Remember when everyone loved the Arcade Fire? Remember when everyone lost their shit for The Strokes? That was awesome. But now? Not so much: The politics of indie backlash.
by Miles Baker
“I see all of it,” says Owen Pallett, of the comments posted online about his acclaimed performances as Final Fantasy. “I see some douchebag in Medicine Hat talking about how I’m an asshole.” But he tries not to think about it – he’d rather concentrate on violin technique and microphone placement. It’s a healthy attitude when the Internet has a rotten opinion of everyone from Owen Pallett to Mother Teresa.
“Message boards are very vocal,” explains Frank Yang of Chromewaves.net, a Toronto blog about music and pop culture. “It’s cathartic or something, but people love to bitch on the Internet.” Recent targets have been the Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene, who have received an enormous fan backlash after their hugely successful records. Obviously, in both cases the ever-dreaded overexposure played a key role. And everyone will tell you that isn’t anyone’s fault – but still people will hop on a message board and start talking smack. They’ll declare, “they were never very big on them in the first place” or “omg. they totally sold out for realz. i can’t believe they’re playing lee’s.”
“If you’re grabbing for that brass ring, people will be able to tell,” says Yang. He thinks that, if a band has made an obvious ploy at money or fame, many fans will post about it negatively. It is perfectly reasonable to expect a backlash when a band sells out – but making a living isn’t selling out. And fuck, who doesn’t want to be famous? I know I do.
“Steve Kado [of Blocks Recording Club and the Barcelona Pavilion] was trying to convince me that Arcade Fire, from the moment they picked up their instruments, had their eyes set on stardom,” explains Pallett. “I vehemently disagreed with him because if Barcelona Pavilion became extremely popular somebody could say the exact same thing about Steve, and Steve would really have no way of defending himself.” Is it the fault of the Arcade Fire that people actually bought their record?
When a band begins to gain mainstream appeal, they have to leave behind much of their novel indie charm. When a band graduates to a stadium show, the audience may grow, but a lot of the intimacy is lost. Fans who were previously passionate about their performance feel they’ve been cheated, and can get vocal (or e-vocal) about their displeasure. “I think that’s a legitimate reaction,” explains Carl Wilson of Zoilus.com and the Globe and Mail, “even though it’s not realistic to expect an artist to keep playing smaller venues because you can’t make a living playing smaller venues very easily.” It’s a catch-22 for a lot of artists – make money or keep long-standing fans happy.
“I like big venues. I think that Final Fantasy sounds good in big clubs. But I do make an effort to try and keep ticket prices down,” says Pallett. “Canadians will really turn on you if you try to charge more than 10 bucks.” Pallett’s point is well taken, but, were he ever to hold a show at Toronto mega-venue The Docks, a vocal portion of his audience would look down on him for it.
“There’s always an obscurer-than-thou ethic that operates in the indie world,” says Wilson. Yang says the same thing happens within the blogging community: “The attention span of a blogger is miniscule. They are constantly looking for the next big thing.”
Even Pallett agrees, “I felt really awkward because everybody knows that Xiu Xiu is my favourite band so it would be so boring if I said Xiu Xiu was my favourite album of this year, but it is actually true. I think it is the best album of this year. So I had to bite the bullet and when the blogs started asking me I said ‘Yes, Xiu Xiu did make the best album this year regardless of what you think about that Joanna Newsom record or what have you.’” See, even Pallett wants to be cool. I know I do. I want to be liked – I want people to say “Miles is a cool guy. He likes cool things and listens to cool music.”
“Music is bound up in what is cool and what is not cool,” says Wilson. “In music there is a lot of territory staking and trying to out-cool the next guy.” Everyone hates the word “hipster,” and with good cause. But I know a lot of hipsters. Most of them are decent folk who like their music obscure and their Dees Sneaked. There is nothing wrong with that – just admit that you like to hate on bands. “In some ways, that stuff is fun,” says Wilson of backlash. “It’s all kind of a game and if people don’t take it too seriously then it’s not too bad.”
