As Will Hermes documented so vividly in his account of it's music scene in the mid 1970's, "Love Goes To Buildings On Fire", even in it's bleakest moments, New York City's musical community is arguably one of the most diverse and vibrant on Earth. While the city ailed from near financial collapse, blackouts, and the Son of Sam, Kool Herc was inventing hip-hop in the rec room of a South Bronx housing project, Jeffrey Hyman and John Cummings became Joey and Johnny Ramone and spent the next three decades extracting more value out of three chords than humanly possible, and a strange new form of dance music called disco wafted from old churches and warehouses in Chelsea.
As the 70's moved on, a group of artists and musicians moved into the lofts of the Lower East Side which was an urban wasteland. Many of these musicians abandoned the traditional verse - chorus - verse song structure and created an extreme type of underground music called "No Wave". No Wave probably had more in common with minimalist and underground composers than the blues with songs that were short, very loud and very unstructured and tended to veer on the edge of chaos with each chord. Among No Wave's most notable acts included Teenage Jesus and the Jerks featuring Lydia Lunch, Glenn Branca's Theoretical Girls, and DNA. While achieving any kind of commercial success, the scene attracted and embraced young musicians including Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo who went on to form Sonic Youth, Helmet's Page Hamilton, and Michael Gira who went on to form the over the top act Swans.
The explosion of hip - hop notwithstanding, the New York music scene went into a semi state of hibernation throughout the 80's and 90'. Punk had become new wave or morphed into a meaner, far more evil twin called hardcore, Saturday Night Fever and Dance Fever helped facilitate disco's early demise, and even the Ramones moved to California. At the end of the 90's, as the city was going through a renaissance of mammoth proportions, just across the Williamsburg bridge from the Lower East Side, a new generation of bands came unexpected from an unlikely place - Brooklyn. Bands such as the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, TV on the Radio, and Clap Your Say Yeah suddenly sprang up and made Brooklyn a hot bed for independent music. While other indie scenes such as Seattle or Minneapolis experienced a relatively rapid rise and fall, the Brooklyn scene - while occasionally suffering from being almost too hip - has continued to attract vital indie acts such as Yeasayer, Dirty Projectors, and lo-fi pop masters Grizzly Bear.
Over the past few weeks, both Swans and Grizzly Bear, representing the old and new guard of the New York indie music scene released extremely powerful new albums. Grizzly Bear's latest "Shields" continues it run of pop gems while the new Swans release "The Seer" is an over the top, two plus hour album of pure insanity.
During it's initial run from the early 80's through 1997, Swans built a reputation for being loud, abrasive, and being just a bit on intense side. Gira and crew's antics inspired bands such as Tool, Neurosis, and Godflesh. On it's newest release and second since reforming a few years back, Swans have created an epic 2 hour plus masterpiece. Nearly every song is a roller-coaster ride with slow moments building up to mammoth crescendos on a dime or vice versa. The centerpiece of the record is the 32 minute (not a typo) title track. Beginning with a barrage of electronically processed horns and percussion, "The Seer" becomes an intense evolving jam after an abrupt climax before finishing as a twisted Middle Eastern style jam. By then end of the 32 minute experience, you feel like you're in another world. A complete change of pace from the mammoth title track, Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs makes a cameo appearance on the folkish sounding "Song For A Warrior". Throughout the record, Gira allows the band to teeter on the edge of chaos without ever falling off - finishing with, of all things, a two minute, over the top percussion solo. Gira doesn't sing much on the record but when he does, it almost serves a means to pull the band from the brink.
Grizzly Bear has made reputation for itself for making smart, layered, powerful pop records with an low-fi feel to them. The hype behind Grizzly Bear was so huge that their 2009 release, Veckatimest, debuted in the top 10 - something unheard of for an Indie Band. The hype was well worth it with tracks such as the bouncy pop gem "Two Weeks" and the gorgeous, atmospheric finale "Foreground". "Shields" takes the formula from Veckatimest and takes it one step further. The opener "Sleeping Ute" is a jangly tune that starts with a very intense first half then fading to a subdued acoustic part driven by a great Spanish guitar piece. Throughout the album, songwriter Ed Droste creates a layered lo-fi sound to match the mammoth size hooks that dominate. "The Hunt" uses a sparse drum beat over a gently strummed acoustic part. gun-shy's multi-layered vocals bring back memories of XTC's finer moments while Sun in Your Eyes is a dramatic 7 minute finale starting with a simple piano section but peaking at the chorus with a horn section and clanging percussion. "Shields" takes the formula from the first few Grizzly Bear albums to new levels.
Regardless of the time frame, New York City has been the launching pad for many types of music no matter how obscure. Grizzly Bear and Swans reinforce the fact with two powerful releases that are among the best, if not the best of 2012.
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