In today’s culture of bombastic beats and heavy synthetic drones, lyrics are going by the wayside in popular music, and bass is speaking in ways language never could. Words now are chosen more for their cadence than their emotive value, and while I enjoy the refrain from songs like Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” enough is enough. This dance music trend needs to stop.

At its best, bass-driven dance pop is a primal and visceral experience; at its worst, it’s a cheap way to entertain college drunks. The synthetic groan of a bitcrusher may be great in the heated sweat of the dance floor, but dance pop rarely resonates beyond the confines of the club. The experience is too electronic; it lacks a human element: lyrics.

Dance raves are great if you’re European, but Americans listened to Bruce Springsteen long before they had heard of DJ Shadow. From The King to the Beatles to Bob Dylan, music’s poetic lyricism has long been a force of social change and internal exploration, and no recent music has had more effect than Dylan’s “The Times, They Are a-Changin’.”

Make no mistake, the world is full of talented electronic artists. On St. Patrick’s Day, I experienced electronic music at its finest with STS9 performing at Mr. Small’s Theatre. Critics are right: STS9 is “making electronic music relevant again,” and I was happy to see a strong Carnegie Mellon presence at the concert. People — artists and listeners alike — just need to delve into the lyrics as much as the beats. It is as simple as listening to Radiohead merge abstract lyrics with electronic dissonance. And if you’re looking for something new, try exploring the lyrics of Matt Berninger as he sings for The National. No one conveys the looming potential of loss better than he does:

“We expected something, something better than before. We expected something more / Do you really think you can just put it in a safe behind a painting, lock it up and leave / Do you really think you can just put it in a safe behind a painting, lock it up and leave / Walk away now and you’re gonna start a war.”

-Stephen Epple

Music and visual art have always shared a connection, but in this modern age, art and music are meeting on different terms. In the past, it has often been the prerogative of the visual artist to interpret the musician, but today, more musicians are realizing their own visual interpretations.

Radiohead’s 2009 single “These Are My Twisted Words” was released with a series of images that could be overlaid to produce a variety of different album covers. The Arcade Fire’s music video for their single “Neon Bible” was made completely interactive on the band’s website. Depending on where a person clicked on the page, he or she could interact with the music video character in different ways.

These combinations of art and music have expanded to large-scale art performances and installations as well. Last year, the BAM Next Wave Festival commissioned Bryce Dessner, Aaron Dessner, and Matthew Ritchie to produce a musical about the dawn of time that would go hand in hand with their gallery of sculptures and images. The performance was radical and the art exploratory. To date, I cannot imagine a more inspiring collaboration of music and art.

On March 4, the realms of music and art will once again blend when Animal Collective opens their new installation and musical performance at Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum. The project, entitled Transverse Temporal Gyrus, will feature the works of artist Danny Perez and promises to be a stunning blend of sounds and art as well as a truly psychedelic experience. It is one of the most anticipated collaborations between art and music, and with the success of Animal Collective’s recent album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, the show is guaranteed to be spectacular.

These advances in the combination of visual art and music are allowing artists to truly explore the boundaries of their medium. We look forward to seeing future collaborations in this arena.

Stephen Epple

The house lights of Mr. Small’s Theatre & Funhouse come on and I notice a couple of facts: First, Mr. Small’s does not seem ventilated enough for a smoking venue; second, the Arctic Monkeys are fantastic; and finally, this crowd is terrible. Maybe it was the $30 ticket price, but almost everyone seemed over 40 and more concerned about the babysitter than the music. The crowd that night, from the bar to the stage, never moved. So where was the young and gunning college crowd? Where were the people known for kicking up musical storms?

Sadly, everyone was just hanging around campus. Chalk it up to price and distance, but no one was making their way out to Millvale. Even worse, most of the people I talked to thought Pittsburgh just didn’t have a very good music scene. Well, Pittsburgh may not be New York, but we certainly get good music.
The Arctic Monkeys were one of the biggest bands to tour Europe back in 2006. They played chart-topping hits at world- famous venues. Why they bothered to come to Pittsburgh I don’t know. I just felt lucky. When the tickets were only $30, I was grateful. Those tickets were nowhere near the $90 I’d be paying for the Ben Folds concert the next day.
I flash back to all of this because once again, the house lights are coming on and once again the crowd is older. I can appreciate their taste in music now, but the lack of enthusiasm is a thorough buzz kill. I need a younger crowd and a girl I can dance with.
-Stephen Epple