Feral Hymns, and why "indie rock" must die a bloody death.

Feral Hymns is the new album by Lungfish and it's not only one of the best in a long career, but it embodies everything that seems to be missing from today's fake-ass indie rock horde -- soul, guts, brains, individuality, a feircely (true) independent spirit, and a willingness to be a bit creepy, to make the listener a bit uncomfortable, to shake them into thinking about where they are, what they're doing, what their leaders are up to, who their friends are.

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To be completely honest, the "I" word has carried very little meaning for me since the early 90s. From all evidence it's morphed from a non-categorization to describe bands and artists on such intrepid labels as SST, Touch and Go, Dischord, etc., (led by the highly unfashionable Greg Ginn, Corey Rusk, and Ian MacKaye) to a strict way of playing and consuming music. Even in smaller scenes (long-considered to be the last hope of the real) it's become an exclusive low-rent cocktail party, a fashion show, a sad little shadow of its former self, a ripoff of a ripoff of a ripoff. And if you participate in this scam, conventional wisdom dictates that you're gonna pay through the nose in more than one sense.

Ah, but who am I to say what you should and shouldn't do with your parents' hard-earned money? Go ahead and buy (into) it, bring your daddy's credit card to the Church Of Satan and scrape away your brain cells one-by-one on the newest, latest, coolest piece of crap, rather than *gasp* discover something for yourself, something that you'll cherish for a long time, without the help of (e)m(p)t(y)v, Myspace (now owned by Rupert Murdoch), one of the many ads that batter you senseless if you spend any amount of time online, or what some douchebag (who would be better suited for fraternity life than my precious underground music scene) has on his t-shirt.

How progressive and forward-thinking can a band be when they're featured prominently in the music section of Wal-Mart? C'mon... if your band's gonna pull some shit like that, call it something else, for the love of God.

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And the categorizations? If I have to hear how "my band is sort of a neo-angular dancepunk with a slight freakfolk shoegazer influence" someone's gonna get throttled by the collar of their ironic Welcome Back Kotter t-shirt. Well, probably not (chances are I'll just roll my eyes and get a beer). The point is, if you have to pigeonhole yourselves just to get fans (another word I fuckin' hate) then you probably should not be playing music in the first place; the best music is done by the musician, for the musician, because the musician not only wants to make music, but has to. The best songs are written without regard to image and marketablity. Period.

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And the new Lungfish LP contains ten of the best songs I've heard in a while.