Stuck on Nothing by Free Energy
LABEL: DFA Records
Forty-two years ago, The Band released Music From Big Pink, a strikingly anachronistic debut that was as brazenly postmodern (the juxtaposition of psychedelic fuzz-organ and Salvation Army dishabille on “Chest Fever”) as it was indebted to a pantheon of heroes—from Charley Patton to Bill Doggett to the numinous post-motorcycle Dylan—venerated by few in the era of “Sunshine Of Your Love”, “Sister Ray”, and Hot Buttered Soul. To compare Free Energy to Ulster County’s most venerable cultural export would be a disingenuous proposition even on a good day, but if the rapscallions who comprise this latest cause célèbre have any sort of staying power, they have the potential to be as epoch-shattering.
If the coruscating Neil Young thrash of Vivian Girl’s Everything Goes Wrong and the ersatz-Springsteen-via-Meat Loaf bombast of Titus Andronicus’ recent The Monitor are any indication, contemporary indie—even in its more primeval iterations, like Brooklyn “shitgaze”—has finally reconciled with the lumbering behemoth that is 70s album-oriented rock. Let’s face it: kitsch is eternally hip; the insurgent bon vivants who castigated the Loaf and Foghat in the Seventies have either succumbed to the virulent lifestyle of the era (my father, Jim Carroll, and Arthur Kane among the more recent casualties) or, even more regrettably, become geezers in their own right a la John Lydon; and, much as we want to disavow clarion production values in favor of guttural raw power, the former tends to come back in vogue in some manifestation after long experimental benders. From freak folk’s reappraisal of Laurel Canyon folk rock to Ernie Brooks’ anecdotes of listening to Fleetwood Mac and ABBA with Arthur Russell to the wanton neo-prog of Battles, the monomythic grand narrative of punk has been wholly dispelled in the past five years.
“And if Echoes was his Breathless, Stuck on Nothing is Pierrot le Fou in all of its Technicolor vividness, recasting the specious theatrics of Forties MGM musicals (early 70s AOR) in the light of Sixties Marxist rhetoric...”
James Murphy handles the production reins here, and one can’t envision a more suitable knob-twiddler; having taken the disco revival from portentous academic treatises into praxis with his seminal (and, in the current milieu, criminally neglected) work with The Rapture and global stardom as the frontman of LCD Soundsystem. In many ways, he has ensconced himself as the Godard of modern pop, an experimental force who is also relentlessly—and preternaturally—accessible. And if Echoes was his Breathless, Stuck on Nothing is Pierrot le Fou in all of its Technicolor vividness, recasting the specious theatrics of Forties MGM musicals (early 70s AOR) in the light of Sixties Marxist rhetoric (or, in our case, the smithereens of the DIY culture that emerged from punk).
Even though frontman Paul Sprangers and lead guitarist Scott Wells are the putative sons of the Dazed and Confused soundtrack (an unnecessary and misleading comparison when Foghat and Rick Derringer—the clear antecedents of this project—are the odd ducklings on an album that predominantly leans towards straightforward metal) and Thin Lizzy (certainly apropos), Sprangers has retained the nasal, punky voice that has been his hallmark since the days of Pavement-emulating Hockey Night. As such, tracks like the shuffling “Bad Stuff”, breakthrough “Dream City” (the greatest song Phil Lynott never wrote), and the Rhodes-dominated “Light Love” sound less like pastiches than the commodified spawn of T. Rex and Ziggy-era Bowie, replete with the odd production touches (particularly the saxophone on the coda of “Dream City”) that came to be associated with Tony Visconti. Beneath their dexterous guitar solos and background harmonies, “Hope Child” and “Wild Wind” amount to the Strokes in bloated, Lycra drag; the title track, a cornucopia of layered guitars and anthemic bombast, falls somewhere between these two extremes.
Without sounding too sepulchral, like jazz before it, rock has become a conservatory medium, with many of its exponents limited to recapitulating the past. Like the borderline unconscionable Dixieland revival of the 1940s and the bop renaissance that followed in the wake of Wynton Marsalis, one need not look at Free Energy for raw innovation or the ever-nebulous “sound of the future”: dubstep, electro-grime, and the remnants of the formal avant-garde hold the key to that terrain. But through their virtuosity, they have crafted a magnanimous album that is both effortlessly pleasing and—like The Band before them—may lead a new generation of rock musicians to the ever-elusive “tree with roots”. 
REVIEWED BY SEAN MURPHY uh...no relation to James...;)
SEAN'S FAVE TRACKS: “Dream City” • “Free Energy” • “Bang Pop”
