Musical Uniquities, by Matt Shirley

Published: April 9, 2010Posted in: Matt Shirley
Musical Uniquities, by Matt Shirley

Most bands aren’t unique.  Bands are like the plots of situational comedies.  Within their genre, they’re pretty much all the same, with only a few changes in characters, cultural backgrounds, and propensities toward alcoholism.  Coldplay is a lot like Death Cab for Cutie who is a lot like Peter Bjorn and John who is a lot like Snow Patrol who is a lot like Jack Johnson who is a lot like John Mayer who looks a lot like Matt Shirley.  However, there are a couple of (legitimate) bands who break this mold.  Who are unlike anything we have ever heard before, or maybe will ever hear again, and who are generally unmistakable in sound.  To these bands, a tribute.  Not necessarily because they make sweet, sweet music, but because they are unlike all the rest.

5. The Mars Volta

You’ll notice I put the word ‘legitimate’ in parentheses in the paragraph above.  This is because it’s quite easy to be a unique band when you produce eardrum-piercing garbagenoise or a jumbled mess of musical weirdom.  The bands who do this are il-legitimate.  And unfortunately The Mars Volta is teetering on the cusp of this characterization.

I was in love with their first album, “De-Loused In The Comatorium”, when I randomly purchased it in 2004, because each song was a bunch of sounds I had never heard together before but that still held together as music.  They lost me with “Frances the Mute” and “Amputechture.”  While they were consistent with naming their album things that get a red underline on Microsoft Word, they lost the musical aspect of their music.  In fact, on “Frances the Mute”, they lost the concept of song altogether.  While “L’Via L’Viaquez” is an amazing song; the original impetus behind my excitement for the album and the metaphorical rod I carried around while buying it, the rest of the album seems to be an attempt at classical music. Songs last 15+ minutes, blend into one another, and have titles like  “4. Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore: Vade Mecum” and “5. Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore: Pour Another Icepick.”  What the fuck is that?

But even though they have lost their way, The Mars Volta is still an unmistakable band with an unmistakable sound and can certainly be characterized as unique.

4. Mumford & Sons

I’ve wanted to write about Mumford & Sons for a long time now, not because of their uniqueness but mainly because I honestly believe it is impossible not to like them.  I stand behind the following thesis: If you listen to this band, you will like this band.  That being said, it’s kind of counterintuitive to say they are unique, but Mumford & Sons blends traditional folk with two or three other genres of music I don’t know enough about to describe, to form a holy combo of soulful, lyrical, unique music.

3.  Outkast

I’m fairly certain the members of Outkast are at least partially insane.  While it’s dangerous for sane people to try to make weird music, it is obviously quite the opposite when weird people try to make sane music.  In my estimation, Outkast belongs to the latter category. And with this weirdness, they took a clone-heavy genre and made their own distinctive, Outkast-sized dent in it.

2.  Radiohead

Radiohead isn’t even a lot like Radiohead most of the time.

While I don’t particularly care for the newer versions of their reinvented sound (translation: everything after “OK Computer” is trash), I respect their ability to distance themselves not only from other bands within their genre, but from their own, earlier versions of themselves.

1. Tool

Every time I hear a Tool song, I think about what it would be like to hear the same song with no prior knowledge of the band’s work.  It must be mind-blowing.  I can’t even imagine that a first time listener would be able to wrap his head around what he is hearing.  I think to myself,  “this is probably what people felt like when they first heard Led Zepplin.”  Not because Led Zepplin and Tool are superfantastic (which they kind of are) but because they are so unlike anything from their respective musical generations.

Sometimes I use Amazon.com’s “If you like x then you might also like y” feature to find new bands similar to ones I already like.  Aside from other Tool and A Perfect Circle (side project, also awesome) albums, Amazon gives me the following bands as recommendations: Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, Godsmack, Lamb of God, Slipknot, and Sublime.  Tool is absolutely nothing like any of these bands.   And when I continue through their suggestions, and the list of musical artists clogging my iTunes and my temporal lobes, I realize there aren’t ANY bands like Tool.

And if there aren’t any other people doing anything like what you are doing, I guess that makes you unique.

Honorable Mention

Before you tell me how wrong I am, how stupid my face is, and list your own version of this list, some honorable mentions:

White Stripes – Pretty much suck but quite distinctive.

Cake – Name one band that sounds like Cake.

Crystal Castles – I keep trying to find bands as awesome as Crystal Castles.  No luck yet.

Everclear – Kind of like Radiohead in that Everclear doesn’t sound like Everclear sometimes but not nearly as weird or as shitty.

Cocorosie – Jury’s still out on quality but uniqueness is definitely a strong suit.

Queens of the Stone Age – I was scared of QOTSA for a long time because they got labeled as ‘Metal’ in all the music magazines.  Metal they are not but if you’ve ever played a song of theirs on Guitar Hero, you realize how different their songs are from all the others.

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