City Center.  Ok this is the post where I talk about what happens when the indie taste makers get a little ahead of themselves and can't tell the difference between artsy fartsy and mostly just fartsy.  City Center (aka Brooklyn's Fred Thomas and Ryan Howard) has garnered a fair amount of blog hype, scored an "Essential Purchase" title on the influential site Boomkat, toured with various hipsteratti at all the proper, off site, off beat joints, and will no doubt see themselves thrust into a larger spotlight with their first full length which comes out next week on Type records, and has been drawing many comparisons to Panda Bear's Person Pitch, High Places, and some of Deerhunter's more ambient cuts.  The comparisons are made largely on the basis of listless, post world, reverb drenched vocals, flittering, shucking, clickety clack found sound percussion, and a droney harmonic stasis.  I don't fault City Center for getting gobbled up and blown out too early by the blog mall/maul (after all they were just innocently posting this shambling City Center stuff as a side project on a blog for free), but I do think that, like a lot of bands right now, the interest surrounding them is a little premature.  Let the band grow up and fill out naturally (this I say, of course, as I inadvertently advertise them).  One the one hand, perhaps the aesthetic of indie is shifting to bands who really don't have it together, who are earnestly not hitting the mark, who are fairly unmarketable.  In this way, it mirrors the anti-professionalism posturing of 90's grunge, 60's folk, or, in a way, the historical avant-garde of the 1910's, although their critique was far more piquantly pointed.  But on the other hand, while some of City Center's work is really promising, particularly the frolicking "Summer School", the airy lethargy of "Bleed Blood", or the swirling "Gladest", I take issue with the flabbiness of the mixing in the record, the over wrought percussion which, even on "Summer School" weighs the whole vibe down as if it was shackled to the contents of a kitchen drawer. Also listen to the completely unnecessary beat that forces its way (way too far behind beat) like a boring anecdote into the first half of "Open/House".  What's more, the second half of that song has no business being there in the first place, and has a terribly pedestrian melody that calls to mind too many bad 90's indie bands that had their one hit song played during a 'thoughtful' moment on the 'Real World'.  

Usually, I'm game for found sound, but in too many cases on this record it's use is at best arbitrary, at worst intrusive and a little bit patronizing (as if to say "you know this gives us avant garde credibility, right?  and you know what that means, right??").  In all honesty, I don't think these guys meant for this record to get to the level where people are critiquing it this way.  If I'd heard this in a club for the first time, I'd be intrigued and probably come away with the sense that this was a young, messy band, with a lot to figure out.  But signing a band like this and releasing a record with this many problems isn't just lazy, or potentially destructive to the band, it's symptomatic of a larger issue in music making praxis in this country.  As it gets easier and easier to create and record music, and easier to have it heard and spread around, and with consumption levels higher than ever but the ability to make money harder and harder, a new pandemic of disaffection is slinking its way into everything we do.  Who cares that City Center's music is underdeveloped, what does developed even mean?  What's the point if there's ten other bands who, like lemmings, are copying this modishness and passing it off as freewheeling sophistication?  Why seek a melodic character that is memorable, isn't that just like putting nail polish on the bourgeoisie?  On the one hand, the music community is thriving, on the other hand, it's as egg headed and trumped up as it has ever been.  These questions are smoke screens from a generation, now in its 20's and 30's and with a chance to make its mark, that has found its calling by not calling.

Summer School
Open/House
Gladest
Bleed Blood
Killer Whale