MUSIC NAVbarz 2
THE NEWEST NEW NEW THING:
How America Must Prepare For The Joanna Newsom Invasion

By Polar Levine, January 29, 2007
If we've learned anything from the Iraq debacle besides the idiocy of going there in the first place, it's that one must plan for all possible outcomes, not just the ones we'd like. With that lesson in mind I feel that it's my duty as a patriotic citizen of our music culture to propose that an enlightened group of concerned music culture guardians examine the potential consequences of the impending Joanna Newsom craze. This will involve taking into account all the positive and potentially destructive consequences. I'll offer some points for this esteemed body to consider.
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Ok, I'll say it straight out: I'm a rabid fan of Joanna Newsom. Not only that -- I believe that she's the newest new new thing. I believe she'll have a ground-shifting impact on pop music.
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We're experiencing a phase in American pop music that's so narrow-casted and so devoid of originality that it's comparable to, more than any other musical era, the pre-rock & roll fifties -- the era of Doris Day, Perry Como and Mitch Miller. But this could be a good thing. Periods of creative stagnation (artists or industry induced) launch a revolutionary backlash. When swing devolved into kitsch, bebop arose. The aforementioned early '50's Doris/Perry/Mitch snoozefest led to rock & roll, and the gooey excesses of flower-power and disco found antidotes in punk and hip hop. Our current musical malaise is already germinating an online ground-up indie music movement that will mature into the next renaissance.
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Mainstream pop music is currently segmented into a few tightly defined genres: rap, R&B, rock, country and a denatured version of any of the above that we call pop. The alternative or indie music stream generally mirrors the mainstream but can be more musically and lyrically challenging and more prone to break out of conventional expectations. It also offers a broader menu of genres including jazz, electronica, world music and a pool of truly unique artists like Tom Waits, Beck, The Brazilian Girls and Newsom. That pool of oddities is stubbornly resistant to being given a distinct, well-defined genre title and to tailoring its creative vision to market concerns. It's primarily the in the rock segment of the indie world where the value of musicianship is most likely to be superceded by that of vibe and attitude. The exception here is the virtuoso school of metal typified by Tool and System of a Down.
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The revolution is right around the corner but which parts of the underground will break through? It won't be alt-rock which has become the Barry Manilow of Generation ZZZZZZ. My guess is that it'll be less pugnacious but harder to chew than the current status quo: more challenging harmonic structures (weirder chord progressions), unpredictable key changes and time signatures, more arcane musical influences and more demanding lyrics. Brazilian Girls, Lupe Fiasco and K-os look to be contenders for leadership of the New New Wave.
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But the surest bet is Joanna Newsom -- classically trained (emphasis on "trained") in harp and composition, but whose singing conjures the twin sister of that weird munchkin banjo player in Deliverance -- unschooled, primitive and childlike yet uniquely virtuostic. Adding to the strangeness of this concoction, she writes words for that voice that are surreal, elegant and otherworldly. They represent the first significant breach of the prevailing post-punk preference for cynicism and a gratuitous dumbed-down version of irony.
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And, damn it, she's even pretty. (Is it the Pretty Factor that's getting her over or am I being pissy?)
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With all that talent, training and vision working against her she's become a national popcult-item and is on the verge of a long, exalted career.
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But our immediate challenge here is to prepare for the fallout of Joanna-mania. So let's look at the pros and cons that our music culture will likely face -- both consumers and artists:
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THE PROS
- higher standards of musicianship and lyric writing;
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- a rise in the value of originality;
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- interest in more obscure genres and music from other times and places;
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- the marginalization of the mainstream music industry (leaving it to concentrate on cute megastars) which gives way to:
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- global music distribution independent of corporate interests and fueled by the relationships between fans and artists, fans and fans, artists and artists.
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THE CONS
- a harp fad. Newsom works the harp like a 800 ton guitar. Will the horde of harpist wannabes default to the heavenly arpeggios that have given the instrument a bad name?
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- hordes of string ensembles adding "seriousness" to songs, particularly if scored by people whose names are not Van Dyke Parks;
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- 10-minute-plus song durations, particularly by those who produce about 10 minutes worth of interesting music and lyrics annually;
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- a wave of elliptical poetry from the land of the unicorn, overstuffing singers' mouths with the peanut butter of lip-twitching words;
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- a binge on xtreme sweetness. Donovan did nicely with it but it mutated into a woozy explosion of flower power that trashed his reputation and required the antidote of the death-as-fashion-statement aesthetic that punk introduced. Ever since, there's been an irresistible gravitational pull toward negativity and pollution of the fine art of irony. A sweetness revival of epic proportions would prove to be as toxic as the first wave and would initiate an epic revival of death-wish, negativity and existential whining.
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- most frightening is the prospect of tens of thousands of girls across the land contorting their innards in the service of clueless imitations of The Voice. There's the added risk of sleeper cells of Joanna clones working out harmonies sung in the style of The Voice.
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The scary thing about cultural shifts out of periods of stagnation is that. . . well. . . ya just never know for sure what's coming and going. Are we scared? Will we survive the alien invasion of non-market-tested creativity that threatens to invade our shores? We must remain vigilant.
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Polar Levine
for Yankin' The Food Chain
polarity1.com
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