Radio 4 - Stealing of a Nation

Genre rock Publisher City Slang/Astralwerks External Links Radio 4 Astral Werks

The first clue I had vis-a-vis the inherent abnormality of the New Wave of New Wave of New Wave hit me during a conversation with a much younger friend of mine. The unfortunate subject of said conversation was a young acquaintance given, in typically paradoxical look-at-me/don't you fucking-look-at-me hipster fashion, to breaking out a boom box on the local college campus and doing the Robot (apparently, the height of her move-busting skills). My friend (whom we shall call Bill, for that is his name) said, "Man, I hate that dance music she listens to!"

Of course, my hackles rose immediately, and I readied myself to call him a rockist and worse if necessary. But I played it cool, coyly asking him, "You mean that 'ooh-ah-just-a-little-bit' techno stuff?"

He said, "No! I mean dance music. You know, like the Rapture."

Do what now? Had my jaw not been on the floor by now, I would have given poor Bill a Ken Burns-style lecture on real dance music and how These Indie Kids Today Don't Know What That Is. But it was, so I couldn't.

Aside from "Wow, these rock critics are OLD!" there was a point to the above story. All right, it was these kids today don't know what real dance music is. You got me. Now, I like to do the Robot as much as the next dude-with-an-Interpol-haircut, but I can also regular-dance. At least I try, like Minor Threat says to do. But I fear that this new barrage of post-punk-art-terrorist type bands are born more out of irony than for love of the music. Despite their best attempts at Marxist rhetoric, Radio 4, Brooklyn hipsters to a man, have forgotten that to make good dance music, you a) must like to dance, and b) be willing to do so without a pained grimace or a ready-for-my-Vice-magazine-close-up shit-eating grin. Instead, Radio 4 has expended precious energy picking out little hats and talking about how most of the dance music The Kids are listening to these days doesn't, you know, say anything. That's fine and dandy, but if you plan to excoriate the very genre from whence you steal (and don't give me that "stealing is an art form crap) then you'd better come up with some better lyrics than "Electrify/across the floor," and damn quick.

What made the first wave of post-punk so exhilarating was a sense of camaraderie that transcended race and class lines, creating original and lasting music out of a very real sense of despair. Stealing of a Nation, though danceable (and not just the Robot either-I checked!), amounts to nothing more than a series of condescending 4/4 harangues with the occasional whistle. You feel as if you're on the wrong end of a High Fidelity rock history lesson/nightmare. The band has the right influences, but it's frustrating knowing that they could have combined those with their obviously right-on politics to forge something akin to what their forebears did. In these times, politically charged music is a necessity. Maybe their next album will see Radio 4 leaving their Williamsburg enclave and getting the balance right.