The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Monday, November 9, 2009 - 5A The ichganDaiy -michganailcomMonay, oveber9, 009- 5 The death of the album Making your music lo-fi doesn't make it sincere. It doesn't make it more "authentic." The ramshackle charm of Io-fi music can often add a nice sentimental charge to an already-electrified song (Slanted and Enchanted by Pavement, Bee Thou- sand by Guided By Voices, the early '90s in general). That said, it should not be used as a crutch or a substitute for dynamic songman- ship. And really, it should not be a genre, though it happens to lend itself well to quirky, sleeve-on- heart indie music. But today, with Garage Band " and the advent of laptops as portable, do-it-yourself recording studios, the "lo-fi" aesthetic has mutated into a bandwagon of egalitarian mim- ,icry and massive carrying capacity. Anyone can be a musician now. And as much as I love free artistic expression, the increasingly rapid rate at which gen- uine ingenuity is flung into the populist meat grinder for mass reproduction is dizzying. A few years ago, Animal Collective was still skimming the waters of the indie underground, pos- sessing a sort of subterranean mystique. I remem- bering hearing Collective for the first time and being absolutely repulsed. The banshee wails and possessed-baby gurgling noises turned me off to the point where I deemed it "not music." While this was largely a sign of my musical greenness at the time, the point is that the music was subversive enough to scare away aKid A-bred 12th-grader. And the inimitable style of this truly unconventional band has slipped on some lubricating hype, spread like wildfire across the Internet though cattle-call blogs and forums and been snatched up by rabid indie ama- teurs across America to be stuffed and conventional- ized for the "mainstream underground." While chip-off bands like The Dodos provide for some good, combustible freak-folk, they're a hell of a lot less freaky than Animal Collective. The Dodos lift the surface features of Animal Collective (the tribal yells and frenetic, rim-clacking percussion) and streamline them into more conventional song struc- tures - which isn't to rip on The Dodos. It's simply to say that technological advancements have made it incredibly easy for anyone with sufficient passion and drive to arrange the spare parts of their favorite bands into serviceable but derivative pastiches. This do-it-your-self mentality has even manifested itself in the way we listen to music. While the art of mix-making far outdates the On-The-Go playlist, MP3 players have certainly stunted our dependence on the album as a cohesive artistic statement. Back in the age of the Walkman, there was no "shuffle." I mean, most Walkmen came equipped with the ability to listen to a single CD in random order - but, hon- estly, what fun is that? iPod nanos, with their relatively small storage sizes, are far better suited to compiling an archive of your personal greatest hits than stockpiling an extensive album collection. And, with so many people trafficking music on the Internet nowadays, it's come down to the sheer logistical fact that songs, with their compact file sizes, are going to enjoy way more broadband movement than digitally bulkier albums. We have entered the era of the single-serv- ing song, and this cultural trend has been picked up on and exploited by legitimate digital music super- markets like iTunes. This may seem like small potatoes, but when you open up iTunes, the first chartyou're hit with is the Top Singles chart. You have to manually scroll down just to get to the Top Albums chart. And the store's marketing technique of selling individual songs for roughly twice the price of a gumball and promoting them with 30-second preview clips has certainly exacerbated our generation's cultural ADD. Not only are people buying albums less, they're basing these single-serving purchases on whether or not a micro- ad can hook them instantly. No one is going to have any conception for the scope and value of a 25-min- ute jazz opus based on the hunk-of-piano-solo a 30-second preview provides. And, consequently, peo- ple are going to be less inclined to buy iton iTunes. What you get is the death of the album. Or, in slightly less hyperbolic terms, the devaluing of the album in the context of popular culture. The world has caught rock star fever - everyone's either pining to be the next bedroom indie darling or stir-frying their own On-The-Go mishmashes of other artists' work. This may all seem like a big load of apocalyptic over-generalizing, but there's certainly been a grow- ing streak of narcissism in music, an art form often toted as the universal language. Everyone's making songs, and everyone's making them badly. Computers are killing music. The "indie" genre, a faction of music typically cor- related with artistic innovation and out-of-the-box- ed-ness, has been busted open to the mainstream by programs like Garage Band. Matt Bradish, owner of local record store Underground Sounds, asserts that, while he is a fervent supporter of local artists, he doesn't feel inclined to sift through the landslide of self-released music he receives. "It's just too easy to make stuff and release it (these days). There's a glut of releases out there that have no place being released," he says. French economist Jacques Attali even goes so far as to wonder if there will ever be a point in the future when the ability to compose music becomes so uni- versal, and the world's musical library so vast, that "musician" will lose its status as a viable career option - everyone will simply be his or her own composer. But, as terrifying as this sounds, we haven't reached the end just yet - we still have Wavves. And for that, we should be thankful. Bayer wrote this column on Garage Band. Obviously that doesn't make sense, but who cares? If you wanna hang out with him, e-mail him at jrbayer@umich.edu. Fashion 's birth Co lo first Coc forefri fashiot at the breaki indust ily in men simple design this bi about about aspirat co Chanel biopic way to the top. "Coco Before Chanel"traces oks at fashion's Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's humble journey from orphan to showgirl to t lady before fame mistress to hatmaker. She becomes the lover of two men and the wife By JENNIFER XU of none. She never had a dream of Daily Arts Writer being a fashion designer, and the movie doesn't pretend otherwise. o Chanel catapulted to the Not until the last few frames of the snt of the film is her vast empire of clothing, n world **** bags and fragrances even men- age of 40, tioned. Instead, it features scenes ng into an Coco Before from her younger years; clearly, ry primar- C n the emphasis is on Coco before habited by Chanel. with her Atthe Playing the eponymous pro- elegant Michigan tagonist is Audrey Tautou ("Ame- s. But Sony lie"), gamine and aloof all at once. opic is not Tautou is truly Audrey Hepburn fashion or men. Instead, it's reincarnated, evoking an untouch- a woman with high-society able elegance even while dressed tions steadily clawing her in whoreish corsets and garish frills. But where Tautou excels is in the exploration of Chanel's ambi- tion, her unquenchable desire to be fabulous and rich and her will- ingness to do anything to get to the top. Chanel is not always a likable person, or an admirable person, yet Tautou is able to temper Chanel's unstoppable determination with her own doe-eyed innocence. "Coco Before Chanel" is all about female empowerment, yet it doesn't go the predictable route of chronicling Chanel forging her way through a male-dominated industry. Instead, she attains lib- eration through independence from love. The film's key conflict lies in Chanel resolving whether she wants to attain status through hard work or remain a mistress in a loving, yet stifling relationship. In See CHANEL, Page 8A -U THERE ARE THREE KINDS OF WG IN THIS eU O U WORLD. 2 5 48 6 4 3 9 6 9 5 g WEAREALL 2 7 OF THEM. 7 3 8 6 9 s 8 WRITE FOR 9 DAILY ARTS. HPV Fact: Yov CNu r b oyfriend the virus that causes There's something you can do. entrer. For an application, e-mail battlebots@umich.edu.