Saturday 04.24.2010 | 10:23 AM UTC

Keep It Simple, Stupid: A Response to Reader
Comments on The New York Time’s article
“The National Agenda”

Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. And there’s no accounting for taste when it comes to something like pop music.

I could easily be accused of bias and puckering up to The National lads’ collectively firm, shapely musical buttocks. Fair enough. But there’s a few comments posted by readers of this article that left themselves wide open to what Kevin H endearingly calls my “unvarnished opinion.”

Reader IRMAFOUN comments:
I found this band’s songs especially repetitive. I cannot understand what motivates newspapers like this one to focus so intensely on what is simple pop music.

With all due respect, there’s a big difference between “simple” and “simplistic.” A creative act that on first inspection appears simple–that is, shaped and pruned to it’s barest essentials–is evidence of extreme skill and careful craftsmanship. Obscuring the significant effort required to present a pure expression of artistic intent is a rare talent. A painting by Mondrian or Rothko or a poem by Richard Brautigan may seem “simple” to an untrained eye, often eliciting an uniformed response: “Oh, I could do that.” Well, maybe you could do that. But did you do that?

Relegating 50 years of the dominant cultural and artistic achievements of “pop” music as “simple” is itself a “simplistic” remark. High Violet isn’t even officially available yet as a consumable document that can be lived with and studied. Passing judgement based on a distracted sampling of streamed media emitted from tinny laptop speakers doesn’t do musicians the due consideration deserved for their efforts. I’ve had the privilege of immersing myself in this gorgeous record for the past month in its intended, hi-fidelity medium. I’d give it a few more spins upon its official release before making up your mind. Don’t confuse “repetitive” with “subtle, mesmerizing, slowly revealed”. As has been said of Don Delillo’s Underworld, “masterpieces teach you how to read them.”

NS VA comments:

…I am curious as to how the Times decided to choose this band for a profile which will undoubtedly results in big sales. The sound is very hard to swallow. There is such a thing as trying too hard to be cool. If you have something to sing about, blast it out majestically and act like you want to be there. Critically acclaimed? Maybe, thanks to glowing articles like this. Will they get far? No. Again the sound only works on an intimate level. Won’t work on radio, TV or anywhere else. Then again, judging by the previous posts, there are people who actually love it.

Will they get far? Have you been hiding under a rock the past 5 years? This band’s trajectory is nothing if not a steep rising incline as they release records that leap further ahead in musical development with each new effort.

“Won’t work on radio, TV or anywhere else.”??? It already has. Witness their repeat appearances on David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon. Sold out shows across the U.S. and Europe, including Radio City in NYC and the Royal Albert Hall in London? Legions of loyal, rabid fans?

But more importantly, success on radio or TV is not necessarily (and is often most definitely NOT) an indication of quality. If all we had were these two media that, for the most part, champion mediocrity and pedestrian creative output, we’d be an even more culturally anemic nation than we already are.