Oasis x2 and Better than Ezra

Fair warning, this one's a doozy. Mostly because i had to squeeze 3 gargantuan 90s albums into one tiny little bottle to do it.

The most confusing part of Power Pop is that it's a make it up as we go genre. The central theme is that critics hated "happy sounding" rock and roll that wasn't actually happy, more longing, pining, searching, chasing the illusion, hoping things will change with jangles on top. So, for 3 decades they just kept chucking bands that felt like that into the alge filled swimming pool. Somehow Green Day is the punk infused version of powerpop. Todd Rundgren? Sure. XTC? Absolutely. Gin Blossoms, Ben Folds, Cheap Trick, what is wrong with all of you? If this all reeks of the Nu-Metal incredulity i shared a while ago, then do what i do and carry an old school clothes pin at all times. Regardless, when i think of Power Pop, i jump straight to the mid 90s version. Critically speaking, Power Pop is an American thing, but what should we call the British version? Brit...Pop...? Who's more power-pop than Oasis? Nobody, that's who. Blur is pretty Britpop, but nobody was directly comparing Blur to the Beatles, were they? 

Now, you might counter argue that Oasis is Alternative Rock, and i'd pointer-counter-argue alternative to what? Find me a song on their first two albums that isn't standard love/relationship/modern-life middle-class first-world doldrum jibber-jabber. Go ahead, i'll listen to 'em too while i wait... 

... how is this any different than Bram Tchaikovsky? The guitars have nicer sounding distortion, there's a noise-rock influence thrown in, and that's about it. It's up-tempo rock and roll, blues riffs, and the occasional boogie. It's fantastic, and i love every second of it, but they directly reference Beatles stuff, and it's a facade. Liam and Noel are about the most dysfunctionally drunk egomaniac brothers you could ever find. Worse than crazy Joe Loeffler. Even the Collyers, those kooky eccentric death-by-hoarding Manhattenite recluses, liked each other as people. So no, this isn't Alternative Rock. This is John Denver with round-framed lilac-tinted sunglasses. 

I think we need a refresher on Alternative. Luckily, Compy found some concurrent American Alternative for comparison. But back to Oasis for the moment. That first album is Definitely awesome, but Maybe a little too divorced from reality to be universally appealing. Being unapoligetically British doesn't have the same flavor as the other times i mentioned that perspective. Why is that? Oh, i remember, that whole crusading, conquering, and colonizing entire continents, and cultures, but never having to apologize or feel the least bit of remorse thing. Obviously it's a bit unfair to atlas Oasis with the entirety of European History, but when you couple that kind of cultural quintessence with a veneer of "all our troubles are relatively trivial" it has a definite tang of sun-baked potato salad. 

The second album is a bit better in that regard. There's a clear distinction between realities, a flavor of the unfulfilling, a recognition of incompleteness. It's still noisy jangle-pop, but there's some real human emotion to it that's somewhat missing from the first album. There's the obvious narcissistic fetishism of Wonderwall, but there's also some "don't idolize me" self-recognition to balance it. 

Emotionally speaking, Morning Glory is definitely the more adventurous album. Back to back, Definitely Maybe ends up sounding like the fake travel agent kind of smiling, but Morning Glory has a more realistic FOMO quality. For the record, holy hell no, don't actually listen to the 100-minute pair back to back in one sitting like i did. 

Now, is Steve Albini's categorization of Power Pop as "music for pussies" fair? No, i don't think so, you can enjoy this with or without testosterone. Besides, you probably wouldn't put Oasis anywhere near your Shellac playlist (Shellac is Albini's current band), because like i said, this isn't any kind of Alternative anything. Still, the incorporation of noise rock feedback and squiggly background guitar wailing gives it a burst of energy that makes the Pop part feel noticeably less uncomfortable. Plus, i think i could take Albini in a fight, but the Gallagher brothers are probably so accustomed and anesthetized to beating the crap out of each other that it's hard to imagine calling them pussies in real life and not instantly regretting it. 

Ok, i think we have an understanding of what Power Pop is, let's go hear what it's not. 

If you remember running throught the wet grass while desperately wanting reality to not suck, then you remember Better Than Ezra's second album. I don't have that one, Compy found their major label debut, Deluxe. 

Stylistically, the single most important part of Alternative Rock is the Bass Solo. That doesn't mean it's a solo solo, it means nobody else is playing for 4 or 8 bars. It can go anywhere, intro, bridge, hell you could have the chorus be a wimper and a single bass lick, it just has to say "hey, look over here, bass players are people too, and we don't have to mimic the rhythm guitar or play chord roots the whole time!" 

Also note that although it's not the full i'm not ok, there's no pizza party to look forward to after we lose in the quarter-finals. It's not in your face, but there's a whole lot of "life sucks and everyone ignores it" going on. You know why that is? Where it comes from? It's James Van Der Beek screaming "i don't want your life!" Obviously, that's a tad melodramatic, but the sentiment is real and it takes a whole lot of anger and self confidence to give it a voice; a self confidence that's been eroded generation by generation by the lottery myth of the American Dream, that weird idea that it's better to feed off the crumbs of false generosity than it is to do the grueling work yourself and be content. 

Do my descriptions match those of the forum trolls? I doubt it. Let's peer into the imaginary 12,000 page tome that is Bottle's Taxonomy, i think the vocabulary section is somewhere in the middle... ah, here we go: 

Mainstream: mainstream music, with some obvious and/or ironic exceptions overwhelmingly focuses on what is good, widely popular, or generically acceptable at a particular time. Criticism of mainstream culture can and does occasionally become itself mainstream, but for a significantly shorter period of time than obvious mainstream thought. We tend to call these "fads," and they tend to last anywhere from 3 to 6 years. 

Flipping back a few pages: 

Alternative: whatever is unlike the concurrent mainstream at the time. Alternative music can certainly be antagonistic toward the mainstream, but more often tends to be a tangent. More a "that's not important, this is what we should be concerned about" mentality. Alternative frequently replaces the mainstream view it criticizes, but only for a short 1-2 year time period. Alternative also tends to be a more regionally localized type of critical response to specific aspects of Mainstream. This is completely distinct from Underground, which has virtually no connection to normal daily life of the time. 

So there you have it. We might all be more confused than when we started. I think next we need to look at some truly obscure mid-80s Glam to appreciate how the macho attitudes of the 70s dissolved into the smelly, sticky hairspray fog of their own oblivion.

Guiffria