20 something
The older I get, the less I find myself impressed by such feats as this.
Age acts as a check on impressionability at the same time as compounding instinct, and in this instance the two have combined to leave me resoundingly nonplussed by the sort of achievement that will quite probably be surpassed come another twelve months or so.
The curse of over-familiarity - of finding yourself revelling in the luxury of detecting echoes of the past in the sights and sounds of the present - just diminishes it further. There's nothing in what this band are doing that hasn't been tried and tested before, albeit not packaged in the same way. To adopt a phrase, it's the same notes but most definitely not in the old order.
If I was ten years younger I'd probably feel completely differently, yet that would be OK because I'd be ten years younger. But then what I knew of the world then was, well, a world away from what I know now. The same thing that qualifies 20-year olds to make music that can purport to be universal enough to go to number one is the same thing that qualifies other 20-year olds to send that music to number one.
What bemuses me above all is the eulogising of 40-year olds about the self same music, be it through a desire to appear cutting edge, to defy their own age, to claim pop music back from their successor generations, or to just kick up a bit of fuss. It's almost a case of protesting too much. The only thing worse than 40 somethings going on about people half their age is 40 somethings acting like people half their age.
My gut feeling is to just keep my head down and let folk follow whatever fads and fashions they like - so long as they don't presume that age confers upon them the right to be more right (let alone "right on") than their pubescent peers.
Age acts as a check on impressionability at the same time as compounding instinct, and in this instance the two have combined to leave me resoundingly nonplussed by the sort of achievement that will quite probably be surpassed come another twelve months or so.
The curse of over-familiarity - of finding yourself revelling in the luxury of detecting echoes of the past in the sights and sounds of the present - just diminishes it further. There's nothing in what this band are doing that hasn't been tried and tested before, albeit not packaged in the same way. To adopt a phrase, it's the same notes but most definitely not in the old order.
If I was ten years younger I'd probably feel completely differently, yet that would be OK because I'd be ten years younger. But then what I knew of the world then was, well, a world away from what I know now. The same thing that qualifies 20-year olds to make music that can purport to be universal enough to go to number one is the same thing that qualifies other 20-year olds to send that music to number one.
What bemuses me above all is the eulogising of 40-year olds about the self same music, be it through a desire to appear cutting edge, to defy their own age, to claim pop music back from their successor generations, or to just kick up a bit of fuss. It's almost a case of protesting too much. The only thing worse than 40 somethings going on about people half their age is 40 somethings acting like people half their age.
My gut feeling is to just keep my head down and let folk follow whatever fads and fashions they like - so long as they don't presume that age confers upon them the right to be more right (let alone "right on") than their pubescent peers.
posted by Alistair Myles at 5:22 pm
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