Waking Ear

Lou Reed/"Perfect Day" -- I just got into Transformer a couple of months ago, and it's scary to think how much Reed/Velvet blends in with the indie-rock collection on my iPod. I always knew the line of descent from Velvet to Pixies, etc. was pretty tight, but damn.

Indie rock as we know it today needs a little more of this exuberance, though. That tremble in Reed's voice, that echo-y, woozy effect on the music -- wow! Those little intangibles make all the difference. They separate the Interpols from the Longwaves. (The Stills are somewhere in between.)

If Julavits can call for the End of Snark (and despite how silly and earnest that sounds, I think she has a point; being clever and irreverent sounds great when you can back it up, but it's often an easy out), then I think it's worth positing that music, to be truly good, must have that little something extra -- an unharnessed joy, a genuine, directed anger, something -- that can't be put into words.