Modern Hut's Joe Steinhardt is the co-founder of New Jersey's Don Giovanni Records, home to Waxahatchee, Screaming Females, California X and others. Steinhardt has an enviable ear for developing talent, and in recent years, Don Giovanni's solidified itself as one of the most important indie labels going. Years back, Steinhardt played guitar for Jersey punkers For Science, and after their 2009 split, Steinhardt began writing and recording the songs that would become Generic Treasure, Modern Hut's Don Giovanni debut. Generic Treasure is a sparse, straightforward anti-folk record in the vein of Jeffrey Lewis (now a DG signee) or Kimya Dawson and Adam Green's Moldy Peaches. It's a personal record in almost every sense of the word, an unadorned address from performer to listener. Modern Hut finds Steinhardt laying his weary, lonesome, cynical self out there, all but daring you to take him as he is.
Produced by Screaming Females' Marissa Paternoster, the rickety Generic Treasure feels less like a proper LP (some six years in the making, as Steinhardt suggets) than a home-recorded demo. Apart from the occasional single-string accouterment and Paternoster's overpowering vocal turn on duet "Life", Modern Hut is little more than Steinhardt, a couple bumbling chords, and his overwhelming unease with both himself and the world around him. "Life's been so mid-tempo these days," Steinhardt sings right at the top of Generic Treasure, "and I don't even know what I am trying to say." Later, he asks his guitar to "shut the fuck up," wonders if he was born "without a taste for life," admits his "brain is to capacity with someone else's stupid dream." It's sobering stuff, the product of a troubled mind working things out over a few shaky strums, taking self-examination to uncomfortable, often unflattering places. "Well, I finally stopped drinking," Steinhardt lets slip, "but what I can't stop is this negative thinking." So it would seem.
Steinhardt, no fan of dressing up his feelings in metaphor, starts roughly 80% of Modern Hut's lyrics with either "I" or "my." Coupled with his close-miced vocals and the barely-there arrangements, this approach invites you right into Steinhardt's head, a place he's made as uninviting as possible. Steinhardt seems to have to drag himself through these songs, sluggishly strumming through the simple chord progressions, glumly intoning the lyrics with only a passing regard for pitch. Steinhardt's voice is laconic, faintly adenoidal, both tiring and just plain tired. He makes constant reference to his crushing self-doubt, to mistakes from the past and fuck-ups waiting to happen, without the slightest hint of levity.
Between the amateurish music (however willful) and the sulking lyrics (however honestly Steinhardt comes by those feelings), Generic Treasure doesn't always seem to care about itself very much, which leaves one wondering why Steinhardt would've thought anybody else might've. It's not meant to be an easy listen, but even at 28 minutes, it's a slog, musically drab and lyrically disheartening, a Debbie Downer sketch that refuses to end. There's never any resolution to all this whinging, nor much in the way of insight: Steinhardt just seems to consider himself beyond repair. But within a few songs, his self-laceration becomes a sort of self-obsession; he may not like himself much, yet he's still his own favorite subject. He's certainly good at letting you know about his problems, he never quite makes himself sympathetic enough to get you to care.
On the rare occasions Steinhardt pull back the camera enough to focus on something other than himself, Generic Treasure finds its voice. "History" finds Steinhardt calling out "a nation of overnight sensations where irony was currency," a biting jab at the kind of shrugged-off, feelings-averse indie rock scene Steinhardt finds himself in the middle of. The laid-bare self-examination Steinhardt offers up throughout Generic Treasure is an increasingly rare quality in modern music, and Steinhardt's right to bemoan this lack of feeling, this escape from honesty. Yet Generic Treasure-- uncompromising but ultimately wearisome-- hardly seems like the antidote. Out in the real world, Steinhardt's a shrewd guy with a lot going for him: he runs a great label, he'll soon have a Ph.D, and he's tight with Marissa Paternoster. But the Steinhardt who made Generic Treasure comes off as a guy far too stuck in his own head to get himself into yours.
