Crawdaddy! The Magazine of Rock

I’m probably out of touch, but I don’t think music today has the same roots in angst that it did in the ’80s and ’90s, when I grew up. Teenagers will always be angst-ridden bastards, but I’m not sure if they will ever have access to the same full-blown expression of those edgy feelings that flooded the musical landscape in the heyday of Trapper Keepers and fears about Yellow 5. Or, maybe everybody believes this about the decade in which they grew up, and I am only defending the music that defined my youth and my generation. Maybe angst necessarily moves with the times. In the end, who’s to say that “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” ranked any lower on the angst-o-meter than Offspring’s “Self Esteem”? After all, angst is a slippery word. It is an unspecific feeling, or collection of feelings, that we generally use to describe any aspect of the torrid ups and downs experienced post-puberty: Lust, depression, anger, and the residue of anguish that sweats through all these things. 

All I know is that Violent Femmes are the angstiest (whatever the hell this really means) band I’ve ever heard. And, unlike some metal and hair bands, they didn’t rely on cheap methods of constructing this feeling, such as loud guitars and screeching. Angst coursed through the veins of their music. Brian Ritchie’s bass, spasmodic but persistent, captures the adolescent paroxysms that come from pent-up energy and frustration—a kid slamming buttons and jamming joysticks, desperately trying to reach the next level of Galaga. The band served as the soundtrack for a gaggle of frustrated teens that produced unfortunate casualties like vandalism, scabbed dicks, and maybe even a few slit wrists. They also produced a twisted, fuck-the-world sort of self-reliant joy, probably best experienced when tearing along toward nowhere in some beater wagon (or, second best, daddy’s convertible), flicking cigarettes out the window.

I tried, but I can’t think of a modern day equivalent to this band. This is an argument for another time, but I think a lot of modern rock music is either too dumb, or tries too hard to sound grown up and sensitive, to wrestle with angst in the same primal way Gordon Gano and Violent Femmes, along with some of their peers, did. One new artist, however, comes close.

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