As a rock critic, it can be tough to judge bands that appear on the surface to have transported themselves through time, bands that don't sound too much like one particular group of past musicians but instead have found a way to capture the spirit of a period in America's variegated and effectual music history. Unique from the everyday artist, these bands emanate an attitude and style that hoists listeners to a point in the past they may not know personally, but with the band's help, feel immediately connected to.
As people, we've always pushed things forward in every aspect of our lives, constantly striving to carry things to the next level - battling the sometimes tempting allure of regression. It's what has brought us all this way. It's what has given us unmatched power and birthed unimaginable suffering.
As a music journalist, it's been my belief that the critics, the often obsessive individuals who spend their lives devouring art, play a part in the human effort to move things forward. It is our little contribution to mankind to expose the public to music that pushes the boundaries and grows as we're growing, music that echoes the essence of everyday existence and gives a voice to what we're all thinking and feeling but may not know how to express ourselves. Critics have a duty when they choose the bands we want to write about and make stances in reviews to guide people to make their own "life compilation" as best as it can be.
But recently, I've learned that the push forward can happen in a couple ways. Sometimes, we'll get artists like Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan or Marc Bolan of T. Rex - otherworldly beings with ideas that come out of nowhere and shock us into awareness like a vengeful, unexpected bee sting to delicate, under-worked flesh.
However, it's important to acknowledge that the music industry works in cycles closely connected to the cycles of the American conscious. Also, we must understand that it is possible for innovation to come from music that that may sound passé at first, as we may later realize that same music couldn't be more perfect for the moment. As part of the cleansing process, music progresses by being occasionally broken down bare so it can be built again to be stronger, bolder and less apologetic than ever before.
Bands, like The Drums, have recently brought us heavily '80s-inspired pop music. Best Coast have regifted the '60s girl group. Free Energy have produced songs that sound like reincarnations of '70s rock tunes. These bands have adopted old music structures, equipment, attitudes and looks and added additional elements to forms that could only come from someone who has lived through experiences following a genre's heyday and learned from the mistakes.
In a way, some retro-rock bands are going back and editing the past, scratching out what we couldn't see before as unnecessary or trivial, and injecting old genres with new, relevant ideas that make the retro-rock sound seem so modern.
When Philadelphia band Free Energy went into the studio to record its debut album, "Stuck on Nothing," with the champagne-sipping, blazer-wearing, record-producing icon James Murphy, he emphasized concision, making sure each riff was clearly articulated, said Free Energy frontman Paul Sprangers.
After chatting with Sprangers - whose choice to sometimes wear a dashiki is admittance to the fact that Animal Collective sound best in an altered-state - it's easy to tell he has an all-around positive outlook on the world. This is something that matches the band's philosophy perfectly. Not only does he perform retro-rock music, but Sprangers seems to embody a free, Vietnam-era lifestyle supported by his reading of New Age books and general liking of hippie, "Dazed and Confused" things.
Murphy's tip on creating a concise, simpler sound stems from his love of '70s glam-rock bands and artists like David Bowie, an interest that seems to have made him the perfect producer for Free Energy's first album. That record evokes life before loops dominated, before auto-tune corrected and before local guitar shops carried a hundred different effects pedals. In my opinion, these are the kinds of things that may be making it tougher for listeners to reach a cultural atmosphere conducive to the development of truth and freedom in music.
Perhaps the freedom that comes from restraint in Free Energy's music is what many of us are longing for these days.
Could it be that the possible shift taking place to more no-frills music is connected to the spirit of America's young people in 2011, who after years of war, economic stress and feeling overwhelmed are looking for simplicity in music - something they're certainly not getting in politics?
"It seems like there will be a move to a more organic sound," said Sprangers, who was hesitant to put himself in a category of a possibly emerging musical climate that strips away machines and shows once again that liberty comes from simplicity.
To me, his hesitation is understandable. Past transitions in music to a raw, more elementary sound seem to always come with problems. Let's not forget the enormous pressure The Strokes were under in the early 2000s when they led the garage-rock movement and were hailed as the "saviors of rock" at a time when pop music felt like an oil spill on the radio waves.
And we definitely shouldn't forget the early '90s shift to alternative music, rooted in punk, that drove overproduced '80s hair metal out of business, created a cultural uproar and, in the end, left America's youth with a teen idol, dead at 27 from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.
Despite the fact that Free Energy's work sounds vintage, it is among the surfacing bands that play an important role in our music and culture. Truly, this is a reminder that things haven't always been the way they are, and that, like our world, we can take things apart and make them better than we imagined we could.
Free Energy will play Common Grounds Feb. 8 with The Postelles and Aleutian Low. Tickets are $10, and doors open at 9 p.m.
