Psycherelic Rock Ersatz Nostalgia for the Sixties and the Evocative Power of Sound in the Retro Rock Music of Tame Impala
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Volume ! La revue des musiques populaires 11 : 1 | 2014 Souvenirs, souvenirs Psycherelic Rock Ersatz Nostalgia for the Sixties and the Evocative Power of Sound in the Retro Rock Music of Tame Impala Nicholas Russo Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/volume/4344 DOI: 10.4000/volume.4344 ISSN: 1950-568X Printed version Date of publication: 30 December 2014 Number of pages: 162-173 ISBN: 978-2-913169-36-4 ISSN: 1634-5495 Electronic reference Nicholas Russo, « Psycherelic Rock », Volume ! [Online], 11 : 1 | 2014, Online since 30 December 2016, connection on 10 December 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/volume/4344 ; DOI : https:// doi.org/10.4000/volume.4344 L'auteur & les Éd. Mélanie Seteun 1 Psycherelic Rock Ersatz Nostalgia for the Sixties and the Evocative Power of Sound in the Retro Rock Music of Tame Impala by Nicholas Russo University of Wollongong (Australia) Abstract: Focusing on the psychedelic rock music Résumé : En se concentrant sur le rock psychédé- of Australian group Tame Impala, this paper inves- lique du groupe de rock australien Tame Impala, cet tigates how an experience of “ersatz nostalgia” article s’intéresse à la façon dont une expérience de (Appadurai, 1996) might be evoked through the nostalgie de substitution (Appadurai, 1996) peut être phonographic staging of sound in contemporary suggérée par la mise en scène phonographique dans retro rock music. Unlike a traditional nostalgia for la musique rétro contemporaine. Là où la nostalgie one’s own personal past, this music evidences a year- traditionnelle concerne le passé effectif d’une per- ning for a past outside of lived experience. This effect sonne, cette musique permet de concevoir une nos- of evoking nostalgic sentiment in new music relies in talgie s’attachant à un passé situé hors de l’expérience large part upon the use of particular sound elements vécue. Cette possibilité d’évoquer le sentiment nos- that are identifiable by musicians and audiences as talgique au sein de la production musicale récente the sonic cultural markers of the 1960s and which est en grande partie liée à l’utilisation d’éléments appeal to the wider collective memory of that era. sonores identifiables par les musiciens et le public comme des marqueurs culturels des années 1960, Keywords: retro, experience, memory, sound engineer déclenchant une vaste mémoire collective de cette Volume / noise / sound anarchy, recording / editing / produc- période. tion, phonography / transphonography, intertextuality (musical), experimentation, feedback / effetcs Mots-clés : rétro – expérience – mémoire – ingénieur ! n° 11-1 son / bruit / anarchie sonore – enregistrement / mon- tage / production, phonographie / transphonographie – intertextualité (musicale) – expérimentation – Larsen / effets 2 Nicholas Russo “It feels like we only go backwards.” I will begin by introducing the notions which (Tame Impala, 2012) underpin this study – ersatz nostalgia and the concept of “sound”—and outline how they are interconnected through contemporary retro rock retro revivals are far from music. Next I will propose a model for evaluating Although uncommon in popular how an experience of nostalgia might be evoked music, a curious development in contemporary sonically in contemporary retro rock music retro rock music which seeks to replicate the style through the technological replication and manip- and sound of the past is a corresponding develop- ulation of the sound palette of a past era. Here I ment of nostalgic sentiment towards classic rock will introduce the elements of phonographic stag- music, generally originating in the 1960s, which ing which I will then apply to the final part of manifests itself in the present generation of musi- this paper which comprises an investigation into cians and audiences. Unlike traditional nostalgic how these elements are manipulated in the music predilection, say, for one’s childhood, this current of Tame Impala in order to demonstrate the inter- trend of reconstructing the past in rock music play between phonographic staging of sound and appears to be geared towards satisfying ersatz their likely nostalgic associations. nostalgia—a yearning for a past that was never experienced and is only evidenced through cul- tural artefacts and socially constructed memory. Ersatz nostalgia and Indeed, whereas artists commonly draw inspira- collective memory tion from what came before (such as the influence Nostalgia is typically understood to be a feeling of of American rhythm and blues music on British wistful longing for an earlier time in one’s life, and rock and roll in the 1960s), the imitation and evo- is thus drawn from earlier personal experience. In cation of the past in contemporary retro rock is a this way Davis (1979) has suggested that “the past defining characteristic, resulting in a product that which is the object of nostalgia must in some fash- carries with it a sense of age. A key way in which ion be a personally experienced past rather than to affect this sensation in new music is to evoke the one drawn solely, for example, from chronicles, past through sound choices which appeal to the almanacs, history books, memorial tablets, or, collective memory of the past, a practice heard in for that matter, legend” (8). Increasingly however, the music of Australian band Tame Impala. In this the sentimental hallmarks of nostalgia, the long- paper I will investigate how sensations of nostal- ing for a time lost, the effacement of the present ! n° 11-1 gia without recourse to lived experience might be in favour of the perceived stability of the past, is evoked in contemporary retro rock music through demonstrated by those who have no experien- examining the phonographic staging of sound in tial ties to the past time which is favoured. This Volume the psychedelic rock music of Tame Impala. nostalgic predilection, which adopts the form of 3 Psycherelic Rock nostalgia but is devoid of experiential content, has which can be so easily and predictably aroused been observed by Baker and Kennedy (1994) and without recourse to an experiential basis. In this Goulding (2002) under the guises of “simulated regard Boym notes ersatz nostalgia, especially as nostalgia” and “vicarious nostalgia” respectively. promoted by the entertainment industry, “makes In both of these expositions of this nostalgic phe- everything time-sensitive and exploits that tempo- nomenon it is acknowledged that it is possible to ral deficit by giving a cure that is also a poison” create the sensation of nostalgia without recourse to (Boym, 2001: 38). experience. Appadurai (1996) similarly notes that In this sense, contemporary retro rock is a vehi- a range of merchandising and marketing strategies cle for this kind of nostalgic experience without seek to inculcate nostalgia by implanting a sense of experience, driven by the institutionalism of rock longing within consumers for things which they and roll and its connection to popular conceptions had never really missed because they had never of the past. Although sharing some similarities had them in the first place. For example, gift-or- with rock revivals in popular music from the late- der catalogues in the United States that manufac- 1960s and beyond, I consider contemporary retro ture nostalgia for bygone lifestyles, landscapes and rock that focuses on 1960s and early 1970s rock scenes appeal not so much to the sentiment of con- music as distinct from these earlier forms of retro sumers who have genuinely lost these things, but rock. The primary difference is that this kind of rather, work to teach “consumers to miss things retro rock music arising from the early 2000s to they have never lost” (Appadurai, 1996: 76-7). the present characteristically features artists and What this amounts to is a type of ready-made nos- audiences who are temporally removed by sev- talgia that can be derived without the hard work eral generations from the 1960s and early-1970s.2 of acquiring memories or experience from which So, unlike the fifties revival of early rock and roll to draw one’s own nostalgia from. So “rather than music in the 1970s or the success of the Happy Days expecting the consumer to supply memories while television show in the same era which were at least the merchandiser supplies the lubricant of nostal- in part linked with nostalgic sentiment derived gia, now the viewer need only bring the faculty of from lived childhood and adolescent experiences, nostalgia to an image that will supply the memory contemporary retro rock appeals to a nostalgic of a loss he or she has never suffered” (Appadurai, sentiment in the current generation of listeners Volume 1996: 78). This “nostalgia without lived experience and performers where there is no lived experi- or collective historical memory” has been coined ence to draw upon (Moore, 2010: 163). Nostalgia “ersatz nostalgia” by Appadurai, and is inter- in contemporary retro rock thus relies upon an ! n° 11-1 changeably referred to as “armchair nostalgia” and understanding of the past that appeals to collective “imagined nostalgia’ (1996: 77-8).1 Nostalgia has memory, the remembrances “held in common by a thus been transformed from the realm of vivid consensus in a group or society, not just by those personal attachments to contrived temporal losses who may have first-hand experience of the events 4 Nicholas Russo memorised” (Wolfe et al., 1999: 271). And since distinguishes contemporary retro rock in the last the concept of the past in contemporary retro rock decade from retro rock trends in the past is the music is by necessity reliant upon highly mediated concurrent rise of online digital media databases representations of our collective memory of the such as iTunes and YouTube which have not only past, it is ultimately these mediated representations indelibly altered the music industry model of pro- of the 1960s that are likely to evoke that collective duction and consumption, but have made availa- memory.