Oh, there it is: that bulbous pretension delivered with naïve sincerity. That deep, sexy voice and cynical, sadistic sense of humour; the lonely laments and elated realisations. The smack-me-then-hug-me-ness of it all. It must be a new Magnetic Fields album. Stephin Merritt and his band delivered the third of their trio of ‘concept’ albums on, perhaps fittingly considering all those descriptors, Invasion/Survival/Australia Day; an album titled Realism (Nonesuch) to counter 2008’s Distortion album of washy electric guitars.
What’s interesting about that title is that the record is also what Merritt has described as his “folk album”, utilising primarily acoustic instruments drawn from various cultural traditions (accordion, sitar, banjo, flugelhorn) and minor percussion (well, minor compared to a drum kit, such as the cajon). Apparently, Merritt was originally to name the these last two albums, intended as a pair following his conceptually “soft rock” record i, ‘True’ and ‘False’, but couldn’t decide which label fitted which album. The titles Distortion and Realism were decided on instead, and “it is what it is”, Merritt recently said in an interview with Canada’s Dose.ca website.
But what is it? If Merritt’s ‘Realism’ is relating to the philosophical theory of Direct Realism – the idea that the world is as we see it, as opposed to all that subjective perception or mind-dependent perception crap (just kidding) – we’re to understand that ‘folk music’ is the stuff of what-we-hear-is-what-is-really-happening. In essence, it is still the ‘truth’. Merritt, however, is the antithesis of almost everything a ‘folk’ musician is known to be – a self-absorbed but ultimately innocent cynic who, even on Realism, hardly ascribes to any kind of ‘traditional’ method of songwriting. Yet, in many ways, he’s built a following for being what ‘folk musicians’ are also known to be: a ‘truth-teller’; a modern-day narrator of modern-day struggles. So is his version of ‘folk music’ the ‘truth’?
Fionn Regan, on the other hand, is the archetype of ‘folk musician’. His 2006 debut album of fingerpicked acoustic songs was connected in no broken line to the kind of unionist, mid-20th century folk songs of Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie – The End Of History. On that record, his songs were so intrinsically linked to the connectivity of humanity and to the laws of the land you almost expected him to drop the word “folk” into his stage banter when addressing the audience.
Regan’s second album, Shadow Of An Empire (Heavenly/Speak N Spell) is out at the start of March and takes up where ‘folk music’ became ‘folk rock’, a plugged-in, lyrically political album of nuanced foot-stompers (and a truly, truly, pants-droppingly remarkable one, it should be said) with song titles such as Protection Racket and Genocide Matinee. He wrote it while touring, “seeing the world, the bone structure, the pulp”. Though his voice is a new one in many regards, Regan is, in 2010, a ‘traditionalist’; a modern-day narrator of, perhaps, an old idea of what it means to be ‘the people’.
Then there’s Adam Green, whose Minor Love (Rough Trade/Remote Control) album was released at the beginning of January and who initially gained notoriety as the face of early-2000s ‘anti-folk’ in The Moldy Peaches. In that group, Green turned ‘traditional’, sincere, acoustic ‘folk song’ forms on their heads with ludicrous, arrogant and irreverent lyrics – the distorted version of Merritt’s ‘truth’. Green has gone on to do much the same with his solo career, largely swapping ‘folk’ for ‘cabaret’, but in 2007 he had one of the biggest ‘folk’-related hits of recent times with The Moldy Peaches’ Anyone Else But You from the Juno soundtrack – the clip reaching five million hits on YouTube alone – a song hardly ‘anti’ in its form or, for all the band’s genre-pegging, its lyrical content. It is, in the end, a song ‘of the people’, taken in by more people than any of Merritt’s or Regan’s songs.
So what is the ‘truth’ of ‘folk music’ in 2010? And is there even one? Maybe the answer to that depends on which side your philosophical bread is buttered, or whether you’re willing to admit to liking ‘folk music’ in the first place.
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