When you start to measure the amount of music you listen to in gigabytes and jumbo-size Case Logics, it's easy to forget the awesome power of the simple declarative statement. Nothing against all those 30-piece ensembles, nautically focused concept albums, intricate field-recording pastiches, and three-hour drum circles that dominate our musical neighborhood, but sometimes it's refreshing to hear a band maximally juicing a single sentiment down to two-minute concentrate. Meet South London's Art Brut: They're here to fill that vacancy.
That it's difficult for me to find a recent point of reference for Art Brut is a testament to just how self-serious indie rock has become-- although they do share a refreshingly bratty quality with proto-punks like the Buzzcocks and Television Personalities. Frontman Eddie Argos even appears to share Joey Ramone's love for first-person narratives that sound no more complex than a transcript of just-some-guy's thoughts on a completely unremarkable day. Ruminations on ex-girlfriends, new girlfriends, little brothers, modern art, his band, other bands, Italian currency, Los Angeles-- all are expressed in language too shallow for even diary-scrawling, but lifted up to anthemic status through sheer multiple exclamation-point enthusiasm.
Oh my God, heresy! But of course, it's only half-serious, a joking reminder to today's bands that VU ended up writing (gasp!) unabashedly fun songs like "Sweet Jane" and "What Goes On", too. If these sloppy, succinct three-chord bashers fail to tread any ground that isn't already well-worn, they do so in an appealing way that underscores Argos' oscillations between humility and delusions of grandeur. Art Brut might display more versatility than one-tempo Ramones, but not by much, contenting themselves with fast songs ("18,000 Lira", "Bad Weekend") or slow songs ("Rusted Guns of Milan", "Stand Down"). It's just enough to give these minutiae-obsessed songs their paradoxical fist-pumping grandeur, and not a bit more.
That this line comes amidst the album's most straight-ahead rock number-- and that about 90% of Argos' lyrics discuss these very topics-- is probably the best joke on the album, though it's not wanting for humorous company. The sly origin story "Formed a Band" and art-fetish celebration "Modern Art" (both re-recorded here from their 2004 single versions) may have laid the foundation of Art Brut's blog rep, but Bang Bang Rock & Roll's new material is equally hilarious when it aspires to be. Argos paints the perfect picture of musical awakening in "My Little Brother", the subject of which expresses his frustration through mixtapes of "bootlegs and B-sides," and makes "Emily Kane" more than just a casual remembrance of young love by being able to recollect the last time he saw her, right down to the second. It's tempting to think of Art Brut as the foreign replacement for the catchy/clever observances Weezer used to traffic, the escape fantasy of "Moving to L.A." obliterating the clichés of "Beverly Hills", with its shirtless motorcycling, hanging with Axl and Morrissey, and foolish tattoos.
Well, let me try to help. See if you can follow this: Art Brut, through their thoroughly unpretentious embrace of pretentiousness, are the most punk new band I've heard in years, punk having lost itself long ago to the pretentiousness of unpretentiousness. So even though Argos boasts of wanting to "write the song/ That makes Israel and Palestine get along," and planning to perform Art Brut's hit eight weeks in a row on "Top of the Pops", any chance you might take him seriously is deflated by the little meta-moments like the one caps-locked above. As with the best LCD Soundsystem singles, Bang Bang Rock & Roll is at times some of the best music criticism going right now, and far better than our boringly verbose bullshit 'cause you can dance to it.
The optimism of that statement is infectious and hard to argue with, though I'm perfectly aware of the large pile of empty Brit-hype firecrackers that went off with a barely a whimper Stateside. Given their reliance on dry English humour (yes, two u's) and lack of a timely U.S. distribution deal, it's unlikely Art Brut will fare well as well with North American listeners as fellow countrymen Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, and the Futureheads. But then, just a year ago, it seemed unlikely that any of those bands would find fans in the States at all, let alone enough to spark yet another small-scale British invasion-- and all told, it's not hard to imagine their dagger-sharp guitar lines and pop-fueled bash carving its own niche in those other bands' wake if given the opportunity. The only thing to do is start a letter-writing campaign, suffer the import prices, and hope Art Brut's got enough in their tank for another album or two. I can't wait to hear "Recorded a Sophomore Album!"
