Contemporary R&B is the new African music.
Waitthat sounds wrong. Let me rephrase that more precisely: For a small but visible subset of indie-rock acts, contemporary R&B is the latest unlikely muse suddenly in vogue. Much as some of the most high-profile indie bands of 2008 drew from the rhythms and tones of African musicamong them Vampire Weekend, Foals, Yeasayer and Dirty Projectorsin the last year there’s been a trend toward the less exotic, more stigmatized sounds of electric, modern R&B, led by bands like The xx, Discovery and, uh, Dirty Projectors again.
It’s a riveting development, and it has yielded fruit. Discovery, perhaps the group most faithful to the contemporary R&B template, recorded “Orange Shirt,” a sugar rush of a single that recreated the indulgent joys of Usher’s Top 40 hits. The song is what more indie-rock should strive to be: astute, genuine and utterly forward looking. Dirty Projects, meanwhile, struck particular pay dirt with their single “Stillness Is The Move,” a much more abstracted but no less loving take on modern urban music. And The xx created an entirely new sound altogether, conceiving the shy love child of post-punk and R&B. The late John Peel, at once the biggest fan and biggest critic of “white boys with guitars” homogeny, would have dug them the most.
It’s harder, however, to get a read on the avant Chicago duo Pit Et Pat, the latest indie act to revel in the expressive sonics of modern R&B. Judging from The Flexible Entertainer, their fourth album and first following their drastic reinvention as a duo, out today on Thrill Jockey Records, they seem to be the jaded art students crashing the party for purposes of making fun of it.
The Flexible Entertainer is imaginative in its juxtaposition between twitchy guitars and flagrantly synthesized electronics. Make no mistake about it, though, this is spiteful stuff. “Water,” the album’s first proper song, plays not like a tribute to modern R&B, but a vicious send up. Whirring, piercingly crappy Timbaland-esque synths wheeze like they’re running out of batteries, while singer Fay Davis-Jeffers yawns nonsensical, half-formed raps about getting nasty. The song closes with a grotesque, pseudo-chopped-and-screwed male voice begging, "Gimmie some."
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If Pit Er Pat is aiming to comment on the sterile state of contemporary, commercial R&Band I think they are; the album’s title seems to be a dig at the nubile performers that dominate the genretheir problem is they’re satirizing a long out-of-date conception of modern R&B.
On "Water," Davis-Jeffers’ Missy Elliott-esque pronunciation of “Wha-Tah” suggests the target of her scorn dates back to 2002. Back then commercial R&B really was mechanical and contentious, but the genre has evolved in thrilling new directions since then. Contemporary R&B is no longer defined as much by Missy’s mannered futurisms but rather by its dedication to the biggest, fluffiest, most sonorous sounds possible (Jason Derulo's new single is a textbook example.) Contemporary R&B is no longer interested in pushing against the grain; instead, it aims for immediate, maximum gratification. That’s an admirable M.O. if there ever was one, and a much harder one for Pit Et Pat to assail.
I’ll give credit where credit is due, though: If Pir Er Pat have positioned themselves as grumpy, subversive contrarians, they’ve at least done so in an interesting way. Even if the duo seems to be mocking much of the music that excites me most right now, The Flexible Entertainer deserves a spin in the same way that Ayn Rand is a necessary read for even the most devote liberals.
