Bandcamp: All Cats Are Grey

I've found more interesting, un-hyped, flat-out enjoyable music through Bandcamp these past several years than through any other music-related outlet. As a place to discover new music, it knocks all the algorithmic-curators and critical places out of the park. The fact that it also generates money for musicians, and (as far as I can tell) is able and willing to cover stuff irrespective of what other noise and PR is out there, makes it the most vital music thing on the internet, if not the planet.

That's why it's worth talking about everything I hate about it.

There's only one thing, really. The music writing on the site is boring as hell. There's no humor, no irreverence, no critical perspective (all music is good and all music contains the exact same amount of goodness. The music exists in a hell of arbitrary equality. It feels like the editors could substitute everything on their front page for something different, and they would write about the music the same way.

At its worst, Bandcamp combines the worst aspects of PR and criticism in a self-contained ouroboros. The only difference from the other ouroboros is that their ouroboros is different from the others. AT its worst, the writing on Bandcamp feels more like someone trying to sell you something than someone exploring the music. The writing isn't art; it's a real-estate broker showing you a house.

Here's one of this week's "essential releases" (note the advertising jargon--the promise of necessity that can't possibly be met). I chose this one because it's the one I liked the best.



There's a couple of paragraphs about the album. Weirdly, the names Bjork and Angelo Badalamenti don't get mentioned once (the first song is a dead ringer for both). Mostly, what we get is a writing that is indistinguishable from hype: 

• Constantly in Love feels like a step forward for Matthildur into a more fully realized sense of herself as a solo artist—a voice, in other words, that cannot be ignored. 
• And Gothic drama is something Sólveig Matthildur’s latest, Constantly in Love, is rich with.
• Her pop songwriting skills are on full display—this would have been a huge hit for 4AD or Projekt in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s.
• The tension necessary for that high drama, these tales of the plangent and often ugly need at the core of desire, is well-established, through curling vocal layers (“Tómas”), pulsing beats (“My Father Taught Me How To Cry”), and chord changes that feel like the bottom of one’s heart dropping out when attempting to vocalize a crush (“My Desperation”).

The reason I call it hype is because the music doesn't measure up to any of this. First off, I think the biggest hit for 4AD around that time was either the Pixies, or Breeders, or I don't know, Belly? I get the comparison (it's goth, or Goth), but "huge hit" seems like a weird claim to make. Secondly, I don't really hear anything pop, or "chord changes that feel like the bottom of one's heart dropping out". I hear a fine, but kind of boring, goth album. It combines elements of Cocteau/Bjork vocals with Coldwave tropes (snares that go snap, an excess of reverb on the vocals, icy synths) that is ultimately less than the sum of its parts. Every influence I hear here is taken from an artist who went further, emotionally and musically, than Matthildur goes here. And because it's written about here as the second (third? eleventh?) coming of goth, I, the listener, come away from a perfectly fine album--nothing special, but nothing horrible--with a feeling of disappointment. The writing makes claims that the music can't live up to. There's no place for the writer to say, most of this album sucks but track three is great. Or shows a lot of potential, we'll have to see what happens. Everything is flawless. Everything is worhty.

Unable to judge music because it is all equally good--or more accurately, each artist exists in its own bubble of itself, unrelated to any other--Bandcamp focuses on biography and genre, i.e. who made this music and what does it sound like. The result is band descriptions that feel like they were generated by a random generator bot that somebody fed music genres into.

New Zealand Female Singer-Songwriter Music On A Grand Organ.

Avant-garde Protest Music with Hindu Philosophy.

A hip-hop collective that "cross wires" Memphis rap and Cyberpunk.

This is all virtually meaningless. As I once said to a local guy who told me he sounded like John Prine, it's easy to sound like John Prine. Anyone can sound like anything. The question is can you write like John Prine (spoiler alert: he couldn't come close). I remember another local guy saying his band sounded like The Housemartins. They did, but without any of political content or soulful singing. I think the first song was about wanting to walk a girl home after school. I asked whether the singer was a pedophile, a virgin, or both.

The biggest problem is that it assumes the genre is an end in itself. Looking for Cosmic Americana Music Made in Africa? You're sure to love this new band? It's a cliche to say you like "all kinds of music." But I'd rather hear someone tell me they like all kinds of music than tell me how they're into Filipino Techno Folk, or whatever.

The point is who cares what a band fucking "sounds like," or what their influences are. I want to know if they sing from their fucking soul, if the music can stop me in my tracks, if it can make me feel less alone in the world, if it can redefine my ideas about what constitutes sound/music/existence. I want to hear something that doesn't sound like anything I've heard before. I want to hear something that sounds like the best, most ultimately realized version, of something I've heard a million times. I want lyrics that hit me so hard I swoon, that give me a way to describe my life that feels more accurate and true. I want lyrics that are silly and make me giggle. I want a guitar solo that sounds awful and wrong the first time I hear it, and the seventh time I hear it, it sounds like a comet blazing a trail though the atmosphere of Jupiter.

But moments like that are rare. They certainly don't come along every day, or five times a week, as Bandcamp would like me to believe. Hey, I'm glad to know that, as today's Bandcamp headline announces, here are Ten Bands Keeping The DIY Scene In Portugal Loud, Edgy, And Alive. I'd be surprised if more than one of them was worth a shit. Here's the first one. You tell me.

I get that Bandcamp has a business to run, mouths to feed, etc. But it is on its way to possessing a great deal of power. As a result, it has the chance to do something that is rare in the history of music criticism. Bandcamp has an opportunity to offer high-visibility music writing--that is to say music ideas/opinions/arguments--that aren't compromised by the fear of jeopardizing its revenue sources. Because it isn't dependent on advertising from labels and artists, Bandcamp could offer sustained criticism & analysis of contemporary music in an arena of total freedom. Instead, it has, so far, chosen to offer mere spectacle. It commits the worst sin of contemporary music criticism. By focusing so exclusively on what is happening "right this second," it communicates that all music is ephemeral and ultimately worthless. You can hear about an incredible album one day, and then never hear anything about it ever again. In its rush to sell you another product, to tell you about the hot new thing (but don't worry, it still sounds recognizably like other things you already like), contempo-music-crit devalues the very things it's supposed to be valuing. In its desperation to sell vast quantities (or any quantities! please! just buy something!) of music, it does away with notions of vast qualities of music.

In the Bandcamp POV, nothing is everything, and everything is nothing. It's impossible to imagine an album of the day that is disruptive, that calls the other music around it into question, that exposes it as compromised, that provokes a furious response in the writer--that forces the writer to pick a side, about anything. Disruption is bad for business. And in its critical tone, its (absence of a) stance, Bandcamp resembles nothing so much as a dislocated version of all these beige buildings surrounding us. If you want burgers, you go to Beef O'Brady's. If you want coffee you go to Starbucks. Hey, I heard we might be getting an In-N-Out Burger soon. Everything here is exactly the same. It's just a question of what shape it comes in. Viewed this way, Bandcamp is (to this point) not much  more than the artisan design--your-own pizza slice across the parking lot from the big corporate chains, attempting to sell its different approach as a substitute for freedom.