IV. John Vs. “New Slaves” by Zs
Let’s just get this out of the way.
WINNER: “New Slaves” by Zs
WHY: We should have given this 2010 album of the year, regardless of our tastes or preferences.
Alright.
Ultimately, we’re still living in the days of mass production and business. The traditional rock set up holds sway for the foreseeable future as it wholly embraces the idea of the product cycle. To a point, I think the tech industry owes a good deal to rock music’s style of proliferation, as the idea of massing on the release day of some new rock record and claiming allegiances to bands over others is the precursor of modern day cellphone culture.
Rock music is starting to come to a point where the people that like it band together because it’s just not the cultural force it used to be. There is still a divide in where the relevance of the market comes in. Rock’s the subculture now, the niche market. I don’t see this changing, especially as dubstep finally clarifies electronic music for the masses.
The thought has to come to what happens to rock music as we slide further out of view, and what we hold onto. There’s a lot of bands currently active that brush against the correct answer in places but not wholly (The Men, Mclusky/Future of the Left, Evangelista, Ponytail, Andrew Jackson Jihad), some who still hold tight to the canon that doesn’t profit anymore (Wild Flag, Girls, Kurt Vile, Titus Andronicus, and to a lesser extent St. Vincent), while others currently enjoy the fate of rock music without fear or need to consider (Earth, Swans, Bry Webb).
I used “the correct answer” above, in what could be seen as arrogance. Fortunately, it isn’t, because the correct answer lies within “New Slaves.” It addresses the universal truth that rock music forgot, but it doesn’t need to put that message in anything but it’s purest form; the sound. It exists untrapped by the economy, and is only beholded to rock canon in it’s instrumentation.
Said universal truth is that the universal human existence is defined by heartbeat, blood, and bone. Everything else is privilege and circumstantial. Heartbeat is invoked by rhythm, and modern music and industry are incredible at invoking it. It’s the easiest truth to replicate in music, and not worth any further explanation.
Blood takes many different shapes (in reflection of it being a liquid, I suppose) but is best explained in terms of music as the action of sound upon time. Whether the sound lingers in a single place, or rushes with intent through the body, it is always blood, and it is vital to separate notions of tonality with this thought.
Bone is the most grim to consider, I feel. Implied is a set shape, that human has this casing and this set concept. The Human body is, for the most part, shaped the one way. Again, privilege and circumstance control the rest, but bone structure is fairly reliable. The idea then comes from either embracing that the body is one shape at all times, or the anxiety of feeling trapped by the one shape. It’s this dire need for freedom that lead to music changing in the ways it does, and it’s the embrace of the shape that, at extremes, leads to things like American Idol.
Or, more relevantly, leads to the state of modern rock music, where rock sounds like rock because it sounds like rock, where the bands doing something truly new are so limited in number that you can only really observe the impact with distance. Things like The Beatles. Things like Pink Floyd, like The Ramones, Black Flag, Pavement*… and then we come to the 21st century, and the answer is unclear.
This is what leads to the idea that rock was dead, or what have you. The lessons taken from Pavement were banal, were surface level. No one that heard Pavement struggling with pulse, blood and bone, knew that was what lied underneath, and then was able to convey that into a widespread influential form. As to people who came to that naturally? Well, I have two answers here. One, is At The Drive-In, who came to the precipice of this reality, and then other members of the band buckled and it collapsed.
The best available answer is Lightning Bolt. There is a startling purity to what they have accomplished, seperated so far from popular schools of thought on tone and texture. It feels like both an obvious culmination of all guitar music (without having a ‘proper’ guitar) and like no other music that came before it. At the same time, this is the answer for the preceeding decade. I know it seems like I’m about to introduce Zs as being the band that is going to answer that question for this decade**, but, no. The wonder is that they’re several steps ahead of where we’re going.
ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT THE RECORD NOW.
By all modern definitions, Zs is a traditional four piece band, just with a saxophone instead of bothering with a voice and lyrics. This creates a situation where the only way to engage the song is to confront the sound with the song and album title in mind. To this point, I wouldn’t dare suggest answers to you. I have my own set, and I don’t know for sure if it’s something that would hold true with everyone coming to the record. Nor would I take any pride in ruining the shock for you.
And shock is the word, for sure. Zs accomplishes something incredible in being able to shed western music fully, and only invoke it as an insult to it. This itself is a vast reduction of the work done on the record, and something I’ve spent three pages trying to explain the value of and yet have no real way to explain how it would work. So here’s what I’m going to suggest. Go procure the record however you want (I’m pretty sure it’s on youtube, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be on spotify) and listen to as much as you physically can handle in your first go, then come back and click next page.
*Pavement still blows, though. “Irony is the last refuge of the weak-willed and cowardly.”
**Women probably was. Now, I’m keeping an eye on Iceage.
Fermata over Whole Rest 