Audio By Carbonatix
A friend of mine (well, sort of a friend: We stopped hanging out when he started ditching me for the obviously-not-as-cool kids) used to try to convince me that Braid was the best example of the worst music white kids can make. He believed the Urbana, Illinois, foursome did nothing but sloppily fuse a litany of underground sounds, Frankenstein-style, into a messy and shamelessly derivative lump.
Another friend (a better friend: We started hanging out when we got ditched by the obviously-not-as-cool-as-the-obviously-not-as-cool kids) thought they were the bee’s knees and played them to death on his shitty car stereo, pulling mid-range out of nowhere and thrumming his steering wheel until left turns became an act of faith. He appreciated their use of quiet-loud dynamics, stop-and-start rhythmic give-and-take and what he called their “good taste” in the past. Now all he listens to is Arvo Pärt and Hall & Oates, which, if you ask me, makes a lot of sense if you’ve heard Hey Mercedes, the band three-quarters of Braid went on to form after it broke up Braid last year.
Why? ‘Cause making nothing look complicated is just about exactly what Hey Mercedes does, extending what Kid A hated about Braid and inverting what Kid B loved about them: underground pop as mid-20s breakdown, Amerindie promise as yellow-brick-road ruse, DIY synergy as post-graduate fragmentation.
I, of course, find myself about halfway between that gutter and those stars. Meaning, I heard the four-song self-titled EP the band released six months ago as an oppressively average slice of post-punk/post-indie/post-emo pop-rock, sprightly and yowling like Braid but absolutely lacking the heart and soul that made Frame and Canvas, that band’s sole solid work, the leader in an ever-increasing pack of guitar albums featuring cleanly designed (but astoundingly uncreative) sleeves and cleanly produced (but astoundingly uncreative) music. That makes me a little sad, if only because as certain as I was that Kid B would be ultimately disappointed by his one-time heroes, I wanted them to transcend their college-town ennui and bad haircuts and obvious influences as much as he thought they did: It’s no fun being a cynic (Kid A can tell you that, as he just broke up with a guy he was sure could kiss around the tongue in his cheek), and young white guys sturdy enough to hang our hopes on are getting fewer and farther between. Especially when we keep looking under the same rocks.
