Crumbler

I was delighted this week to see Stephen Deusner stroke out over the idea that Wilco and Feist are “too dull to even hate,” an idea so commonplace that such a hysterical reaction could only mean it were true. He was writing, of course, about this Nitsuh Abebe piece, and its argument that Wilco and Feist and maybe even Radiohead might usefully be described as “adult contemporary.” Many pixels have been spilled debating Abebe’s piece, and here are a few more. First let me say that Abebe is right — there absolutely is a type of music that sits comfortably next to the cash registers at Starbucks, and the fact that even beloved indie acts fit into this category does not in itself discredit them. But what interests me isn’t why we resist seeing our favorite bands branded “adult contemporary” — it’s why we cling to the notion that they’re indie.

The reason, I suspect, is that “indie” is how we see ourselves — adventurous in taste, eccentric in our choice of heroes, proudly detached from the dull and hated mainstream. Which is to say: young. We live for those moments that come along every year or two, when a new band of rogues emerges to reset our expectations for what music can be. We nod respectfully at the old lions while reserving most of our enthusiasm for the hungry and the foolish.

But eventually the hungry and foolish become old lions themselves, and the sharp edges of their music are sanded down into something less threatening. They become like Wilco — a band that seems, as Popcorn Noises notes, “rather content to paddle around in the lukewarm waters of roots rock and folk pop into their graying years.” And yet we resist this interpretation, because we fear that the same thing will happen to us, if it’s not happening already.

For to embrace adult contemporary music is to acknowledge that we are becoming, or have become, adults ourselves. As music obsessives we know that adults’ taste is deeply suspect. Here’s William Bowers, writing in August, in his magnificent piece on the dilemma of the aging critic: 

I also have a vested interest in not becoming yet another culture-consumer whose notional “adultness” involves no longer keeping up with new music, a gateway elision often seen to lead to that cranky fallacious confidence about the superiority of the music that just happens to align with the heights of one’s young adulthood. (“How fortuitous and lottery-like, Grampaw, that you turned 22 right when music peaked.”)

If we continue to enjoy Wilco in their sunset years, what does it say about us?  Do we listen out of laziness, because it’s something we’ve always done, the way Baby Boomers buy new Rod Stewart records because they always have? The thought is too much bear. And so the Deusners of the Internet harrumph, “Wilco, adult contemporary? Really?” And then spend a couple thousand words loudly asserting Nuh-uhhhhhh.

None of this should surprise us, not in a culture that exalts youth above all else. In America adulthood remains a destination to be avoided, by surgery if necessary. If we find ourselves enamored of an album that might comfortably be played at the dinner parties we have recently begun throwing, we will insist to our dying days that their “motorik grooves” and “backward-looped guitar bits” elevate them to the status of avant-garde. 

Which: fine. Few of us totally escape the harmless delusion of our ongoing relevance. At some point every man looks in the mirror and tells himself he’s still got it, just before stepping into his socks and sandals. It happened to Rolling Stone, it’s happening to Stereogum, and someday it may strike even Pitchfork. 

The alternative is to try, as best one can, to age gracefully — to admit that there is some adult contemporary that is dark and compelling, like Feist’s Metals; and some that is gooey and unsuccessful, like The Whole Love. Readers pounced on Abebe because he dared to mention that the Pitchfork generation is growing older. What you come to doubt, after all their empty hollering, is that they’re growing up.