Wasted on hype (or: Am I having a crisis or what?)

As occasionally happens, I’ve been struggling lately with the influx of new releases to my desk/life, each weighed down by previous conversations with others about how good it is or how much people have been talking or writing about the band or who’s in the band and what they’ve done prior to my learning about them. It’s by no means an uncommon affliction for anyone interested in music; the ‘hype machine’ is often discussed as killer of all that is innocent in music appreciation. Nor does is take anything away from that greater interest in what can be achieved in the name of music or (for some only, perhaps) how that relates to the world. But it does have an affect on how music is accepted or processed, and it’s currently doing my head in.

For one, the talk of West Coast scenes and sounds and the seemingly never-ending line of bands and releases tagged with some kind of ‘60s pop or psych revival or featuring members of another band you only just heard of last month from some obscurely connected group of bands who moved to the Bay Area from Omaha and wear pastel smoks and Ray-Bans. Or was that the Williamsburg band who are, perhaps ironically (but who can tell?), incorporating ‘90s LA beach-pop sounds into their lo-fi garage songs? What were they called, again? Maiden Owl Bear Nothing?

I’m as interested in ‘happenings’ and influences on happenings as the next pop-cultural hack, but it’s easy to become cynical when it feels like ‘someone’ is constantly trying to throw an idea wrapped in marketing at you and claim it as the piece of your artistic appreciation or emotional experience that has been missing from your life. Particularly when that idea is just an idea; a bit of music recorded in one take by a few people who met each other a few months ago, intended as something instant and visceral. Thrown-together or improvised ideas can change the course of history, but it seems unlikely they can change an individual’s life when that individual lives hundreds of thousands of kilometres away and is streaming them via a blog in their bedroom. (This column/blog is also just an idea, and a thrown-together one at that.) A band has to change someone’s life to cut through the barrage of noise, but it feels like it’s getting harder and harder for that to happen the more noise there is and the more fragmented our access to music becomes.

Perhaps it’s just that, more than ever, it’s possible for a person or label or blogger to ‘discover’ a band they enjoy and then gain access to all the bands and ‘side projects’ attached to that band, creating instantaneous recognition of a ‘scene’ right around the world. It’s rare for bands to be publicised or even talked about right now as any kind of anomaly or example of a long, hard slog from the bottom made good. Besides in media that has no interest in music anyway, gone are the all-in ‘discoveries’ of the ‘best new band on the planet’ from Aberdeen. There’s a perceived equal playing field, thanks in large part to the continuing deconstruction of the role of major labels and also an increased awareness of how the ‘music industry’ has previously operated. That can have great benefits, but in place of the big-money push of an act (which does still happen, granted), now there’s a clusterfuck of smaller operators all still hoping to get their band some recognition and audiences and sales. People may celebrate the end of the major-label reign, but everyone still wants a piece of that pie.

I guess it’s just had me considering my ‘personal’ connections to the music I listen to and how important it is that exists. Recent news of the imminent end of Melbourne doom-thrash duo Wasted Truth (pictured) and Queensland/Sydney post-screamo pub rockers The Scare has reminded me of both bands’ gigs great and small I’ve been to and been a part of; the feeling of being involved in something and experiencing it with likeminded people. It’s natural to want to share that experience, and I’ve had conversations about how both bands “should have been better known”, but it’s also important to step back and remember that the experience of an idea, not the dissemination of it, is the thing.