The Velvet Underground was an New York City-based rock band who, under Andy Warhol's management, permanently altered the landscape of popular music through its blah blah blah blah. You know the story. Or if you don't, the introduction to the band's Wikipedia article can bring you up to speed with the highlights. Calling the Velvet Underground influential is one of the oldest lines in rock criticism, so I'm not really going to spend too much time defending it. Plenty of more insightful ink has already been spilled on the topic; no use rehashing all that here. The Velvet Underground's output is a landmark in music history, one that has inspired many an artist. You won't here me arguing that point.
But is it still inspiring artists?
Ironically, this question came to me after listening to the most recent album from Foxygen, a band that is without a doubt inspired by the Velvet Underground. If you haven't already, go give Foxygen's latest, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, a few spins. In my reckoning, it's one of the year's best albums, and also one of the funnest, especially if you're into late-'60s-style psych rock. The album takes tons of cues from that era's heavy-hitters, including the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and any number of bands captured on the Nuggets compilation, and it spins those allusions into a playful homage.
But as much as McCartney and Mick Jagger have left fingerprints all over the record, the reference point that stuck me most was that of the Velvet Underground, particularly from the poppier Velvet Underground/Loaded iteration of the band. There is, of course, that famous Brian Eno quote that "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies [of the first Velvet Underground record] started a band," and Foxgen is definitely one of them, at least metaphorically (the band members' birth dates preclude them from actually being around for the first pressing of The Velvet Underground & Nico).
The influence is most pronounced on the album's second track, "No Destruction" (embedded below), but you can hear VU touches in all the songs, from the "Herion"-style, slow-to-fast percussion/organ sections in "On Blue Mountain" to lead singer Sam France's channeling of Lou Reed's drawling monotone pretty much throughout the album.
We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic is only Foxygen's second album released since Jagjaguwar Records picked them up in early 2011 (I have yet to listen to their first album, Take the Kids Off Broadway), which makes them relative newcomers to the music industry. And as I got to listening to this newcomer's album more and more over the past week, I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I heard another new band that sounded remotely like it could be one of those Eno 30,000.
Of course, pop and rock radio has never had very much to do with the Velvet Underground, but where the lack of VU influence is sort of surprising to me is in the (for lack of a better term) indie music scene, an arena that has embraced the Velvet Underground sound in the past. Looking at the current generation of headlining indie darlings (Animal Collective, Vampire Weekend, MGMT, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Janelle Monáe, etc.) it's hard not to notice how distinctly un-VU most of them sound. Sure, it can be argued that none of these bands could exist in their current form without the foundations laid by the Velvet Underground, but when it comes to what they sound like[1], the Beach Boys, the Band, Prince, world music, and, um, '80s adult contemporary[2] seem like more relevant touchstones than "Sister Ray" or "Sweet Jane." There are a few exceptions (The Men and everybody's-favorite-2013-debuting-band Savages come to mind), but those are notable more for their rarity than for their place within larger trends. Compare that to the rise of indie music in the '80s and '90s, when bands like R.E.M., Belle and Sebastian[3], the Pixies, Joy Division, and My Bloody Valentine found creative potential bursting out of every nuance of the Velvet Underground's distortion-meets-NYC-underbelly sound.
I can think of two reasons that might explain the weaning of indie music from the Velvet Underground. First, perhaps the Velvet Underground sound became too much of a default template for indie music, and maybe this made the deviations from VU territory become more innovative and therefore more emulated. If you look at the best (or at least the most notable) indie rock records from about a decade ago, when current-gen bands would have been forming their sound—Funeral, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, White Blood Cells—a lot of them became known not for their use of VU-inspired noise and distortion but for the addition of electronics, nontraditional instruments, and pre-VU genres like folk and the blues. So maybe it was those elements that seemed fresher and more inspiring to younger artists, causing electronic dance music and Americana to replace post-punk and noise rock as the go-to sounds for indie bands.
Second, there's the increasing influence of hip hop and R&B on the scene, two genres that have never felt very much of the Velvet Underground's pull. When the mid-2000s thrust indie music into the mainstream, it tore down a bunch of the self-imposed stylistic barriers surrounding indie rock (guitars, whiteness), and put the scene into a conversation that included not just Arcade Fire and the Shins but also Outkast and Beyoncé. When Pitchfork has more to say about Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean, and Kenye West than the new My Bloody Valentine and David Bowie albums, you know something has changed in the indie world.
And that's good. I like seeing music scenes going in new directions. Great as it is, the Velvet Underground isn't the be-all, end-all of music, even rock music, and I welcome the chance indie music has to kill its idols, so to speak. A lot of thrilling things are going on in the music world now, and I'm all for the new ideas coming out of those exciting transitions. Sometimes it's nice to have a good ol' throwback, though. And that's when I put on that new Foxygen album for the fifth time today.
But, then again, I could be wrong. Maybe you think I'm totally missing out some great new bands. Maybe you think there hasn't really been a big change in the VU's influence. Or maybe you think my reasons for the change are complete garbage. Or maybe you just want to share some related anecdote. Don't be shy: share it in the comments! Make your voice known! I'd love to hear from y'all.
Until next time.
1] A tricky game if there ever was one. If you listen hard enough to the nuances, anything can sound like it was influenced by anyone. But let's not overthink it; I'm just talking about the main sonic aesthetic of these bands.
2] Two years later, I am still confounded by the production choice to turn one of Bon Iver's prettier tunes into a Michael Bolton song.
3] Who have in recent years excised the hazier VU sound present on early albums like If You're Feeling Sinister in favor of the sunnier territory of power pop and '70s FM. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just sayin'.
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