Say No To Beards!

The hushed reverence, the oh so earnest lyrics, the lush harmonies followed by the really very sincere nodding of the head and gentle applause. A Fleet Foxes concert can be a very disturbing and chilling occasion for any normal music loving individual. The outpouring of smug is enough to render a self aware person temporarily blind and deaf.

It isn’t just Fleet Foxes; they are just one of many who will be more than likely put out to pasture by these consumer driven wastrels. Midlake, The Kissaway Trail, Bon Iver, Beach House, the list goes on. The crowd are distinctly middle class possibly working in the financial sector or as solicitors, patting each other on the back with their eyes for being in on this secret and really getting it.  They make these identikit bands popular for no better reason, then they make them believe they are cool and with it because they like bands from the American Midwest with beards and songs about lost love or living in a cabin or the hopelessness of everything.

‘We may live in the city and wear suits but we listen to music about nature by people with beards, occasionally we may attempt to grow beards ourselves but only to a point were it doesn’t affect our jobs’, is the mantra that goes through the distinctly ill wired brains of these drones, it is possible to know someone will be a fan of this sort of buffoonery without them even telling you. The first clue is, they look very pleased with themselves, all the time. Secondly, they will be wearing a suit and drinking a bottle of beer. Thirdly, they probably have more money than you. Finally they don’t like talking during songs or moving or merriment. 

They define themselves by being so relevant so everything is fleeting; they consume only the new and discard the less recent. Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, the list will grow, record companies will churn this nonsense until, just like the slinky, these half witted consumers, trade in their hollow meaningless adulation to some other fad. I believe beach based harmonies are going to be huge in 2010, so **** off beards.

Day by day as the record industry contracts like a dilated arsehole, young bands in your area are being beaten down, possible pretenders to the throne of greatness are discarded due to apathy and lack of interest yet these clowns can waltz into headlining festivals and sell out gigs on the back of one piss poor album that someone deemed to be a cool secret. It must be soul destroying for these young local bands to see bands as undeniably mediocre as some of the bed wetters from America coming over to the adulation of arseholes and scene followers.

Wilco, we love you but you have a lot to answer for. 

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