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Indie cred fuels campaign trail of Bush-bashing

by Leslie Wylie

Ted Nugent aside, rock ‘n’ roll seems hell-bent on derailing President George W. Bush’s reelection.

While the Republican party boasts a clenched fistful of support from mostly country and contemporary Christian musicians, massive tours like “Rock the Vote” and “Vote for Change” are headed up by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Bonnie Raitt, Dave Matthews and R.E.M. in the name of getting the “W” out of Washington, D.C. Lately, even pop culture barometer Rolling Stone doesn’t try to mask the fact that it’s become half music magazine, half leftist political rag.

The counter-mainstream sensibility of indie rock, then, finds itself with a peculiar conundrum: How to get in bed with politics without looking like a because-everyone-else-is-doing-it slut?

A few, like Bright Eyes and Death Cab for Cutie, have taken the screw-it approach and gladly hopped aboard the big tour bandwagon. Others, like indie stalwarts Yo La Tengo, are opting to do their own thing.

“I don’t think of it as a mass movement, or as a role that artists should take,” says Yo La Tengo frontman Ira Kaplan. “This is the three of us doing whatever we can as people, not artists. This feels more personal and grassroots-y than movement-y. I hope it will be just as effective.”

According to Kaplan, installations of “Patriot Act: Yo La Tengo’s Swing State Tour,” also known by its less laconic alter-title “Tour of Swing States to Try and Help John Kerry Get Elected,” won’t be concerts, per say. “It’s going to be less formal,” he says, “and I think that it will be a format that will lend itself to talking.”

Kaplan’s intriguingly foggy explanation of the Knoxville show’s format includes a “revolving, loosely structured and interchangeable” lineup, including guest musicians David Kilgour of the Clean, Sue Garner from Run On, William Tyler from Lambchop and guest comedian Todd Barry, and a set list that may or may not make sense to the audience.

Kaplan says, “I can’t guarantee the audience will recognize the personal reasons we’re doing these songs, but I don’t think that’s our point.”

The point is, quite simply, to get people riled up about voting, more specifically voting for Sen. John Kerry. Kaplan says that it’s not so much a matter of steering potential Democrats away from the Republican side—he doesn’t expect much of a pro-Bush turnout at the show, anyway—as it is an opportunity to steer potential voters out of complacency and into the voting booths on Nov. 2.

“I can pretty much guarantee that you’re one step of separation at most away from a non-voter at all times,” Kaplan says. “I’m not worried in the least about the phrase ‘preaching at the choir’ or anything like that. Promoting more intelligent discussion about the election can only be a good thing.”

Kaplan is critical of the mainstream media and concerned with the public’s unwillingness to question the information it receives. “A lot of the time we make decisions based on assumptions rather than thinking it through,” he says.

A former rock journalist himself, he demands specific questions during the interview and responds with deliberate, if tentative, answers. However, it’s easy to detect his temptation to spew emotionally charged assertions. The ones that do manage to slip past Kaplan’s tongue are almost always followed by a clarifying postscript, “I’m not comfortable with that sweeping statement,” as if he’s taking out his disillusionment with face-value political rhetoric on himself.

Kaplan’s hyper-awareness of both the power and the limitations of language is manifest in Yo La Tengo’s music, a bittersweet phantasmagoria of melody, feedback and poetry that Kaplan refuses to expound upon. “We’re a rock band. That’s about it,” he says.

Actually, “rock band” is probably the most accurate description that can be applied to Yo La Tengo’s eclectic 20-year lifespan. Along with his wife/drummer/vocalist Georgia Hubley and bassist James McNew, Kaplan’s band has experimented with everything from the atmospherics of dream pop to vintage British Invasion without ever relinquishing its critics’ darling throne. With its latest album, 2003’s Summer Sun, the band blows smoke rings at the edgy sound sculptures of its youth with a demure soundtrack of pretty, free-falling compositions.

There was a pseudo-story in The Onion a while back that bore the tragic headline “37 Record-Store Clerks Feared Dead in Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster.” It was a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the band’s notorious cachet among hipsters, but in reality Yo La Tengo intends to harness its appeal to an alternative demographic for what it perceives as the public’s own political good.

“The spirit of these shows is really exciting, and that’s always been a hard thing to export out of Hoboken [New Jersey, where the band is based]. That’s another sweeping statement,” Kaplan says, then shrugs it off for once with an unapologetic addendum: “I don’t care.”

VARDATE © 2004 Metro Pulse