In the old century, the classic-rock canon appealed to a certain kind of music nerd obsessed with order and clarity. In the canon, there was no room for gray areas. The Beatles, Dylan, and the Clash were important because they'd always been important. It was practically a science, with laws that were established on the basis of ancient albums that were similarly well-ordered, with their linear tracklists and agreed-upon contexts. You could argue that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band wasn't actually that great, but this would instantly put you in the flat-earth lunatic fringe. Certain albums were just factually great, which meant your experience with them, even as a newcomer, tended to be fairly rigid and pre-ordained.
The internet, as it tends to do, pretty much put an end to this old way of looking at things. The ability to access any song from any era, instantly, and place it alongside other songs from other eras-- therefore rendering the "official" rock narrative irrelevant-- did a big gravity check on the canon, sending its fussy compendium of carefully curated history spilling in all sorts of erratic directions. Take the Kids Off Broadway, the new EP by recent Jagjaguwar signees Foxygen, is latest product of this DIY context for rock history, and the spillage is as disorienting as ever.
Broadway is fun and boisterous and consciously difficult to discern, like the sugary fuzz stuck between oldies stations. Band members Jonathan Rado and Sam France have been honing this sound for seven years, starting off as L.A. high school kids obsessed with the Brian Jonestown Massacre. (They're also big admirers of singer-songwriter-producer Richard Swift, who gets a shout-out in Broadway's closer, "Middle School Dance".) The guys in Foxygen made 10 records together before unofficially splitting off to attend college, but they remained on the same musical page as they entered their 20s. Finally, they returned to the Foxygen fold to make a series of independently released EPs, including Broadway, which originally came out last year.
France and Rado beg, borrow, and steal from 20th-century legends in uniquely 21st-century ways, deconstructing their favorite Stones, Bowie, and Lou Reed records and brazenly re-assembling those elements into free-wheeling songs that melt old sounds into weird, wild shapes. Why reference Their Satanic Majesties Request when you can touch on every 1960s Stones album, plus every other classic record you've just downloaded, in the space of a single song? On Broadway, Foxygen's music sounds like a stack of eight-tracks that's been left out in the sun too long.
While Broadway touches on territory similar to that previously mined by Ariel Pink and MGMT, Foxygen approach psych-pop revivalism with the cram-it-all enthusiasm of teenagers discovering rock-music staples for the first time. Coupled with a muscular virtuosity that belies Foxygen's bedroom pop roots, Broadway transforms familiar ingredients into unpredictable, even unwieldy music. Sometimes France and Rado lift melodies wholesale, like the interpolation of "Ruby Tuesday" into "Abandon My Toys", or the snippet of Los Bravos' 60s pop chestnut "Black Is Black" into the title track. Other times they make up their own timeless melodies in order to twist and subvert them, like on "Make It Known", the closest thing to a straightforward song on Broadway, which starts off as a lounge-singer synth-rock ballad that's buffeted by a free-form horn section and English music hall-style theatricality. The 10-minute "Teenage Alien Blues" is the purest distillation of the Foxygen aesthetic, marrying the drone-y dread of the Doors with the lysergic freakouts of the Flaming Lips before heading recklessly though detours into psychedelic Motown soul and *Bitches Brew-*inspired voodoo spaciness.
Foxygen haven't so much produced memorable songs as much as cool, disembodied sonic layers that might one day coalesce into memorable songs in your head if you listen to it enough. Whether this approach is more refined on the upcoming full-length due early next year remains to be seen. But Broadway suggests that Foxygen have found a patch of untamed wilderness in the midst of otherwise well-trod territory. Offering neither clarity nor order, but very much the opposite, Foxygen see exciting possibilities in these disjointed times.
