It’s one of life’s deliciously inconsequential ironies that post-modernism, like irony itself, is so difficult to define. Ask any number of professional/semi-professional/amateur beard-strokers what it really is and you’ll get any number of woolly answers, probably hinging round the words ‘irony’ and ‘self-conscious’. If I might venture my personal take on it (which I might, although it could and probably will be conceived as wrong), I’d say it’s something subversive, subjective and, very importantly, supercool (bordering on pretentious). I came to this conclusion after a weekend at the wonderful Green Man Festival this year, where I realised that this slippery academic movement has well and truly infused popular music. The bands at this great event was pretty much unknown to me beforehand, which gave me an advantage in being able to judge it without preconceived, CD-based opinions. What struck me most about pretty much the whole array was that each performance had elements of what I’ve described as a postmodern aesthetic: Explosions in the Sky showed everyone the infuriatingly tantalising power of anti-climax; Fleet Foxes provided a beautifully self-aware performance of Neo-Country’n’Western twang; James Blake showcased the amazing musical results of shutting himself in his bedroom for a few years with a synth; The Low Anthem took our breath away with the incredibly ‘organic’ things they do with high-quality mics. But I felt that something was missing from these gigs, something that had been there a few years ago when I used to rock out to grunge/ska/punk in dirty rock clubs, where the music wasn’t as sophisticated and the words were more audible, if only because they were shouted in your face really loud. It was only when the last band appeared on stage that I realised exactly what we’d lost. Iron and Wine gave a performance that ripped to pieces all the post-mod stuff that preceded it, simply because they exuded an ecstatic hedonism that true musical communication brings. Gone was the solipsism, the irony, the arrogance of music made to show off how cool the creator is: here was a large band revelling in each others’ musicality and the joy of making music with and for one another and their audience. It was a truly brilliant gig that made the whole place reel with a love of music, and the Green Manners certainly appreciated it: shouts for more went on for at least 10 minutes, and the festival organisers had to break their curfew and allow Sam Beam to pacify the crowd with one last chillingly beautiful acoustic number. It all went to show that though a post-modern vibe has well and truly penetrated popular music, and though the music resulting from this can be really excellent, for me it misses the point a bit: the true meaning of music is communication, universality and music, not subversion, solipsism and cleverness.
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November 2012
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