Being boring

The future is bleak. Or at least not as bright as it used to be. The Space Age is over and nothing but kitsch remains of those atomic-powered dreams of tomorrow. Even the idea of dystopia no longer carries the imaginative charge it did in the 1980s or ‘90s. (Utopia had gone out of fashion long before Charles Manson, Vietnam and Altamont wilted that Eden.) Once it served as the impetus for literature, the arts, cinema and music; it now only yields banality. J.G. Ballard’s quip that the future will be boring is especially prescient. “Everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again,” he says. He’s right — and even the most liberal usage of post-modern theory won’t hide the fact that much of what passes itself off as “exciting” or “edgy” won’t even inspire an erection from spec-fic blog geeks these days. (Hey, most of the speculative fictions some of them indulge in mostly concern having a girlfriend.)

Even worse, pop music is worse than ever. Better if it were indeed dead.

“Endings of a New Kind” is the debut album from current scenester faves Taken By Cars. From the electronic pulsing and synths of Intro (a musical fragment that only serves as the album’s preamble) it plunges into the dance rock of leadoff single, Uh Oh, which falls neatly into the dance-punk template that unfortunately came into vogue a few years back. (That portmanteau genre too often picks up and fuses the less admirable aspects both of “disco” and “punk,” the formulaic adherence to cliché and general senselessness of the former and the aimlessness and lack of musicianship of the latter.) Current single December 2 Chapter VII attempts to infuse some pathos into the album as do tracks like The Afterhours or Stereolove. Not surprisingly, they are the only songs on the album where one can hear the lyrics clearly. Although most of it is serviceable (like Donna Summer’s I Feel Love), it’s often when the language is awkward that the words convey something genuine (“The lights transmit a certain kind/of wanting to absent my mind/From all that I see...”). But unlike the Giorgio Moroder-produced single, it lacks any imagination in approach or innovation. Singer Sarah Marco sings well enough and some of the production is clever… it would’ve certainly been affecting if it didn’t sound so phony.    

As for the faster tracks, the ones that get the kids all riled up and stupid, that’ll serve as the soundtracks to being free, reckless and stupid, that whenever they hear they’ll remember last weekend (“the good old days…”) and laugh at how stupid they were… ah, well, never mind, never mind.

About their pioneering single, Blue Monday, and the band’s readiness to be influenced by the club or dance music in New York’s gay scene, New Order’s Bernard Sumner said he’d rather have exciting sounds made by machines and synthesizers than boring music made by people with guitars. However, Taken By Cars’ Endings of a New Kind sounds as if it’s been made by people with guitars and synthesizers who are as boring as machines. Yes, we’ve heard it all before and nothing’s new — but that’s not an excuse to be boring, is it?