Snap, Crackle, Pop!
Pop music may often get short shrift as a form that privileges mass appeal over substance, but the perfect pop songs staying power has proven undeniable.
Pops been elevated. A hundred years ago the song form as we know it was something that was considered throwaway. And now its the only idiom left, argues Andrew Prinz, who sings and plays guitar and sings in the New York City–based dream-pop band Mahogany. Jazz as a forward movement is dead and so is classical music. So you have all these other forms falling away, and you have the five-minute pop songs left.
While commercial pop in all its permutations still reigns among mainstream tastes, its quieter, more eloquent cousin, indie pop, has long been a force in underground music. Indie pop emerged in the 1980s in the United Kingdom as a style pervaded by jangling guitars, sweet melodies and charming lyrics, with Orange Juice, Aztec Camera and The Smiths paving the way. The sound quickly spread overseas, influencing bands from Beat Happening in the United States to The Go-Betweens in Australia.
The 90s gave birth to a new slew of bands with indie-pop sensibilities, several of whom will play the NYC Popfest, a four-day party beginning Thursday dedicated to the genres devotees. Mahogany is one of numerous NYC bands, including Ladybug Transistor, My Teenage Stride and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, performing alongside international pop emissaries like Swedens Love is All and Australias The Cannanes at six venues around the city.
A number of U.S. pop festivals sprang up in the mid 90s, by the beginning of this decade, interest in indie pop seemed to wane. And some of its biggest championsthe performers who brought it to the stagelost their momentum as well. Mahogany formed in Michigan in 1995, eventually relocating to New York; and after a string of successful singles and a full-length release in 2001, the band went on a sort of hiatus.
I stopped recording for at least three or four years after 9/11 and I felt like, I have to redefine everything that I believe in, Prinz explains, though Mahogany continued to play live. I think a lot of people walked away from anything optimistic because of what happened with our country over the last eight years Twee pop was too optimistic for how people were really feeling. But you get a little bit of hope and change in this country, and maybe its worth considering again.
Though he references twee popthe lightest, most sugary sweet and unwaveringly upbeat of the indie-pop offshootshis assessment typifies the overall attitude toward the genre. During that introspective period in the early part of the decade, Prinz says Mahogany worked to re-evaluate its approach.
We felt we need to strip it all down and reassess. If we were going to use the pop format, what were we going to bring to it? Prinz says. We need our music to be robust. It cant be flimsy in this day and age. But it still has to be optimistic and uplifting.
Mahogany returned in 2006 with the triumphant Connectivity!, a glittering, heavily orchestrated and densely layered record that shows the fruits of Mahoganys meticulous labors to reinvent itself.
Although Ladybug Transistor doesnt share Mahoganys shoegazer leanings, the Brooklyn-based groups high standard for recording, attention to songwriting and emphasis on elaborate arrangements puts it in the same strata of pop excellence. Gary Olson, Ladybug Transistors baritone-voiced bandleader, says he aims for a timeless sound, which comes through on the groups latest album, Cant Wait Another Day. Despite Ladybugs frequent invitations to play pop festivals, though, Olson says hes never felt the band was part of a local pop community. I dont think that Ladybug has ever been part of a real scene in New York for as long as weve been kicking around, Olson says, referring to the groups decade-long existence. But the nice thing about the pop scene is that it does seem to be a bit international.
This marks the second year for the NYC Popfest, the goal of which is to help build a community for indie-pop fans and bands in the area. And like other festivals focused on indie pop that have been sprouting up around the nation from Gainesville, Fla. to Toledo, Ohio, the NYC Popfest celebrates the global reach of indie pop, bringing together the progenitors of the sound and its most recent adherents.
Australian indie-pop pioneers The Cannanes have been perfecting the art of airy, light-hearted twee since they formed in 1984 during the first wave of indie pop. The Cannanes havent played in the United States in eight years, but they decided to embark on a short tour after being invited to several American pop festivals, which they see as a convening of groups with a similar outlook but diverging approaches.
The kind of pop festivals that weve been involved in, its been bands who are playing music not primarily to achieve commercial success, says Frances Gibson, who sings and plays keyboards and flute in The Cannanes. Its a chance to see a number of bands that have quite widely differing styles but have something in common in terms of their attitude.
Various locations, June 12-15. See [nycpopfest.org] for venues & ticket prices.