time, I think Vivian Girls is going to be the band to do it.

So why not those other bands? 1. geography. 2. they aren't hot girls, and certainly not in this typically American early 20s definition of what hot is way

Anyways, this probably isn't all I have to say on the subject, but I gotta go see a show, so anything else will have to wait (I'm going to see Golden Triangle, who may be one of those 5 bands that is not all hype from Brooklyn...I'll find out soon enough...and also Quintron and Miss Pussycat)

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