In Jonathan Franzen's “Freedom,” Walter Berglund and Richard Katz, two old friends, with a pretty fucked-up and endearing relationship, pay a visit to Conor Oberst, Bright Eyes. Katz's, the rock star's, omniscience reflects on Oberst's “tortured Soulful Artist shtick, his self-indulgence in pushing his songs past their natural limits of endurance, his artful crimes against pop convention: he was performing sincerity, and when the performance threatened to give sincerity the lie, he performed his sincere anguish over the difficulty of sincerity.”
Is one of this year's “cools” the antithesis to cool? i.e. taking the avoided path because it's okay to be sentimental when you are sincere about what you are doing and doing it artfully? Have we reached a point in music where revivalism swallowing in irony has reached a noticeable level of shallowness that artists organically react with sincerity? In the context of American literature, David Foster Wallace speaks of the hypothesized anti-rebels who “eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue” and who are “backward, quaint, naïve, anachronistic.”
If you don't understand something is it ironic? Is it ironic in the Alanis Morrissette way? Irony has metastasized as a construct, infecting our perception of the world. It's nothing new, but it is used and misused with a frightening frequency. Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), in an interview with Pitchfork, says that “the simple answer is that irony is based on insecurity; it seems to me that when people are doing something ironically, it's because they're challenged by something or they like to hate something that's popular.” He doesn't bother defending "Beth/Rest," which is definitely anachronistic, in and out of place, and when listened to by an ironic ear comes off as insincere: “I literally just don't give a shit.” He made the song for himself. He's telling us, if you don't understand it, deal with it or don't listen to it.
When word broke that Justin Vernon and James Blake were collaborating on a project called “Fall Creek Boys Choir,” I, very plainly, got very excited. Blake, like Vernon, has pushed the “anti-rebel” agenda. In another Pitchfork interview, Blake revisits the idea of honesty: “People can smell dishonesty on you. On this album, I felt like I was being totally honest-- so I don't have anything to lose.” Blake is candid about where he draws inspiration from. A few of my favorite Blake tracks are derivatives: samples or covers. I love the use of Aaliyah's “Are You That Someone” in “CYMK.” Blake's covers are particularly interesting and bold. “Wilhelm Scream” covers the lyrics of his father's (James Litherland) yacht-rock love song “Where To Turn.” “Limit To Your Love” is an obvious Feist cover. And he pays homage to another female pop artist, Joni Mitchell, in “A Case of You.” Compared to Vernon's visceral sincerity, Blake's sincerity is conceptual and technical.
So Blake and Vernon have released “FallCreek Boys Choir (FCBC),” and we now know that “FCBC” is part of Blake's upcoming EP Enough Thunder. “A Case of You” is said to be included in Enough Thunder, and we are all left wondering what Vernon's larger role will be on the EP. When Blake was asked whether he would produce for anyone else, he said, “I'm too aware of that approach of, 'Oh, let's get that one producer to work on this.' There's a weird producer-mating-season thing going on and I'm not really a fan of that.” Which is interesting because on “FCBC” it sounds like Blake is on the production and Vernon is on the vocals. I'm going to withhold judgment, though, on “FCBC” until I hear the EP in its entirety. I'm just waiting for Vernon and Blake to cover Simon and Garfunkel's “Old Friends,” composed and recorded in Vernon's log cabin.
In seriousness, though, how many yacht-rock covers can we listen to (See Washed Out perform “FarAway.”)? When will sincerity fail to be sincere and we get inundated by musicians who have to pull an Oberst and perform their “sincere anguish over the difficulty of sincerity”? I hope the sincere anti-rebels don't fall into the recursive loop of self-conscious art.
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