Seattle Subsonic

Rococo And The Information Age

October 5th, 2010

Pitchfork has a great, albeit brief, interview with the Butler Bros. of Arcade Fire. If you’re a fan, and how could you not be, it’s worth a moment of your fleeting internet time. The interviewer queries them on how they fit into the overall Major v. Indie label spectrum, and about the underlying ideas in a few of their songs, regarding youth and nostalgia (two central themes in all of the band’s music). What caught my eye was a quote Win gives on the slow, swirling burn of “Rococo”:

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“I probably heard about the Rococo period through Régine, who was really into medieval art when she was younger. Not like Renaissance fairs, more like learning ancient languages. And while there are so many beautiful Baroque churches and it’s a beautiful artistic tradition, it almost gets hideous and grotesque if if you push it further. You can take something beautiful and overdo it. I had a similar feeling about the current information age, where you have all this information that you don’t need or want but the medium is there so it’s filled up. I was trying to think about this very modern idea using the same language. “

This struck me for two reasons: One, “Rococo” is, in my opinion, one of the weirder, more challenging songs on The Suburbs. I didn’t really like it at first. It’s kind of an acquired taste, though, given how bizarre the first 60 seconds are, before opening up to reveal a rather solid orchestral ballad with some scuzzy guitar underscoring. And two, the connection he made between the style’s opulence and the intimidating overabundance of information we have nowadays. I guess I too struggle with that sometimes, the “rat race”, if you will, and the plethora of it all (specifically, with music); and in my struggling with the song, that connection is certainly not lost on me. No, it’s quite close to home, where I can find it. Knowing that’s what he had in mind—I love reading about an artist’s explanation of a song’s inception—just makes it that much more personal and affecting to me. Win Butler is one of the most interesting musicians there is today.