Indie boys through the years and why I hate them

I was listening to Sufjan Stevens's Seven Swans a moment ago, when his twee little voice just started to piss me off. Just sing, man! Possibly, the Jesus-heavy content of his songs was also to blame for my insta-hatred. I'm getting tired of soft-voiced dudes and their sweet little songs--do you hear me, Sam Beam?! We're supposed to swoon for the humorless "poetic" imagery in these goons' songs, when in fact they're just tapping into the same hipster/yuppie collective unconscious that makes everyone name their kid Emma, Jack, Jacob, or Madeline. Ride the zeitgeist, fellas!

Anyway, my mood has improved with a heaping helping of Odetta. Hot damn, I love that woman. Give me a woman with a big voice and awesome songwriting/interpreting skills any damn day of the week.

Dork alert: Think of these indie white boyz as Wordsworth--popular and occasionally interesting, but ultimately irritating and unfulfilling. Eventually, you're tempted to smack him about the chops a bit just to make his pain real.

You're much better off finding yourself some Marvell or, to fast-forward to the 20th century, some Philip Larkin. Not only was Larkin a librarian (shout out to the Manfriend!), but he was a loner who wrote scathingly brilliant, sad, and funny poems. His earlier poems kind of rub me the wrong way, but once he gets going, watch out. I'll post my two favorite Larkin poems soon: "The Whitsun Weddings" and "Aubade." Melancholy and reflective, these have both affected me greatly over the past few weeks.

"Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album" by Philip Larkin

At last you yielded up the album, which,
Once open, sent me distracted. All your ages
Matt and glossy on the thick black pages!
Too much confectionery, too rich:
I choke on such nutritious images.

My swivel eye hungers from pose to pose –
In pigtails, clutching a reluctant cat;
Or furred yourself, a sweet girl-graduate;
Or lifting a heavy-headed rose
Beneath a trellis, or in a trilby hat

(Faintly disturbing, that, in several ways) –
From every side you strike at my control,
Not least through these disquieting chaps who loll
At ease about your earlier days:
Not quite your class, I'd say, dear, on the whole.

But o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! that records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards,

But shows the cat as disinclined, and shades
A chin as doubled when it is, what grace
Your candour thus confers upon her face!
How overwhelmingly persuades
That this is a real girl in a real place,

In every sense empirically true!
Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate,
These misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being over; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.

Yes, true; but in the end, surely, we cry
Not only at exclusion, but because
It leaves us free to cry. We know what was
Won't call on us to justify
Our grief, however hard we yowl across

The gap from eye to page. So I am left
To mourn (without a chance of consequence)
You, balanced on a bike against a fence;
To wonder if you'd spot the theft
Of this one of you bathing; to condense,

In short, a past that no one now can share,
No matter whose your future; calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and you lie
Unvariably lovely there,
Smaller and clearer as the years go by.

18 September 1953

The Fantasy Poets No 21 (1954)
The Less Deceived (1955)

© The estate of Philip Larkin