SFTS’s First Annual Epically Non-Comprehensive Hung Over Noise Pop Coverage
by The Scene on February 29th, 2008
So we got to the Noise Pop party one day late. We would have made it to the Walkmen’s show at the Independent on Wednesday had we been paying enough attention to actually remember that it was happening far enough in advance to score tickets. But alas, our first Noise Pop show this year was the Blitzen Trapper/Fleet Foxes/Here Here/Sholi show at Bottom of the Hill yesterday.
Our memory of Sholi is fuzzy and we were out in the back not paying attention and trying to not smoke cigarettes during most of Fleet Foxes’ set, which is a shame because P4k just gave them a sloppy bj of an album review this morning so we feel like we probably should have been paying attention. We’d seen Here Here w/Holy Fuck (who is playing tonight, a show that all reasonable people need to attend) and the Super Furry Animals about a month ago and they didn’t impress us very much. They have a very big Arcade Fire vibe going on and we’re of the opinion that if your band has more than 7 people in it, at least one of those people should not be playing at least 65% of the time. If you seen the Arcade Fire, you know what we’re talking about. Anyway, Here Here were much better this time - quite enjoyable really.
The main event was Blitzen Trapper and they, as always, did not disappoint. We’ve harped on this a bit earlier and, after seeing BT again, we can’t help but be intrigued by the fact that they really seem like a country band. If you were to take the song “Wild Mountain Nation,” make a video of them playing in an empty warehouse with an upside-down American flag on the wall, you could put it on CMT and they’d be the country music Nirvana. You wouldn’t have to change a note.
The problem with this is that the whole world of country music has been completely ghettoized, granted its an enormous, highly profitable ghetto, but a ghetto nonetheless. There are probably a lot of reasons for this but we’re going to place the blame squarely on Garth Brooks. Brooks isn’t terrible, per se, but his astronomical success in the early 90s really change the county music game and turned popular country music into a genre of shitty, bland pop songs with the occasional slide guitar and fiddle parts sung by people wearing cowboy hats. Granted there’s alt.country but that’s kinda small potatoes at this point. The real issue at hand is that no self-respecting musician who came up from outside the country music establishment would want to be associated with it in any “official” way. Sure, band’s like Ween can toss of an album of great country tunes, but they’re still considered a rock band at heart. All of this is a damn shame because what country music could really use right now is a kick in the pants, however that’s probably only going to come from the outside but until country loses its patently “uncool” vibe, the odds of that happening are virtually nil.
We guess, what we meant to say was the Blitzen Trapper absolutely killed. Killed.
on March 3rd, 2008 at 7:36 pm
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