In the last decade, corporate interest, brand manoeuvring plus a smattering of big-name festivals have essentially bankrolled and helped sustain what is left of the Indian rock music community. Standalone concerts featuring bands have almost ceased to exist. Reality spells a Puma-this, a Converse-that and a Budweiser-so-and-so, mainly just brand activations masked as concerts aimed at the youth, or in other words, the target market for a new line of shoes, clothes or beer. This, while electronic dance music, for better or worse, has all but taken over what’s left of the music performance space.
So why have we been set so far back in terms of independent music in the city? Among the various arguments to be made is the hot potato issue of originality. As a defining characteristic of a band’s work, originality is a subject contested, yet rarely discussed in the open. And even more so since serious discussions of bands have gone from impassioned debates in watering holes and online forums to calculated moves in agency boardrooms. Are bands with particularly popular Western influences even capable of bodies of work that are wholly unique in this increasingly competitive creative space? Here’s an analysis of this phenomenon with a look at last week’s most talked about album, Triggerpunkte by Chennai’s The F16s.
Back in October 2015, The F16s, in conversation with Rolling Stone India , stated, “Our music so far was more like a tribute to the bands we listened to.” Fans and casual consumers of the material in question, EPs Kaleidoscope and Nobody’s Gonna Wait, immediately likened them to UK chartbusters Arctic Monkeys, New York indie darlings The Strokes, and eventually English dance-punk outfit Foals: the latter from whose palette of sound they had ‘borrowed’ rather liberally.
Consequently, The F16s rode a wave of success and recognition that resulted in a trip to the Rubber Tracks studio in New York courtesy of shoe conglomerate Converse. Eventually, they landed up at London’s iconic Abbey Road Studios, where their subsequent music was recorded.
As for their latest effort, The F16s say, “As a band, we’re now finding our niche and we understand what we want. This album is way more F16s than any other artist we’ve been listening to, which is awesome, because we have our own sound.”
So then, the proof of this statement must be extricated from the pudding, Triggerpunkte , their debut full-length album released recently via Bandcamp. In a week since its release, it has already gained some accolades. Besides their diehard fans, high praise has come equally from music-agnostic blogs and magazines like Rolling Stone India .
To this critic’s ear, The F16s’ new, original direction is, to put it bluntly, once again a mosaic of sounds already explored, and in many cases championed by another set of Western bands. Traces of the old F16s happen to remain on a couple of Triggerpunkte ’s songs, particularly opening duo ‘Summer In My Lungs’ and ‘Moon Child’. The bulk of the album, however, plays out like a tapestry of F16-ised songs by other bands. These include art-rockers TV On The Radio, synth-pop trio Future Islands, festival circuit regulars Mutemath, self-described “ambient-punk” band Deerhunter, dance-punk icons LCD Soundsystem and notably English supergroup, The Last Shadow Puppets.
The album isn’t without its meritorious moments though, particularly in the kink of the slinky, slowed-down ‘Cannibal Life II’, the more abrasive ‘Digital Dead’ and the delayed euphoria of closer ‘You Could Use Me As A Weapon’. If anything, you can’t fault The F16s for keeping it diverse along the length of Triggerpunkte ’s nine songs.
It probably doesn’t help the band’s cause that their lyrics, though possibly honest and even heartfelt, are still quite arbitrary and often indecipherable. They don’t so much play the role of messenger but rather settle for being accessories to the instrumentation.
Either way, little in Triggerpunkte asserts itself as a bold, original sound and vision. Not, at least, the kind that’s ready to represent modern, Indian band music on the world stage.
And if a critic with only a middling interest in Western rock music can pick their influences apart, it does make for a cogent statement on what the word ‘original’ has really become stretched out to mean.
A critical beat down of popular, conglomerate-backed rock band’s album will not affect listens or sales. In any case, Triggerpunkte is a free download.
Still, it seems that in contemporary Indian rock music, we’re still stuck paying clothed homage to our influences. The emperor, his lack of clothes notwithstanding, will be just fine so long as nakedness is evidently the flavour of the year.
The author is a freelance music journalist
Download Triggerpunkte atthef16s.bandcamp.com
