Writing Bombs, Not Songs

I went to a concert last night. It was a smallish affair in a crowded local bar, so while the opening band was droning on, I had a lot of time to think. After all, it was either that or realize how sweaty I was getting or how uncomfortable I felt brushing up against other people's elbows.

The opening band was... well, I can't speak from a lot of experience. I haven't been to a lot of local music shows, so I don't know how common this kind of band is. But basically, there were three members. The drummer, a white guy wearing a stupid hipster vest, had on a straw hat with brown feathers taped to the back in some sort of ironic headdress fashion. He also had bracelets with feathers on them, and I'm pretty sure the last set of drumsticks had feathers on them, too.

The she-bassist was wearing shoulderpads with blue feathers on them, along with some strange combination of a bikini and a prom dress. She also had a perm that looked like she was going to prom in the 80's.

And the lead guitarist/singer? An attractive lady with a small 'fro, wearing a simple purple dress. No feathers in sight. How... ironically unlike the rest of her band?

She also used a 12-stringed purple stratocaster. It was a beautiful, matte purple. Unfortunately, this guitarist was not a guitarist. She had the guitar tuned to a certain chord (I couldn't tell you which one), and just strummed and plucked as necessary. Any time she played a melodic "solo," she did all of it on one string.

This, of course, meant that all of her songs were done with one chord. The same chord. Over and over. Even the melodic solos were similar. Bo. Ring.

But, music critique aside, here's what I wanted to talk about: Her lyrics. Even without being in the scene, I know that there is a trend in indie music to make songs that sound really, really deep but are utterly meaningless. As I commented to my husband, if you have to introduce every song with "This is a song about..." then you probably aren't doing a very good job with your lyric-writing. Especially when all of the songs are about death and sex, arguably the two easiest things to write about.

For example, this group liked to throw the words "body" and "mind" into every song, as though making an edgy statement by differentiating between body and mind. Edgy in the 16th century, maybe.

There just seems to be far too many artists now that make vague references to deep philosophical arguments, but leave most of the mental work to the listener. Whether this is because hipster musicians don't know what they're talking about, or because they think everyone should know this stuff because only idiots don't, I don't know. Either way is equally pretentious and annoying. Sidenote: This is also why I don't like postmodern literature, now that I think of it.

I mean, music is art, and artists are free to do whatever they want for whatever reason they can justify it with. Far be it from me to say whether something is "good" music or not. I can't make a value judgment like that for anyone but me. Personally, though, I'll take music with something to actually say over music that tries to sound like it has something to say.