These New Puritans

So, last week I was going off all the time about old people like Mick Jagger, Mark E. Smith, and Sonic Youth. (I wonder if, when they started, they ever thought they’d exist long enough for that name to take on the extra layers of meaning that have accumulated with age?)

In any case, I apologize. Alec Bemis doesn’t care about old people. But he really wanted to explore the way sincerity and referentiality is being explored in music these days. And, sure, he’s probably undercutting that message a bit by referring to himself in the third person. So, again, he’ll apologize, and leave you, instead, with this newish track from These New Puritans — his greatest current object of musical obsession.

“Navigate, Navigate” was originally created as a soundtrack to Hedi Slimane’s Autumn ‘07 collection for Dior Homme — Slimane being clothing designer of choice for skinny rock dudes. It was released last week, and it works its post-punk groove obsessively for over 15-minutes. I think what makes it work is the sense of mystery to the track. It sounds less like the band was playing than they created, cutted, pasted, and built this thing out of scraps found on the rehearsal room floor. You don’t know what is coming from people, what is coming from machines, and if any of it could or will be reproduced anywhere beyond. It’s as ephemeral as a Prada shoe — expensive, disposable things being coin of the realm in our modern world, a society in which luxury itself has been turned into something of a commodity.

And then there is the vocal line — a stupid yelp, a stutter, an approach that has more than a little to do with Mark E. Smith’s manic ranting in the Fall. As with Smith’s lyrics, there’s very little you can be sure of. “Image! Image!” he yells. Or was that “Cinders! Cinders!” Then “you know, you know.” (No actually I don’t.) Or wait, did he just say “regal is strange,” or “regal is straight”?

Just goes to show, fashion and rock can mix without a hitch.