The Descendants #2: “My Girls”

The Premise: The first independent record labels were founded by and for first-wave punk bands and really took off when hardcore and post-punk came around in the following years. The 80′s were moving along nicely, and those maturing punk bands were soon identified as “college rock.” By the time the now-divisive abbreviation “indie” crept up in the early 90′s, the bands wearing the label were still plenty punk. As much as folks love to hate the term, “indie” just won’t seem to leave the discussion and is just as present today as it ever was. But does it still have anything to do with its punk roots?

Course not! But as a fun little exercise, I’ll be examining some of the latest, hottest “indie” jams to see if I can’t pick out which bits they might have inherited from their punk ancestors. In this edition, I’ll pick apart Animal Collective’s monstrously popular “My Girls” from their 2009 album Merriweather Post Pavilion.

So, picking this song was a pretty dumb idea. It doesn’t even have a guitar part. Or any live instrument for that matter. But then Suicide never used live instruments either. Too bad “My Girls” doesn’t sound anything like Suicide, otherwise I could close this case right this second. Whelp, since grasping at straws is more or less the name of the game with this column, looks like we’ll be doing just that. Help me out Flux of Pink Indians!

This song struck me as nothing but the utter absence of punk until a fun little “whoo!” was whooped and the snare kicked in at the three minute mark. “Hey!” I thought, “Whoops are pretty punk, right?” Um, I guess. More importantly, it called attention to the fact that the song never quite locks in until it’s more than halfway through. The percussion sort of meanders and bounces off and on but doesn’t fully commit to the beat until that totally punk rock “whoop” shows up. Structurally, “Is There Anybody There?” by the 1980′s anarcho-punks Flux of Pink Indians (often lovingly referred to as Flux) does the same trick. Similar to how Animal Collective slowly layer their song around those ever-blippety sextuplet synths, Flux’s drummer sticks to a 16th note snare roll for a solid 2 minutes as the song builds around him before falling into a heavy one-two slap beat. The percussion in “My Girls” up until their snare snaps into place mostly just interjects when appropriate, providing more of a texture than a solid groove, just like the sporadic crash hits in “Is There Anybody There?”, which often don’t even fall on actual beats but are used simply to pile on the noise as needed.

Whew! That was hard! Let’s move on to the lyrics!

While punks typically aren’t family men, as Animal Collective certainly seem to be in the kid-loving domesticity-fest that is “My Girls,” they certainly love to hate materialism, a sentiment that shows up all over this song. “There isn’t much that I feel I need,” Pandaguy sings. “I don’t care for fancy things,” he says later, followed by the kicker, “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things, like social status.” Can I get a “You are not what you own!” up in this adobe slat hizzy? Seriously, just about any song from Repeater, Fugazi’s most socially conscious album, would make really great friends with Pandaman’s lyrics. Ian and Guy totally don’t care about fancy things and social status. Everything is greed! The morale of the story here is that while anti-materialism may drive some folks to flail around sweaty basements with guitars and such, it can compel others to lightly bob their heads while slowly turning knobs or something. Different strokes!

Join us next time for The Descendants #3, in which I investigate the punk trappings of Ke$ha’s not particularly indie but particularly awesome “Party at a Rich Dude’s House.”