Comfort food or not, you add anything to a pot of Kraft Dinner, it will make it better. Rather immediately. The same with any Top 40 song. You add any kind of talent or imagination to the general tune you'd find up there on that corporate laboratory clone-hatched living advertisement (yet still boring over-produced) artificial, horrible, anti-organic shit ticket sound, you end up with a lot better song, right away.
Granted I haven't listened to a Top 40 radio station in a really long time, but when I happen over one, like, in the car's radio on the way to an AM oldies station on a strange road in a strange city or maybe when I catch a quick edit or two of some shitty video, channel surfing to the oldies movie station, or perhaps as I check out the back cover of Rolling Stone from four months ago while waiting for my teeth to be cleaned, it seems all the Top 40 is the same music from the same bands it was three years ago, five years ago, even a decade ago. As a matter of fact I fucking swear that the Top 40 hasn't changed since I was a kid. That's a long time of stagnation and inbreeding and criminal non-art, so it's no wonder the top 40 is such a piece of shit, always.
The same kind of unhealthy homogeny is occurring of late in other McGenres as well. The alternative rock sound has oozy-gross-plopped a number of incredibly similar (and terrible) sounding bands onto the counter top of the record store. The same action is happening with hip hop, country and even folk.
If I hear one more 'singer-songwriter', the typical, always, (not even ironically ugly, just dirty ugly) sweater wearing, with thumb holes in the sleeves for stubby unattractive thumbs to poke through, vapid herbal tea sipping while guilt forcing me into a banal lump of pity, oh the world and everyone in is so mean to me, the lame fake victim singer-songwriter, (Who wants to listen to a lame fake victim?) I will go and buy the new U2 album just throw in the towel.
Bad sounding times are afoot in other words! It's not like mySpace and Pandora can solve all of my escalating musical concerns! (Although they both help quite a bit…..) Anyway what I'm saying is that on one hand right now there is an explosion in the number of artists putting out work, on the other hand more bands means more of the same sounding stuff and a lot more suck.
My observation of the state of music right now begs a further question, if there are tons and tons of shitty music out now, what does that say about the society and culture it is commenting on and has this always been going on and it's now that it's just irked me?
Attempting an answer to this question, and actually the focus of this review is the band Annuals. This is a marvelous sextet and no one in the band is over 22 years old! Made up of childhood friends and their friends this band has incredible musical and lyrical talent, and has found a home with a great label, Ace Fu, the same label Devotchka calls home of late.
This band is from the Opposite coast as I am presently anchored upon, the middle opposite, North Carolina to be specific. My aunt recently moved to North Carolina, but I don't think she's made it to any of Annuals gigs yet.
Their sound is….well….ok imagine a blender, a thrift store glass blender, as opposed to pre-mixed microwave ready convenience store Top 40 non-recyclable container. Now in this blender pour in a bit of, to your taste, all the great independent bands from the last ten, no, fifteen years. In my concoction there would be a splash of Pixies, Sparkle horse, Jets to Brazil, Waits, Jonathan Richman, you know on and on like, pinch and dash. Anyway I would blend this music together for just a bit and pour myself a wonderful glass of Annuals.
This band has the musical and lyrical talent of any of the bands from the past, which is very impressive, considering their ages. The only thing is and the thing I'm keeping my fingers crossed about is that while these songs are great, they don't ever bust out from the shadow of these past bands. The songs don't really seem to stand on there own. They are strong, they sound great, they stir my emotions, but not in a new direction, a direction I need from a new band now.
Maybe that's too harsh a measure to have music to aspire too. I criticize them because they have the talent and potential to be amazingly new and exciting, but they end up just maintaining with the best? Yes I do slight them for that short fall.
I will keep this band in mind down the line because I'm thinking they will evolve their sound. Having mastered the present and past sounds of their peers, they don't have anywhere else to go, they have to create and explore new territory! Yes. I think they are good enough to evolve a new sound, take us forward, move us on.
Enough of this depressing and stagnant musical situation we have to deal with, it's time for progress. Annuals is a band that can lead us from the horrible musical direction we've been heading in, on the whole, having Top 40 ride shotgun in the car. Happy roads ahead.
