 |
If critics should be harsh toward the top dogs of the music business for offering nothing new to a particular genre or sound, how should they then turn their pens on emerging artists? This is the question that I ask myself when listening again to Nocturne, the second album from Virginia dream-pop artist Wild Nothing. It's easy to be seduced by this music. If you listen long enough, you will grow bangs that hang over your eyes, walk more briskly and to-the-beat, and your frown will start to look like a smile. (Well, actually, it's not a frown. It's more that contemplative sidelong face that you get when you're alone with a painting.) So, if you need a soundtrack to that navy-striped off-the-shoulder look, this might be it — especially if you are a 20-year-old girl, or an older dude who wishes you were one. But for the jaded among us, this is regressive and full of genre-contrivances — late to the Cut Copy party in an electro-drums-bow-tie-and-synth-pads tux, wearing slathers of crummy digital-reverb cologne, and double-bagging it with 7th chords. When will this start to feel at least slightly embarrassing?
WILD NOTHING + DIIV + BLONDS | Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave, Allston | September 20 @ 8 pm | 18+ | $15 | 617.779.0140
