The Elitist Rock Snob Problem Part IV: the Bigger Lovers churn out a genuine rockroll gem, and all I get is grief

"You know what your problem is? You’re too goddamn well-informed."

"What the fuck does that mean?" I asked my accuser.

"It means you dig around to fucking much; you can’t just accept the prevailing culture…on any level. Jesus man. We’re here talking about fucking records we dig and you’re tossing out shit that no one has ever heard. And probably never will fucking hear."

"That’s not necessarily true," I said in desperation.

"Not true? Oh now come fucking on! You tell me who else knows who the hell the Bigger…what are they called?"

"Lovers…the Bigger Lovers," I explained. It sounded, to me, more like an apology as it walked out of my mouth. Which pissed me off, because I knew I had nothing to apologize for.

"Yeah, them…the Bigger Lovers. Nobody knows who the fuck they are man. At least a few people have heard of fucking Jimmy Eat World when I mention them. You, well, you have to always toss off about some damn obscurity. Christ man, the rest of us can’t all be wrong."

"No one says you’re wrong." Again I thought I was coming off as defensive and whiny – and was starting to simmer a bit. "And you know what…maybe they should tell all of you that you’re flat-out fucking wrong. Maybe everyone should hear that for once, instead of all of the ‘I’m okay, you’re okay as long as you’re part of the fucking prevailing homogenous culture’ bullshit. Because, quite frankly, I’m getting pretty goddamn tired of being looked at as some sort of freak all the time. I fucking participate in some of the mainstream – but you’re right, I don’t like much of it because it doesn’t do a goddamn thing for me most of the time. Hell, there was a time that I figured that the popular culture existed - at the least – to entertain, at a very minimum. But even that is a fucking bad bet these days."

"You must be a miserable sonofabitch." It was delivered with a tight-lipped wise-assed smirk.

"Fuck no," I laughed. "I’m the one who has heard the Bigger Lovers new record. It’s you who I feel sorry for. You’ll probably never know what you missed."

My friend finished his beer, dropped a ten spot on the table, and walked out without saying another word. I made a mental note to get the poor fellow a gift subscription to People magazine for Christmas.

You can peg whatever tag you may have - snob, hipster, jerk, jackass – pick one, whatever you like, and press it to my chest. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll wear it proudly. If being thought of as some hipper-than-thou rockroll elitist means that I can keep listening to a record as utterly perfect as the Bigger Lovers Honey in the Hive, well then, go ahead and slap my ass all up with whatever it is you think I am. But as far as I’m concerned good is good, bad is bad, and most of the dull middle that rests between is out there drifting in the mainstream. So, like any reasonably afflicted rockroll junky I tend to stray into the margins a bit to find my kicks, and while that may seem highfalutin to you, it’s a one way ticket to sanity for me.

I gotta admit, I wasn’t completely taken in by the Lover Honey in the Hive at first listen. It’s a very different record than their 2000 debut How I Learned to Stop Worrying (which, if foggy beer soaked memory serves me well, was another one of those records that didn’t leap up and make me grin from the git-go. But rather, as any experienced music dork understands, it was one of those records so steeped in its own brilliance that it took numerous listens to connect – and those are the records with real fucking legs, and the ones that last forever) – which was one of that years surprise slabs of rockroll gold. How I Learned was a swell set of pop tunes that dripped out its influences little by little. It hid them in small pockets of intrigue, a guitar lick, or a drum fill. It pressed them into fade-outs and endings, and hinted so slyly at them in phrasings. And the whole thing was kissed by smart production. It took its time in presenting itself, but the payoff was huge.

Honey in the Hive moves in just as stealthily as its forbearer, but with an altogether different approach. Here the influences come right at you immediately - with a wink and a nod. "Half Richard’s" opens the record with the Soft Boys clearly in mind, but set out on a rampage of guitar, hell bent to re-invent, not mimic. "A Simple ‘How Are You?" has welcome keyboards (that wind the thing up in proto-perfect Attractions – as in Elvis Costello and the - style) and whisper sung layered vocals (that sound like the best of those done by – gulp – Express-era Love and Rockets) that dodge a heady, steady driving rhythm. It's so good its unnerving, and the whole thing seems like an impossible puzzle of muses coming together - inexplicable.

That - "an impossible puzzle of muses coming together" – may be the best thing I can possibly write about this record. I could quit right there and leave that line to sum up every little truth about this entire goddamn record and have succeeded at this ridiculous thing that I do – but such truths in rockroll just can’t be trusted anymore. Damn near every implied ounce of honesty that ever comes down the pike these days is nothing more than a con, a sham, an epic and unmitigated lie. The "new" Beatles! The "new" Stones! The "new" Radiohead! The "new" Dylan! All "new"! A heap of "new" bullshit is what it all is. So move on we must.

Look (deep breath), it's like this: taking the sounds of a band that came before you and smudging it up with your own fingerprints don’t make you a "new" any-goddamn-thing. Maybe an awful lot of bands out there just can’t figure out how to deal with their adorations and inspirations without resorting to flat-out imitating them…and that’s fine. Good luck I say. But these cats in the Bigger Lovers have more important work to fucking do. They’re busy trying to move the goddamn music to different places, new places, and into new sounds. They’re taking all of these disparate influences that swim around in their head into their own hands and are trying to push them around a bit = trying to rework and mold them. They pick them apart, toss pieces away, patch others together, break some down, and then build them back up as something that is their own. They heat up traditional lyrical and vocal pure pop moves with a fiery wall of 80’s indie-rock guitar; they stumble through mood and atmospherics ("Don’t Know Why") with something brilliantly far from flawless perfection – because perfection just wouldn’t be rockroll enough; they pit rock guitar and beastly percussion againt a lyrical gentility rapt with irony. Indubitably!

By the time "Ivy Grows", a song that will now and forever be remembered here as the apex of this record as well as an utterly dazzling example of what this band is capable of, plays itself out in all its raging glory Honey in the Hive has fully presented itself as a record that does what so few even attempt to do anymore: it succeeds at pushing rockroll to a new place. A place that, for the most part, rockroll stopped heading for long, long ago.

Apparently the Bigger Lovers never gave up on rock’s flimsy promises. Even now, when the form seems to have dwindled down into having been the greatest cultural con in modern history, the Lovers seem to find some salvation in its reckless, noisy covenants. Honey in the Hive takes rockroll’s few beautiful moments of stark naked truth - no matter how unreliable they’ve proven to be - and forge them into a new promise, one that they know probably won’t be heard by many, or that won’t matter to a insipid ‘prevailing pop culture’, but fuck it, this goddamn record is an effort that stands up for all of the grand and authentically original possibilities that rockroll once seemed to offer at every turn.

I don’t know why these guys do it (they probably often wonder the same thing) when the payouts, if there are any, seem so slim, but I do know I am over-fucking-joyed that they do. After all, I just sit here on my ass, brooding and pontificating over these things, they’re out there putting themselves in the line of fire making a real rock difference. So, yeah, I probably am a fucking music snob, but I at least still know a great rockroll record when I hear one. Which probably ain’t no big deal if you just have the gumption to put your ear up into the wind and listen - because this one was easy, they simply don’t come this good very often anymore.

.

back