Style Versus Content Versus Me
By Guest Author
Thursday. Jul 07, 1:28 AM
Barry Burns of Mogwai sounds off... and becomes our new hero.

Clothes have nothing to do with music.

There’s no clear chemical or biological parallel between a crotchet note and the molecular structure of a crocheted gingham scarf. And in my tiny mind, this must be true, but you only have to open the scrap of cloth known as NME or cast your fatigued eyes upon MTV2’s daily programming to unveil the real facts about the link between how good a band looks and how successful they can become.

When I look at bands like The Bravery or any of those purveyors of emotionless, fashion-based music, I feel a heavy disappointment that our age old occupation of choice often relies on pouting, posing, and three haircuts on the one head to achieve success rather than the production of well composed, good old tunes. If these countless dilettantes spent as much time crafting songs as they did heaping on make-up and frizz-ease, then maybe there’d be something more interesting to hear… something worthwhile? But let’s understand one thing: these chancers are only here to look all nice for the record-buying wee girls in order to distract from the actuality that all their songs are more or less vacuous in content. It seems that only in the music industry you can indeed “polish a shit.” Well, at least for long enough to make some easy, quick dollars snatched from the pockets of teenagers. To Wit: it works like a charm.

Look at The Pixies as the ultimate antithesis to this. Ugly fatties with a total disregard for fancy clothes, yet, in my opinion anyway, one of the greatest pop bands in existence. If they can do it, The Bravery, The Editors, and all their despicable doppelgangers should be able to too. I think it’s that simple. And if they can’t “cut it” in jeans and a t-shirt, they must be shunned.

The sort of sad realisation for me is that the capricious and forward thinking nature of the fashion world proper has much to teach the unchallenging, unchanging trends in music of the last five years. I’ve heard scores of these clone bands and it feels like there’s a real stuckness in the music produced. It’s as if there’s a fear to walk down the catwalk toward something more musically ambitious, so instead we’re punished by the relentless reproduction of the same ol’ same ol’ but with different, more up-to-date garb.

I’m not saying that it hasn’t always been this way in the music industry, it’s just particularly exacerbating at this moment in time. And even though there’s probably an element of old mannism coming from me (“let’s ban all press pictures of bands and make them wear permanent ninja suits at performances”), isn’t it time to just look at the substantive content of a band more closely and try to stop attaching importance to appearance? It’s not going to happen, is it? So what I’d really like is a jumbo flamethrower and three days at Glastonbury in the VIP area.
www.mogwai.co.uk

Got something constructive to say? By all means, rant away. Gonna blab about something unrelated and/or talk shit? Don't expect your comment to stick around.