This Blows: YouTube, Mp3 Blogs, and How to Hype a New Band (as in, The Blow)

I'd rather not make a habit of this. It was with reluctance that I posted my first YouTube clip, and it is with remorse that I will post my second (below). This clip, of a recent performance by the Blow, has been watermarked as the property of the indie rock magazine, Fader, as well as YouTube (which is owned by Google). In it you can see that, before she begins, the singer will try to sell the audience her band's new record. I happen to like her new record, but still I worry that by posting this clip I am facilitating the process through which the so-called independent media commodifies the spirit of music-for-its-own-sake. Music that may have begun with the intention to create autonomous expression has by now been rendered a commercial product that I am in the process of distributing. What's worse is that if you wind up buying Paper Television, the new record by the Blow that is advertised in this clip, not only will I have helped sell it to you -- I will have also sold you the idea that you are buying an authentic and meaningful form of self-expression. No music betrays its own good intentions as self-consciously as indie rock, and nowhere are those intentions betrayed so readily as the blogosphere. The idea behind a blog, after all, the reason it is a successful way to promote popular music, is that it feels more personal. The recommendation isn't coming from MTV or a professional rock critic, but from an actual human being -- who, we think, really digs this music. Of course, that is an illusion. Blogging may have worked that way for six months in 2001, but by now most blogs -- especially the well-read ones -- have been fully integrated into the industry's machinery. Not every blogger is a shill, but even those who mean well don't seem aware of their place in the mechanism. The rest, meanwhile, simply regurgitate press release or marketing copy (sometimes verbatim), post mp3s and links to the MySpace page of whatever band is presently up for discussion, and relegate the actual discussion -- or whatever passes for it -- to the comments boards. This is an externally controlled and inherently limited mode of expression that undermines the little opportunity we still have to engage in a broad and meaningful dialogue about popular music.

I have alluded to this before, in regard to my qualms with The List, but now I can clarify. The lack of such a dialogue online, where it would seem most at home, is in some sense a result of the blog's specific appeal, which is to value a sense of intimacy or honesty over analysis and judgment. This is generally achieved by means of a clever, apparently offhand, and ironic voice that says amusing things like, Yeah, you all know I have the unholiest of unholy loves for Interpol and the National. (A smart, if ultimately unchallenging, variation on the intimate voice can be seen in this video review of the Blow's song, "Pile of Gold.") The message conveyed by this voice is I'm a real fan, my devotion is genuine, readers should trust this band truly moves people.

The bloggers, I suppose, don't have the luxury of being philosophical. Music festivals like CMJ, where the clip (below) was taken, feature a lot of potentially exciting bands. The Blow was only one crop among this year's bountiful harvest, and every word spent on them would subtract from the time left to pitch the Knife or the Thermals or the (aptly named) Annuals. It happens every year, new bands emerging alongside autumn's back-to-school clothes while the old ones are stored away and forgotten with last summer's shorts. This twisted harvest ritual, insofar as it can be called a ritual at all, has to satisfy the industry's insatiable hunger for new products. In the end, it this hunger -- the industry's -- rather than our need for nourishment, which compels the craving for tunes. The tunes won't nourish us. They offer easy, fast-burning energy, not protein and vitamins. The notion that these tunes might sustain us is a myth perpetuated by The List and the larger web sites, which is accepted by the blogs as a given. At Pitchfork, which employs a team of writers and a finely calibrated decimal-point rating system, readers are offered only the pretense of criticism. There are words and ideas, but no reflection, no connections, no analysis. Significant questions are not raised and the cultivation of complex thought is actually discouraged -- by the rating system in particular. Indeed, Pitchfork's rating system reveals how literally mechanized the process of turning out new, discussable bands has become.

The blogs, as I've suggested, don't usually bother with even the pretense of criticism. They proceed from the assumption that the music they like is important and worth linking to -- and don't care to have that assumption undermined. Contrary opinions are only acceptable when they conform to the circle's expectations. Judgment may be passed, casually, especially if it is tinged with irony and self-deprecation, but serious criticism is not appreciated. In certain cases, as I have discovered, the bloggers will gang up on a dissenting voice and, if it threatens them sufficiently, as I did, they will expel the voice from their midst. Open minds must be annihilated inside the sphere that has made laws of cherished opinions.

Anyway, perhaps you should listen to and see the Blow for yourself:



Now perhaps you like her song, and perhaps you don't. I found the performance charming. It's not quite as appealing as the recording, but it seems heartfelt. Her voice is ordinary, sometimes it cracks, and her shirt is halfway untucked -- but this only further endeared her toward me. The song is called "True Affection" and it's the final song on the Blow's new record. It was also my favorite song when I first listened to the record. On my second listen, I didn't care for it as much. It seemed too easy. On a record struggling with love, relationships, and miscommunication, it is the sparest and most intentionally sincere ballad. It tells the listener it is pouring its heart out too eagerly. I am awkward, it says. I am lonely. Love me for my awkward loneliness -- know the meaning of "True Affection"! I decided to withhold my affection instead. (I think that placing the song at the end of the record is manipulative, a trick designed to leave us feeling lost and forlorn -- yearning for something unnamed that can only be found by listening to the record again and again.) I decided that "Parenthesis" was my favorite song of the record instead. "Parenthesis" is clearly superior to "True Affection" anyway since it features hands-clapping. Clap-clap, clap! It also depicts a scene between two lovers in a grocery store in which the girl sings of something in the deli aisle that makes you cry. I love this lyric. It makes me nauseous. One of the Pitchfork writers tried to complement this lyric, but actually ruined it -- and then made an incoherent accusation about the originality of the hands-clapping. (Who cares if it sounds like "My Boyfriend's Back"? Does that make it any less enjoyable to clap along, or bob my head and tap my feet on the ground as I listen?) Something in the deli aisle! Makes you cry! Of course I put my arm around you and I walk you outside, she says, through the sliding doors, why would I mind? More affection is implied with the words of course than through the entire performance clip of "True Affection." For weeks I listened to "Parenthesis" every day, singing it out loud to myself whenever I was alone. It haunted me. Then, after a while . . . I became bored of it. I had listened to it too many times. At the moment, my favorite song on the record is "Fists Up." "Fists Up" features hands-clapping, like "Parenthesis," but has the additional benefit of not being the subject of a lame Pitchfork review. Also, the hands-clapping is more urgent -- two well placed claps snapping from out of nowhere. Fists up! she says as the beat increases and electronic swirls encircle her voice. I don't wanna come to the point of this song, she says, because the point of this song would have to be sooo long -- long -- long -- long -- and it becomes very quiet and suddenly she is all alone, singing ah ha haaaa, her voice turning circles in overdubbed harmony with itself.

I am in awe of this song.


If you haven't left the site to look at the links I've been posting, or if you have but you haven't seen this for yourself, the cover of the Blow's new record depicts a girl and a boy together. The boy, as you may have noticed, doesn't appear in the performance clip from CMJ. He wasn't there. He was performing in Europe with his solo project, YACHT. The boy's role is to create the Blow's rhythm and instrumental tracks while the girl sings the songs, but I don't get the impression they perform their music together in person -- at least not very often. The best place to see them together is on the cover of their new record or in publicity photos on the band's MySpace page, where they appear in two streaming videos. One of the videos depicts them in a loft, working at a computer on their new record (although the only time in the video that they appear side by side is in a video-within-the-video that shows a holographic version of them both dancing on a computer screen).*

In concert, as I was saying, the girl has been performing by herself. Her name is Khaela Maricich. She has a blog called The Touch Me Feeling and, on it, there is a post about being alone called Alone vs. Alone. I have had this idea of myself, alone, Khaela says. In it I am cool. I carry a bag that I have packed very well, and I listen to my ipod often, because it has a lot of interesting and inspiring music, which makes me feel both comforted and adventurous. She says that on her adventure she takes pictures of herself alone. A photo of myself on the toilet, she says, to show myself later. Then she seems to pause, and wonders: Is the picture secretly to show to someone else later, when I am telling them about how cool it was to be by myself all night?

This question, I think, can be phrased another way and applied to her performance at CMJ. Was it truly heartbreaking to watch her on stage alone, a victim of circumstance, trying to perform the songs she had written and recorded with her friend, or had Khaela's solitude been intended somehow? A picture to secretly show someone later . . . (to convince them she is cool). Indie rock thrives on displays of emotional vulnerability, and Khaela's performance -- which is naïve and off key and emphasizes the words I never felt so all alone -- is the stuff of which indie coolness is made. You feel awful for her and touched at the same time, according to the review Pitchfork gave her new record (which received an 8.3 rating, and was included on the site's Also Recommended list). I bought her record because of this review. Actually, I bought her record because two years ago I had downloaded an mp3 of her song "Hey Boy," which (can be heard on the band's MySpace page and) represents the moment when the Blow first becomes a couple. Originally, the band had been Khaela's solo project. There was no boy in the Blow -- it was just Khaela, single and alone, with some of her friends sitting in for support. "Hey Boy," it seems, is Khaela's way of introducing listeners to her new partner, Jona Bechtolt.

"Hey Boy" is the reason I bought the Blow's record. It is a song about a girl who likes a boy and wonders why he hasn't called her. She gave him her number. She has been waiting for days and, after a while, she begins to speculate . . . a) you're gay, b) you've got a girlfriend, c) you could've thought I came on too strong, or, d) I just wasn't your thing, no ring. The song has hands-clapping and electric beats and, near the end, Khaela says it's not a lot that I want, just some talking. I always start laughing to myself as soon she says a) you're gay and, then, when she says it's not a lot that I want, just some talking, I think awwww!!

But the Blow is more than cute, and the anxiety expressed through their music is not merely endearing bittersweetness. It is a statement made possible by the very technology that keeps Khaela separated from her partner and which, every day, helps implement a new and evermore frightening kind of American isolationism. America Online. YouTube. MySpace. iPod. The trajectory from collective aspiration to individual profit is striking. It is the difference between good intentions and their accomplishments; the difference between when Khaela confidently sings I will always be around, and when, later, she corrects herself and says, I thought that I would always be around.

I pretty much only know how to write about myself, Khaela says in an interview with ELLEgirl magazine ("Parenthesis," ELLEgirl says, is our latest obsession). I like being alone in my house, zoning out, sitting in the bathtub and singing to myself, she says. She doesn't play any musical instruments particularly well, though she picks around with the guitar and the keyboard. So if someone wanted me to perform live while playing an instrument, she says, I would have to practice A LOT. This is where Jona comes in. Jona can play several instruments competently and is skilled at programming music with a laptop computer. The pair met about four years ago through friends. Khaela said she wanted to make pop music and Jona seemed interested. They decided that, together, they would make what Khaela calls, clean radio-style songs that our moms would like. At the time, this may have seemed a daring proposition. It wasn't easy for an indie mindset to reconcile pop songs with its preference for supposedly handmade music that attempts to be difficult to listen to. So it was important, as Khaela told ELLEgirl magazine, that Jona was willing to go all the way.

Four years later, the Blow have made two records of clean radio-style songs without losing their indie credibility. The indie landscape, it appears, has changed. Inexpensive computer software has made it easier for an individual to create glitzy songs without betraying the do-it-yourself ethos. File-sharing, blogs, and mp3s have made it easier for a band with a local reputation to instantly achieve national or even international recognition. And Pitchfork, which stated in 2004 that not liking pop singles was a form of bias, has been called the new Rolling Stone. The Blow, meanwhile, have the advantage of apparent authenticity. Their MySpace page says they are from Portland, Oregon, and their press write-ups are quick to say things like DIY or Pacific Northwest scene. Listeners who make their way to Khaela's blog and read her Alone vs. Alone post will find 31 comments from people offering reassurance and thoughts on being alone. Take heart, says Lindsey. Take heart, says Luke. They all wish Khaela wasn't alone. They all want to be with her. (And I get the sense that many of these people are Khaela's real friends.) I think you're really really great, says Mitsu. Jona, meanwhile, has an mp3 on his website that was featured on French National Radio called "Music By Friends for the Radio in France" of previously unreleased remixes and songs by the Blow and their friends' bands. Friends, friends, friends! he says. (According to the band's MySpace page, the Blow have 10,656 friends -- and counting -- while MySpace page visitors have played "Hey Boy" 126,670 times.) This is intimate music, made special by friends, for their other friends to share (while it is distributed anonymously online to 100 million global users at a time). You can share it too.

The Blow make no apologies for expanding their audience. In fact, the band's MySpace page proudly asserts that the Blow have developed a pop music formula, fashioned, as the best popular music is, with the function of getting under the skin of the people. (I don't know about The People, but I usually take special care to avoid things that would penetrate, and dwell beneath, the barriers of my flesh.) Perhaps the Blow don't realize that they have compared themselves to a parasite. Perhaps they do, but feel that, once it has burrowed its way inside us, their message of friendship, sympathy, and understanding could only be beneficial. I'm less optimistic. The gleaming electric beats and themes of inspired loneliness are so alluring I fear they wind up sentimentalizing what we might otherwise call despair. We become lost and wallow in darkness instead of learning to recognize our despair and call it by its proper name.

The Blow's characters are aware of a pervasive loneliness. They sing of great distances between friends and lovers, of lost hope and long hours at work -- even as they hold out for a utopian peace (or at least a light at the end of their long tunnel of struggle). Yet peace won't come. The rebels just can't muster the force, Khaela sings, to walk the thin line between belief and delusion. She has stopped calling for them to raise their "Fists Up" and, as the song ends, Khaela seems unable to say anything but ahhhhhh. Distance and frustration have culminated in a final isolation -- not only for the Blow's characters, but for the listeners who don't realize that this music is alienated from itself by means of its very structure. The way that Jona and I record, Khaela says, all on separate tracks on the computer, it works for us to pick out single lines of music and compile them all together. Khaela doesn't say whether the Blow write their own tracks or borrow them from other recordings, but Pitchfork, in its Track Review of "Parenthesis," says that the Blow have appropriated some of their material in a perhaps irresponsible manner. Pitchfork's argument isn't very clear, but it seems aimed at the present concern over copyright protection and ownership. I'm not very interested in this concern, however, which is generally understood in the most simplistic and cynical terms, because I think there's something more basically problematic about music that is constructed from samples, whether these samples are borrowed or originally composed. It makes for songs that are a mere, as Khaela says, compilation of separate tracks and single lines. None of the songs is an integrated whole, but rather a mix of unique parts that have been unified primarily by circumstance (this sounds good with that . . . these sound good with those). The final product is nice, sometimes, but the elements out of which it has been fashioned are estranged from the contexts that originally gave them meaning. Intention, finally, has been removed from the equation, no longer a factor at all.

Watch the Blow's YouTube clip again. After a while, the similarity between Khaela's performance and a karaoke routine will seem less charming. Eventually one realizes that, in this music, any given vocal performance is interchangeable with its accompaniment. The track playing behind Khaela will be the same whether she is singing in New York, Chicago, or Portland. It is inflexible. A pervasive inflexibility, moreover, which may be brought into clearer focus by considering the phenomenon of the remix. Remixes rely on the fact that certain musical works have already been divided into two basic -- and separate -- parts, vocal and instrumental tracks. Either track is potentially disposable. The instrumental track may be disposed so that the vocal track can be matched with a new instrumental track; or the vocal track may be disposed so that the instrumental track may be matched with a new vocal track. They are like a pair of my socks: each fits on either foot, and they're both sized 6-11½ -- for just about anyone.

Music like this is not multi-dimensional, and art that is one-, or in this case perhaps two-, dimensional will never give us insight into the paradox of modern communication. It may even perpetuate the paradox by sabotaging our willingness to address its fundamental questions. Why, for instance, do we feel so alone in spite of our ever-greater capacity for interconnection? Why do we attempt to resolve the isolation of a technological age by spending more time on the phone or online or surrounded by holographic images of the companionship we so presumably lack? It seems to me that, not so long ago, it was a blessing to have a little quiet time to one's self. Now, however, we would rather preoccupy ourselves with someone like Khaela. Her projected insecurity becomes a focal point for our anxieties. We begin to feel a connection to her. The stability of a knowing, recorded presence that will always be there, exactly the same, makes us feel less alone when, in fact, we are no less alone. At one point, for instance, after I had listened to "Parenthesis" eighty-seven times in a row, I decided that I was even in love with Khaela. The coy toss of her eyebrows, the way she says ah, her white ruffled shirt. I began to yearn. At first I had assumed she was too young for me. Later one of the comments on her blog led me to believe she was closer to my age. This was exciting. I imagined her singing, holding my hand, whispering of course in my ear -- until suddenly I remembered a) I've never met her, and b) I've got a girlfriend. (Karen, my girlfriend, has been crushing on the Blow along with me, incidentally; her favorite song is "True Affection." We have been listening to it on our respective iPods as we ride the train together.)

In the end, I sense something unhealthy about this relationship. I have nothing to offer it. I only receive. I am given the same simple sentiments, over and over, without any nuance. Karen and I are tired of the Blow now. Their music unsettles us. We no longer want their songs in our heads.

The Blow, however, will not leave us alone.



(WHEN I-I-I-I-I'MMMM HOLDING YOOOOOOU, WE MAKE A PAIR OF PAR-EN-THE-SIS!!!

THERE'S PLENTY OF SPACE TO EN-CASE
WHATEVER WEIRD WAY MY MIND GOES

WHEN I-I-I-I-I'MMMM HOLDING YOOOOOOU, WE MAKE A PAIR OF PAR-EN-THE-SIS!!!)

NOTES

*This video has since been removed from the Blow's MySpace page

"Parenthesis" mp3 (above), via Instrumental Analysis

"Fists Up" mp3 (above), via Merry Swankster

Khaela's performance photo from Flikr, via FixedGeer


Other blogs discussing the Blow

Gorilla vs. Bear
Idolator
Indieblogheaven: Music for People with Taste
Lullabyes
Macktronic
Podbop
Slutty Fringe
Stereogum
Steregum, again (with video!!)


Also

Khaela's blog, The Touch Me Feeling (her Alone vs. Alone post)

Jona's web site for YACHT

Pitchfork's review of Paper Television