What do you do about rock when everyone seems only to want
pop? Ignoring the genre-mutations and blurred definitions we know that rock
doesn’t die but when it goes this quiet is that somehow worse?
I saw a bit of Black Star Riders with Tax The Heat at the
Asylum last week. I have no doubt that it was the right venue, it’s a great
room for proper rock and this was it. I couldn’t help thinking however that a
band containing ex-members of Thin Lizzy and authentically performing those
songs should really be in a bigger venue. Is this what it’s come to? Even when
they weren’t littering the ‘pop’ charts the rock and metal bands of old were
still routinely filling venues.
We can blame the economic situation and the lack of
disposable revenue, we can even point to the high-ticket prices of acts like
Eagles taking money out of the market but they seem like flimsy excuses. Rock
doesn’t seem to have the cachet anymore.
I’m relatively confident that things will come around. Music
tastes are notoriously cyclical. It just seems to be taking a while to rotate
in rock’s direction. I still believe that the casual music-listener yearns for
a standard, classic, well-written song with the familiar format of guitar,
bass, drums and vocal. The issue is possibly whether those tastes have deviated
too far into the middle of the road; someone’s buying Michael Buble after all. Has the traditional role of rock been
supplanted by the soul-inflexions and leanings exhibited by Adele and Paolo
Nutini? Unquestionably they are controlling the physical sales in rock’s
demographic.
Only seven of the current top twenty albums
could be construed as rock releases. It’s unfortunate that one of them is Eric
Clapton and that very few are very new but it’s a lot better than the singles chart
which remains a perilously rock-free zone. A lot of this has to be down to
airplay and streaming. Rock isn’t breaking big on single track sales (or play)
because the songs aren’t there. Tax The Heat, Rival Sons, The Temperance
Movement and their ilk will always struggle unless they find a crossover song. All
of the above have had great things said about them , equally I feel comfortable
saying great things about some of the acts I think have a chance of cutting a
path through the pop.
I’ve tipped Royal Blood before, shortly after their Jools
performance, they have momentum and a handy tag of being a British Queens of
the Stone Age, almost anyway – there’s a bass driven groove that reminds me of
QOTSA running through their work. This is the latest.
Twin Atlantic might be termed slightly more conventional but
still with enough edge to be acceptable to the rock audience.
The best new track I’ve heard in a while merges an
introspective vocal delivery with moments of ‘rocking-out’ and could
consequently merge a lot of indie and rock desires. Marc O’Reilly doesn’t even
have major label support as yet which makes this track only more astonishing.
At the time of writing it hadn’t even hit 1000 views.
Band of Skulls also have enormous potential to swing the
blues-leanings of rock that has been successful (Jack White, Black Keys, etc) a
little heavier. The video is a bit obvious but they can almost be forgiven for
playing the Robin Thicke/Belouis Some card.
Next week: more jukebox stuff and what the women have to say
about it.
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