Radically Inclusive
Pop
or
A triumphant display
of creative originality gives reviewer cause for hope.
Franz Ferdinand as seen from the balcony of the
Brighton Dome 26/02/18
Apologies in advance if this concert review is skewed by my specific
interests but the benefit of sharing personal peculiarities is rather the
point. In a recent interview the members of Franz Ferdinand described a desire
to make a record they could imagine people listening to today. Today being the
future we always imagined. It’s curiously apt that the Modernists who inspired
much of FFs visual imagery conspired to drive culture into a cul-de-sac where
original individual creativity was no longer relevant or thought to be genuinely
possible. Normally when you hear statements like the above from a band it’s a
cue for the Les Frères Chemical to remix your almost finished songs but in this
case its peculiar because A) I think they meant it and B) they seem to have
achieved it. Achieved it if you
subscribe to a rather old idea of the future currently gaining traction amongst
critical theorists and athletics coaches*. I’m referring to A. N. Whitehead’s
call to frame life as organic event rather than fixed object in his book
Process and Reality. Central to this is the idea that individual creativity is
a strange and dislocated thing. In ontological terms he sees life as becoming rather
than the artfully quirky state of being (hip) seen through the bottom of a coke
bottle. In parallel to the commercialisation of individuality the problem with
Modernism’s idea of creativity as the “new” was that everything ended up being
a manifesto of an idea of the “new” rather than original in the true germinal
sense of the word. This is mirrored in pop music’s tension between repetition
and a quest for nascent originality. During my attendance at the concert with
my Wife and two sons I realised this entanglement was richly and generously played
out in every Franz Ferdinand song.
A lot of people and artists (!) are wary of theoretical
discourse around arts and culture. I think this is because they think, perhaps
justifiably, that it ruins the experience of the music or the artefact. It’s
ironic then that a lot of really helpful theory surrounds the idea that
original creativity can free us from the stasis of a patriarchal culture where
consumerist forces convert creativity into just another ersatz chunk of
monetary power. I’m thinking largely of Deleuze and Guattari’s pragmatic
calling for a “local engagement that can be the only condition of resistance
the only condition by which resistance may create a new cosmos.”
I think some bands joyfully retain this idiosyncratic
localness thereby force cultivating an explosive engagement in their audience.
This localness is about rendering subjective singularities before they are
congealed into recognisable and repeatable forms. Franz Ferdinand are one such local
band. In this light their peculiarities are not adopted mannerisms but part of
a heart-felt desire to create something new. By this I don’t mean a synthesis
of existing elements (see mash-up) but something non-repeatable. The trouble is
that somnambulistic UX culture lulled creatives (humans) into thinking that
“its all been done” as if local strangeness counts for nothing. At the end of
the 20th Century we all became the “girl with the mousy hair”.
Deleuze argues that genuine originality in art can return us to a Nietzschean
innocence of becoming. This is the child’s wide-eyed vision of the eternal
return. Or as Simon O’Sullivan says in the intro to Deleuze and Guattari, “The
new is an outside that exists within this world”. The problem is, and I get the
feeling this is what new FF song Huck and Jim addresses, is that pop music,
like fashion, relies upon repetition of the idea of something new rather than
something authentically new or local.
The lyric,
“We're going to
America
We're gonna tell them about the NHS”
is really about the dangers of turning genuine issues into
an emblematic form of status creation.
So all this is my way of saying that the Franz Ferdinand gig
at The Brighton Dome was both sonically amazing and a reason for hope. They may
not want me to pin my hopes on them for changing the cosmos but it is these
pockets of creative searching that will help us find a way out through the
clearing. There’s something to be said
for hearing music very loud that helps you feel it in a transformative state. The
meaning is delivered through affect rather than a reading of the signifiers
(words) embedded in the form (music). Affect is a process and this follows the
trajectory of transformation. Our progressive culture has been built upon the
fixed separation of objective truth. According to Deleuze we need is a way of
living in fluid entanglement. Always Ascending starts the set like a rave at
the beginning of time
“It's just the way that gravity works round here
All slowly rising,
falling patiently …”
This music is highly melodic and harmonious and yet makes a
whole new sense when experienced at high volume. The band themselves build a
performance around this equation. What
became clear is the manner in which the songs are soothing and seductive but
continually wriggle free of the standardised pop structure. They stutter and
shift and make stomach-lurching skips but somehow retain a sense of flow. They
do not make their “difficultness” into an equivalence of uniqueness but instead
manifest a creative search for something that is novel and also as if we’ve
always known it – as opposed to an ironic repetition of what everyone already
knows. This kind of song-writing is about trying to shape your creativity into
something engaging without endangering its germinal energy or betraying its
process by turning it into a signifier for awkwardness. So here is the Deleuzian point that only
genuine and original creativity can critically engage with our times – as
opposed to emblematic symbols of dissent.
If you listen to more than one FF song you will experience a specificity
which is beyond an algorithmic equation. Going back to the band’s desire to
make a music for now I would say this is about shifting our idea of progress.
Innovation has been co-opted by market forces that insist upon repetition
through familiarity. What I heard at the FF concert was a joyful and inclusive
sharing of pop-music as a space for autopoesis or what Nancy calls “being
singular plural”. Pop music has historically been a format for rebellion and political
dissent but in time this itself becomes another poster child for freedom. By
contrast, from a Deleuzian point of view creativity as propaganda betrays
itself and transformation can come from
“Art’s ability to construct new sensations, unheard, unseen
and altogether in human affects that marks it out as a force for genuine
invention and resistance”
Adorno hated pop music’s drive to turn art into a repeatable
commodity but I grew up believing pop music was a way of being or a culture in
which imagination shaped reality. Perhaps I am an old fool who was overwhelmed
by the experience of loud music shared with his wife and children. This doesn’t
happen everyday and in itself is specific enough to warrant curious attention.
You cannot separate the process of hearing the words from the music for this
turns them into a letters page but Paper Cages has kept resurfacing in my mind
since we drove home together after the show. Dear Sir…
“You're so vivid
and free in your imagination”
Above: Me, the
wife and kids meet Franz Ferdinand
*
At a recent talk I attended by a swimming coach she outlined the benefits of
non-goal orientated development in favour of process i.e. swimming better not
faster
Text & Photos by Mikey Georgeson 2018
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