The Year When Rock Just Spun Its WheelsBy JON CARAMANICA
Every week since the end of May the band Sublime With Rome has had at least one song, sometimes two, on Billboard?s Rock Songs chart or its Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart, often both. The most successful have been ?Panic? and ?Take It or Leave It,? both true to the band?s mission to reincarnate the band Sublime, whose singer, Brad Nowell, died in 1996, and whose ska-lite Sublime With Rome both covers and, in its originals, shamelessly apes.
It is pure historical re-enactment, interrupted only to write new material in the style of the band it?s standing in for, like the hired hand who steps in for the mystery-novel author who keels over before finishing a trilogy. It?s designed to satisfy fans who still crave the feeling, if not quite the author himself. It quenches pre-existing thirst.
Anomaly? No. The same can be said of almost the whole of major-label rock these days, a musical universe in crisis like no other, full of old bands spinning their wheels, praying for one more summer out under big-tour sheds, and their young reinforcements, not much more than a field of dullards who are the artistic equivalent of grocery store generic brands.
2011 may well be remembered as the most numbing year for mainstream rock music in history. (For the purposes of this article, that?s more or less rock released on American major labels, regardless of origin, and played on mainstream rock radio stations.) The genre didn?t produce a single great album, and the best of the middling walked blindly in footprints laid out years, even decades, earlier. Plenty of juggernauts ? U2 and Bruce Springsteen, among others ? took the year off, but the genre?s failings are creative, not commercial. At this point rock is becoming a graveyard of aesthetic innovation and creativity, a lie perpetrated by major labels, radio conglomerates and touring concerns, all of whom need ? or feel they need ? the continued sustenance of this style of music. The fringes remain interesting, and regenerate constantly, but the center has been left to rot.
Declaring a genre dead is the worst, least imaginative sort of proclamation, so let?s call it zombified: it moves, it takes up space, it looks powerful from afar ? with oodles of bands working hard, and some even making money ? and garish up close. It lacks nutrients. How else to explain the critical consensus around a band like Foster the People, whose album, ?Torches? (StarTime/Columbia), was one of the most lauded rock albums of the year by an emerging band, even though it did little to add to the soul-infused lite-rock of the 1980s. And what of the Black Keys, who have committed themselves to undistinguished garage-soul and have cruelly outlasted their onetime peers the White Stripes? Their latest, ?El Camino? (Nonesuch), is one long airless, swingless jam, a flat boogie primer for foreigners and marketers. Or take a less acclaimed but still popular band: the colossally dopey Hot Chelle Rae, which on ?Whatever? (RCA) recalls the early breakthroughs of pop-punk bands like Sum 41 and Blink-182, though with sprinkles of power-pop and hip-hop.
These bands at least are doing their best to resist the tides around them, borrowing from different influences than their far more numerous neighbors. Those bands ? Nickelback on ?Here And Now? (Roadrunner), Chevelle on ?Hats Off to the Bull? (Epic), Disturbed on the B-sides collection ?The Lost Children? (Reprise) ? all released big albums this year that work the post-grunge rock spectrum, to varying degrees of success but with equal amounts of innovation, which is to say little. The burly guitars are the same, as are the melancholy choruses, the assertive but not affirming drumming and the sense that this has all been done before, and better (in some cases by Nickelback itself, several years ago). Daughtry almost fell into this same trap, as it has in the past, but avoided it by taking its morbid power rock and moving toward Bon Jovi hopefulness on its new album, the largely enjoyable ?Break the Spell? (19/RCA).
Even for those whose version of arena rock didn?t lean so heavily on groaning, this was a terrible year full of creative flops, and often commercial flops, by long-reliable acts that failed to arouse even their typical level of interest: Evanescence?s ?Evanescence? (Wind-Up), Blink-182?s ?Neighborhoods? (DGC/Interscope), Coldplay?s ?Mylo Xyloto? (Capitol). That?s to say nothing of the airless comeback albums by bands well past their sell-by date: the Red Hot Chili Peppers? ?I?m With You? (Warner Brothers), Limp Bizkit?s ?Gold Cobra? (Interscope), R.E.M.?s ?Collapse Into Now? (Warner Brothers), Sum 41?s ?Screaming Bloody Murder? (Island). There was also the outrageously fraught ?Lulu? (Warner Brothers), by Lou Reed and Metallica, which defied most categorization yet somehow still falls neatly into this one.
Scale in and of itself need not be a deterrent to creativity; look at hip-hop, where plenty of sonic innovations take place on the biggest stages, proffered by the biggest stars. Even major-label country, no firestorm of originality, has been riskier in the last decade than major-label rock, which is hiding out in a few comfortable modes, hoping no one will ask much more of it.
But it wasn?t so long ago that major-label rock had bursts of vitality; at least two infusions of energy in the last two decades kept it slightly unpredictable. There was Nirvana?s breakthrough in 1991, which brought grunge to the mainstream and also unapologetically splattered the advances of 1980s alternative rock ? college rock back then ? all over a huge canvas. And a decade ago came the arrival of bands like the Strokes, the White Stripes and several others whose creative vision revolved around a definite article, who ascended quickly from the indie-rock underground to something grander without sacrificing the fundamental quirks that helped them connect in the first place.
The veteran band with the best 2011 was Foo Fighters, which continued its quest to average-out all the great rock albums from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s on ?Wasting Light? (Roswell/RCA). The band won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Rock Video, besting four younger but probably not better bands (the Black Keys, Mumford & Sons, Foster the People and Cage the Elephant); in his acceptance speech, the frontman, Dave Grohl, once of Nirvana, took a stand that almost certainly fell on deaf ears: ?I just want to say, never lose faith in real rock ?n? roll music, you know what I mean? Never lose faith in that.?
About an hour after Mr. Grohl?s speech, the lone rock band of the night performed: Young the Giant, which made a tepid showing as if to rebuke Mr. Grohl for his empty hope. Which was a shame, because that band?s self-titled debut (on Roadrunner) is one of the year?s most careful major-label releases, a modest reframing of the breakthrough indie rock of the 1990s that, while pushing no boundaries, still felt promising, a foundation for something riskier. The same could be said of Needtobreathe, which has done a good job of being the next Kings of Leon, except with a more potent motor; its album ?The Reckoning? (Atlantic) felt dangerous in places, as apt to seek out idiosyncratic harmonies as sticky melodies.
These bands are a couple of rare bright spots working in the major-label system. Add to that pile Paramore, which didn?t release an album this year. It stands out not only for its ability to match manic energy and powerhouse melodies, but also that it?s fronted by a woman, Hayley Williams, one of the most convincing singers in mainstream rock. It doesn?t help that some bands are beginning to bypass major labels altogether. The Gaslight Anthem, for example, has the potential to make huge, sweeping, pastoral post-Springsteen anthems, but thus far it has committed to doing so on an independent label.
Can you blame it? Too often major labels continue to commit resources to bands whose albums linger on the Rock Albums chart for months, free of ambition. 30 Seconds to Mars recently set a Guinness World Record for most shows performed in a single album cycle (over 300), which, viewed cynically, means it was easier for them to play old songs than write new ones. The album in question, ?This Is War? (Virgin), was released in 2009 and only certified gold a few weeks ago. It?s a post-industrial, post-prog yelp-fest, a faint tracing of an early Nine Inch Nails album, and were it not for the fact that its lead singer is Jared Leto, it might have fizzled some time ago.
But here?s to another 300 shows by 30 Seconds to Mars, if only as a reminder of the band?s fundamental flimsiness, and of the flimsy system that props it up. It?s a living funeral, and it?s got to come tumbling down sometime.
