though the music is influenced by other music, not once has the band cited any band that isn’t punk or rock among their influences.

But what I’d really like to hear you talk more about is this tabula rasa idea. If you write something at length that you’d like to be a regular post, I can arrange that, either through these comments, or you can email me: scottc@wlu.edu

When I note the unironic and atypical use of Robert Smith and video game hardware synths, things that were likely placed in front of them as children for them to consume, I’m trying to suggest that they’re opting out of either the “time machine conservative” approach of The Specials and the “up against the wall liberal” approach of Nirvana. They’re aren’t approaching 1980s synthpop and house as a social movement or a genre, but as a standardized set of tools that has no baggage attached to it. Robert Smith has no “default style” to them, and noise music and Amiga hardware have no pre-considered ties to video games to them. This “lazy,” libertarian attitude is the normal one among people my age.

I also don’t think this is ahistorical, just ahistorical as a norm. When, say, The Beatles used a sitar in their music, it MEANT something. The sitar has unique musical properties, naturally, but it associated The Beatles with ideas about religion, geography, drug use, and culture. They subsequently used them to undermine (rightly, in my view) the limited sonic repetoire of rock ‘n’ roll bands of their era. If you suggested that the sitar meant something about Hinduism or hallucinogenic drugs or a certain style of music to a Bangladeshi person who’s always had it around him, he’d consider you foolish. The tabula rasa idea is what, I think, most modern musicians believe. Crystal Castles’ nihilist or absurdist-leaning interviews and concerts reinforce that.

I suppose that’s my answer to your question about transgression. If it was about revanchist conservatism, then you’d expect every song to be like Not In Love, the equivalent to that swing comeback in the 1990s. If it was about taking a bat to an earlier generation, you’d look for lots like Pap Smear, where it’s pleasant and then “distancing.” But that they move from Not In Love to Pap Smear to something in-between like Knights suggests randomness. Sometimes they want to scratch your records and sometimes they want to play something soothing for your mother.

That doesn’t mean that your last questions aren’t relevant. It also doesn’t mean that we have to answer with the boring, standard, “Well, in this digital, splintered age, it means different things to different people.” What it does mean, I believe, is that if a record industry was allowed to thrive and then die, a schism is created. So, where it’s appropriate to talk about continuity in Russia, it’s inappropriate to talk about it in the U.S. post-1998.

And I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the series. I can’t claim to understand everything you’re talking about, but I’m already somewhat intrigued by the Tenniscoats and will get to work on Tim Hecker on one hand, and James McMillan on the other.

I am antagonistic to “Doe Dear” and the type of trangressivist instinct that produces assault music like that, but I should say I can certainly hear the attraction to Crystal Castles overall–”Baptism” has got that dopey-fun main line, and songs like “Celestica” sound like what OMD wished it could have sounded like in the 80s. And when you say CC ” simply think the possibilities weren’t tapped before history moved on,” I know exactly what you mean, even if 80s synth was never my thing. Still, even if it was more my thing, I would ask: is CC more about music than transgression set to music? The signs do not appear good. And I can’t help but noting that groups that go for the futuristic aesthetic, whether in the 80s, 90s, or now, seem predictably more addicted to transgressive gestures.

I certainly would welcome more comments from you, GaleonQ, because my Songbook series certainly needs input from those more attuned to the latest trends, and even more so, from musically informed persons who disagree with my main ideas.

Two things, though. You say “I’ve explicitly grounded this series in antagonism,” and you speak of the “the newness” you say “I value in music.” The weird line I’m trying to walk in the Songbook is to attack Rock and Middle-Class Homogenized Music in General from two sides–from the direction of the older folk traditions (including, in a way, r n’ r), and from the direction of elitist art music–BUT ALSO to see what we can learn about ourselves from and appreciate what’s best in that Middling Music. (And so BTW if you’re right about classical music being played out–I think my whole framework collapses.) As for newness, this particular post is one of many messages I hope to send Rock’s way to say that the Cult of Newness is over. I want to get us OUT of the tired avant-garde expectations of the 20th century get us to think more in terms of the following question: among the things we can still do, what is best to do? For what purposes do we, and should we, use music?

Preface: I don’t mean any of the following to cut; I’m not trying to be curt, just brief. I’m a traditionalist conservative Missouri Synod Lutheran and, basically, an art elitist. (Whereas hipsters throw away the past for the present, an elitist loves seeing tradition force its relevance on the traditionless; think 2011 Tim Hecker or Bjork.) I’m a native of a small Wisconsin town, but I listen to a ton of music from around the world. That album was still my favorite of that year. I think art/classical music is mostly dead, James MacMillan and Arvo Part aside, but I think popular music is better than ever thanks to globalization and market forces decimating artistic bureaucracies. I also am frustrated by political and religious conservatives’ awful taste in modern art. I wouldn’t condemn you with that last sentence, but you’ve acknowledged that you’re slightly ignorant.

I don’t think your interpretation is unreasonable, so I won’t refute it point-for-point. That said, Crystal Castles recruited The Cure’s Robert Smith to rerecord 1 of their most accessible songs for a single, and they let him do a non-Cure-like performance. They use modified 1980s video game hardware not because of superficial affection (despite the massive amount of crossover between your Shimomuras and Mitsudas and your Yellow Magic Orchestras and Pixelords, they hate video games), but because they make unique sounds that have intrigued them for decades. So, to set aside the debts their artistic output’s accrued, their artistic SENTIMENT isn’t a simple reaction to 1 idea of what the 1980s were. As their stage and interview presence demonstrates, they (and many other modern acts) just aren’t interested in pop music as a proxy culture war. Instead of bludgeoning the 1990s with the 2000s, they simply think the possibilities weren’t tapped before “history” moved on. Sometimes it leads them to make songs like Doe Deer, and sometimes it leads them to make something as orthodox as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4pOrJK-bYY
To catch them being dissonant sometimes and consonant at others is not to catch them at all. Music can only be 1 of the 2.

My alternate interpretation is 1 of geography, not chronology. I think fast-moving economies disrupt the folk music traditions that eventually produce the newness you value in music. Supplier-goosed demand and overconsumption of art (individually and as a populace) creates premature artistic turnover. The sons kill the fathers. It may have happened to the U.S. at a different time than, say, France, but it leaves generations bewildered and unable to make sense of anything that’s not immediately in front of them. It creates a Doctor Luke in America and a Girls’ Generation in South Korea. Where stagnation or slow growth has occurred, you get musicians like Mujuice. Check the new takes on Russian folk traditions in songs like Youth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elnLVqyRFp8 and the commercial-style-video-game-influenced sounds of International Deadline Lifestyle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcb13HlxOTk to see how an unhealthy economy can boost a healthy art scene. The same goes for any continent.

I love reading this series for that reason. You’ve explicitly grounded this series in antagonism. I’m a Burkean right-winger and theologically most sympathetic to Martin Luther and Soren Kierkegaard, so I clearly don’t dislike antagonism. It’s just that where you largely see the good kind of competition, the kind that spurs development and creates useful cultural signifiers, I see a largely North American phenomenon of enforced obsolescence. Crystal Castles happens to be 1 of the best at picking up the pieces left by Chuck Berry.

Of course, I could be totally wrong. Tim Hecker’s Ravedeath 1972 (which you REALLY must address with relation to series) or Bjork’s Biophilia might just be 1910s art music scrambled through audio software. Just know that the defining trend of pop music in the last decade is that there was no defining trend. For every bleep-blooper or neo-folk hippie, there are always simple people who like simple things. My favorite song of 2011 was by 1 of my favorite Japanese bands, Tenniscoats. They got tired of the trend you describe above, moved to a small town in Hokkaido, and recorded a simple album called Song Of Time. Japanese harmonic structures and American rhythmic ones got fused in lovely and exciting ways. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMzzArcCBU8 If Airplane doesn’t smack down Retromania, I don’t know what can.

(And now, I’m going to click “Submit Comment” and run away for a bit before checking to see if I’ve embarrassed myself.)