Gordon Solie Motherfuckers- Chairshot Politics EP (1998) [revised]
A few months ago, a friend came over to my house and we were playing some power-pop and early punk 45’s. Of course, when you do this, you only play the A-side, and after 2 minutes, 3 minutes, you know whether it’s a good record or not. There is no element of uncertainty, although a more eccentric band may be more divisive. But if a song is catchy, to-the-point, and engaging, it’s a “hit,” and if it is forgettable or doesn’t make an impact, that’s the end of it. But my point is, it’s a snap judgment whether a song is good or not. The same is true for the A-side/B-side distinction. The two sides of a single are an object lesson is what makes for a good song.
It is not that the same criteria that make for a good pop/punk song also make for a good death metal song, or a good hardcore song, or a good jazz song, in the sense that a melodic bridge is an essential for one genre but not for the other. My point is that we are capable of saying whether a song is good or not, just by listening to it, seeing if it grabs us. It’s incredibly easy to do so with a pop song. Anyone who tells you it is impossible for other music (or movies, or books)—is trying to sell you something.
Obviously, early punk and power pop are basically pop/rock, and they follow definite patterns and it is easy to evaluate because we know these patterns, e.g. we know that the chorus is where we need to center our judgment, and we can tune out at certain other points in the song. In pop/rock, the point is to be catchy in a way I don’t need to elaborate upon. Let AC/DC “You Shook Me All Night Long” stand in as an example.
Let me jump to a song that is obviously not catchy in that way, the spoken-word Crass single “Reality Asylum.” As far away from AC/DC as this song is—and I mean specifically the single version—no listener can emerge from it unscathed. It is terrifying. It is gripping. It is impossible to be “bored” while it is on, no matter how many times one has heard it. The differences with AC/DC are legion, but the effect on the listener is the same in this way: the single GRABS you.
This is how we all get into punk or hardcore. Something grabs us. This “something” may be an intensity, a loudness, an aggressiveness. It *could* be something mediocre which just happens to be the first loud, heavy, angry music that someone is hearing. But I don’t think so. Minor Threat grabs you. It’s not an accident. Black Flag grabs you. No one would accuse Black Flag of being a pop/rock band, but it is the same thing for all of my examples so far—you know something is good because it commandeers your attention.
Here is the corollary: when something does NOT grab my attention, it is NOT good. Beethoven’s Fifth symphony: grabs my attention right away with its famous opening; good. The 2005 Rolling Stones album A Bigger Bang, I found myself skipping through every single song; bad. See how easy this is?
But this is too vague and subjective and besides, we are not so sensitive that we are being arrested in our tracks at all times. And surely there is such a thing as music that “grows” on you? And not everything is “catchy” in the same way as a pop song!
When I say catchy, immediate, something that grabs you, neat parts… all of this is interchangeable. Supposedly “uncatchy” music like death metal or jazz is STILL best when something “jumps out” and is memorable. The reason I stress these words is rhetorical, though: these little moments have nothing to do with the way that music gets reviewed or discussed these days.
Calling Framtid “catchy” or saying how many “neat parts” Darkthrone has, is meant to get away from fretting about how “mind-exploding” Japanese crust’s distortion effects are, or how kult and ritualistic black metal is. It is not meant to reduce Framtid or Darkthrone to the level of ABBA, or to say that the *music* works on the same principles. It is intentionally ignoring style and focusing instead on what is effective and makes me want to put a record on over and over. And that something will always be some combination of musical moments, not anything else (not lyrics!).
My reviews will always be “song-based,” because this is how our favorite records invariably work. My appreciation of a mediocre record will usually judge it as a whole. But my favorite records are loved song-by-song. I have a discrete opinion about every song on Black Flag’s Damaged. I do not have as distinct opinion about every song on, say, the most recent Gauze album. The fact is that I do not like it as much, it is not as important to me. But I think our criteria should be based on our experience of what we love. And this is invariably “song-based.” But only in the sense that it is distinguished from a hazy, stylistic cognition which might as well not listen to the whole record!
Let’s take a listen to this Gordon Solie 7”. I have heard hundreds of hardcore 7”s since this was released, and I only bought a copy (and heard it) recently, but there is absolutely. no. question. that on first listen, it leaps out of the speakers and is not to be confused with a disposable record of nowadays. To paraphrase a review of Michael Haneke’s film The White Ribbon, the Gordon Solie 7” “sounds like a classic the very first time you are listening to it.” Is this because of some indefinable aura, or a bunch of adjectives, or because they had crazy live shows? No!
The vocals are immediately interesting, for one thing. The songs stand apart from each other. The riffs are huge when they need to be. The breakdowns are as “catchy” as anything… There is simply no question about this record. It’s electrifying! It’s full of personality! It gets you dancing (in your head, if nowhere else)! It’s not contemporary classical music, guys… it’s punk rock! The pleasures are simple, and we can say whether we are having these pleasures or not. Obviously this doesn’t mean there’s not a LOT to say about these simple pleasures, but when something is this lively and self-evidently a cut above, the lengthy arbitration process that we go through when it comes to mediocre records seems very silly.
[Revision begins here]
Now, it’s easy to say this is a great record, because many other people have thought so, and time has shown this to be the case. This is why I don’t belabor the actual review. It is a somewhat “sought after” record. OK. In one way, this makes it seem like, “why even bother reviewing it?” But I want to turn this logic against itself. The very OBVIOUSNESS of this-being-a-good-record is the very thing I want to use against the idea that punk music has to be unhappily and laboriously waded-through to discover if it is good or not. When you put on the GSMF 7”, *nothing could be more obvious* than that it is a “keeper.” Because art ages, it becomes more obvious with every year how good or bad something is. A record that is “really good” when you buy it, becomes “ok” the next year, and ten years later you are surprised that you own it. The GSMF 7”, without overstating things, is still worth buying a long time after it came out. These are completely opposite processes.
When someone argues that, beyond enjoying a record, rocking out to it, discussing it, playing it for friends, putting it on while driving, putting it on a mixtape—beyond all of this, that there is some unhappy, morbid need to apologize for it and sift through everything to appreciate it, I can simply not agree. Life’s too short. I don’t like only “happy” or “poppy” music—I love the Stooges Fun House and Neil Young On the Beach, just to stay within rock examples—but the immodest obviousness of the status of these albums as classics is chosen precisely to oppress you! And I think in time, fretting about whether a new, mediocre hardcore or metal or indie rock record is “ok” or not, when the world is full of stone cold classics and life-changing art… is a real sign of a cultural problem, to which my response is (to my dismay) increasingly Nietzschean. It is as though people are intent on being miserable.
[End revision]
There are two clarifications I want to make briefly. 1) The worst thing in the world is non-catchy catchy music. Pop/rock that has left in all the gaps for hooks that just don’t materialize, or that is merely repetitive instead of memorable: this FORMALISM is the worst thing of all. Indie-pop is the most guilty of all. “Dreamy” vocals, “shimmering” or “lo-fi” guitar: none of this is the substance of a memorable or catchy song. I talk a lot about neat parts, but a neat part cannot be substituted for by a style that is “poppy” where it ought to be memorable.
When I say “catchy,” I don’t legislate in advance the forms this can take.
2) At the other end of the spectrum, there is the Wax Poetics approach to music—and I will leave aside the collector aspect—which reduces music to its style, its production, or even its smallest parts (“the break”). Wax Poetics and I both love Otis Redding. And we can talk all day about how the small parts fit together, how the production works, and nit-pick every aspect of the sound. But the MAIN THING is to know that Otis Redding is better, more enjoyable, more lasting, and more stirring and profound, than the mediocre, basically tedious music which Wax Poetics subjects to the SAME TREATMENT. What makes Otis Redding, *for them, too!*, has nothing to do with these things, and everything to do with the visceral emotional power of these songs and these performances.
Some people will think that the aspects of music I find appealing are “shallow,” and that some OTHER THING must be lurking behind more obscure or more opaque music. I totally refute this. This is the totally wrong metaphor. Music shouldn’t have “depth” in this sense. It should leap out at you, which is the opposite thing. The “structure” of this leaping-out can be studied, analyzed, appreciated, but any other approach—going *searching* for something that is not immediately there—is at least the opposite of what makes music, fundamentally, the aspect of our lives that it undeniably is.
[Recommended]
