The D4 remind me of two Falstaff-like white trash guys who live down the block. Daily, like live-action Gummo, they stand in front of their house and throw rocks at the gas station across the street. When they get a hit they chuckle at each other, get loud and rowdy. Despite their pejorative comments about other races and the fact that they're as white as the cream inside a fresh Twinkie, they refer to one another as "nigga," ad infinitum. So I ask you, is this awkward brotherly love or a pantomime of toughness?
I sort of admire these hapless dorks for managing to exist at the top of their trailer-park game within super-hip/ultra-prissy Williamsburg, that erstwhile no-wave village in the heart of Brooklyn. Considering the cultural context, when you watch the obliviousness unfold on a daily basis, it becomes almost touching: Beavis and Butthead laughing it up as everyone walking past in turn laughs at them.
Though to be fair, I guess the kid with the faux-hawk has someone else in stitches, as does the girl with the lines shaved into the side of her head, Yeah Yeah Yeahs t-shirt torn just so around the collar. Because I'm a fucking sap, I feel bad for these guys (all of them). And when I feel bad I pretend their shtick is a weird anthropology experiment, that one day they'll pull off their Coors t-shirts and baggy jeans and yell surprise, joke's on you, over-analytical prick! While listening to The D4-- four lads from Auckland, New Zealand who play lifeless garage rock about getting drunk, partying, heartbreaking chicks, and living it up all rocker-like-- I had a similar embarrassed, repulsed, nervous reaction. And, you know, I wasn't about to make fun; instead, I'd have just liked to tell them to open their eyes and stop navel-gazing, to see what exists around them, to perhaps move on.
But then, the lack of immediacy on 6twenty is striking, like time gave out in a really bad way the day before meaning was invented: you wake up dizzy and pasty in a garage somewhere and realize all you know how to do is get drunk and point your guitar at your friends like a gun. Bang, bang. Ha, ha. The guitar isn't a real gun, though, so you can't touch them. When you try-- kaplow!-- stolen notes mug for the camera in slow-motion. You chump, your own guitar licks are laughing at you! Soon enough your solo's acting in its own backyard revue about time lost called Party Really F**kin' Hard, YEAH: The Musical. The existential finale:
"Maybe time's not gone, pop. Maybe in the garage world, the minutes are stacked differently, the seconds otherwise weighted. Like it takes an hour to shit, one second to die, a year to grow sideburns. Dig?"
The music swells, then goes limp. Poor kid hasn't even reached puberty, how's he expected to carry on the traditions of his more talented forefather?
Looking like Michael J. Fox clones decked out in garage rock gear, The D4 present aural amnesia with the lyrical complexity of an even less non-ironic Andrew WK:
Rock was always kind of stupid-- that's part of the fun-- but when did it become entirely, unrelentingly dumbassed? And I'm not talking about intellectual capacities. Stupidity isn't measured by IQ tests or reading lists: it's what you do. I mean stupidity as no-soul alienation from the self, obliviousness to your own badness. Oh, where have all the New York Dolls gone...
That's the easy dismissal of an easily forgotten band, but I want to go further. We already have The Datsuns and they're equally lame. What's with garage? These groups are so obviously coping sounds, styles, and band philosophies from contemporaries, distant historical facsimiles, and the Estrus records back catalog that it's self-reflexive parody from the second the first pick slide occurs.
They love the Buzzcocks. You can't fault that. Also, they're from New Zealand. Solid enough country. The one vocalist/guitarist, Johnny Christmas, seems to be balding somewhat gracefully. Or his hair's just really stringy and he has a high forehead. The bass player reminds me of Alex James from Blur, but possibly sober. They played David Letterman, which means maybe my dad knows about them. They formed in 1998, a bit before the garage rock revival. Not bad.
They cover Guitar Wolf's "Invader Ace". Guitar Wolf covers? The best song of the stinkin' lot is the cover of "Pirate Love" by Johnny Thunders, but only because Thunders knew how to write a song. "Party" is the Bay City Rollers minus the guy with the large package. Or maybe it's "Working for the Weekend" with less impressive drumming.
The D4 are like the nerdy aliens in a bad Hollywood film who land somewhere out west and decide to mimic a band of soulful earthlings. But the problem is the aliens lack nuance, forward thinking, and any sense of aesthetic understanding. When they perform an awkward take on the earthlings' strange music, the town laughs and laughs and laughs at the ineptitude... and I have to turn off the TV because I feel bad for them.
A private note to Flying Nun: I know shit's changed and nationalism's getting more important in the light of the American machine and I try to fight the good fight against whimpering and wallowing, but I do remember a time-- not so long ago-- when your label was completely and irrevocably synonymous with quality. And it was through labels like you that I first learned of and greedily consumed the haunting songs of Cakekitchen, Peter Jefferies, and The Terminals, as well as the smart pop of Chris Knox, and the noise of The Dead C. Was a goddamn sheep-infested Eden if I ever heard one! What happened to the knowledge of good and evil?
