This article sums up pretty well a lot of my own feelings about music and recording. Mostly about how a technically perfect recording is not the most important thing and it’s better to capture the spirit of the song. Of course not very many people agree with me but it is well worth a read all the same.
Lo-Fi by Richie Unterberger (www.allmusic.com)
Over the last several decades, there’s been a more or less ongoing clique of staunch traditionalists who insist that hi-tech, glossy production values are taking the soul and spontaneity out of rock & roll music. As rock heads into the 21st century — in an age where such technology-dependent musics as techno, ambient, and rap are gaining an unstoppable momentum, and multi-track recordings and “punch-in” vocals are standard practice — it’s ironic that one of the most influential trends of alternative rock in the ’90s has deliberately cast itself in opposition to studio sophistication. Called “lo-fi” artists, more by the rock underground than by themselves, they see simple, even primitive recording quality as an advantage, not a hindrance.
If you’re so inclined, you can trace lo-fi right back to the beginning of rock & roll, when thousands of rockabilly and doo wop artists recorded in primitive circumstances, lending their records a unique naivete that is impossible to recreate today. The garage bands of the mid-’60s, of course, often recorded in facilities as primitive as the ones they rehearsed in, a quality which was duplicated in the ’70s by many of the early punk bands.
The difference between these earlier rock & rollers and today’s lo-fi artists is that, in all probability, virtually all of the earlier records sounded primitive due to financial limitations rather than conscious decision. If these rockabilly, garage, and even punks had been asked at the time whether they would like to be recording in more sophisticated facilities, with greater time and budgets at their disposable, the vast majority of them would have likely said yes without a second thought. While today’s lo-fi artists are often limited by budgetary constraints as well, the defining difference is that they are by and large making a conscious choice to aim for the spontaneity and distinctive distorted, grainy sonic qualities that can arise from recording quickly on simple, even outdated, equipment.
Again, this approach isn’t unique to the ’90s, and in fact has pretty deep roots. On their second album, White Light/White Heat, the Velvet Underground deliberately turned their amps to 11 and gleefully watched the needles go into the red, ignoring the engineer’s pleas to turn down the volume to eliminate distortion. The Beatles deliberately created distortion on tracks like “Revolution”; the Rolling Stones recorded some of “Jumping Jack Flash”’s guitars on cassette to get the right amount of dirt into the sound.
But lo-fi, as the label’s applied in 1995, really has its roots in the do-it-yourself ethic that arose from the punk movement in the late ’70s. One of its basic (if not always observed) tenets was that anybody could form a band, record their music, and issue it on their own label. By the early ’80s, this was taken a step further by some independent artists, who realized that they need not even enter a studio to record their own music, or even “release” it through traditional vinyl means, instead recording at home, dubbing their own cassettes, and selling/trading those at gigs or through the mail. The fuzzy sound, distorted guitars, simple instrumentation, occasional mistakes: these were not viewed as flaws, but as actual enhancements, increasing the most intimate and personal quality of the performances, and the truest representation of the artists’ visions. Many alternative acts of the ’80s were lo-fi in this classic sense, although the label hadn’t been created at the time. Page through any issue of alternative/underground publications such as Op, Option, or Forced Exposure, and there will be plenty of them, on vinyl, cassette, and eventually, compact disc. The K label, run by Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening is (in retrospect) the most famous and influential repository of the lo-fi aesthetic. But there were innumerable others following the same path, most (but not all) rock-based, although they didn’t achieve even a modicum of mainstream recognition: Jandek, Kath Bloom, Walls of Genius, Linda Smith and Loren Mazzacane are but a few of the better under-appreciated trailblazers of the genre. Content as well as attitude was needed to make this stuff work, as the music of the unspeakably, deliberately awful Happy Flowers, as well as literally thousands of cassette tapes, could attest to.
At the beginning of the 1990s, several alternative rock acts using the lo-fi aesthetic began to rise to levels of attention previously reserved for R.E.M. clones and British gloom-mongers. Chief among these were Sebadoh formed by Dinosaur Jr. castoff Lou Barlow; Pavement, a California band that seemed to positively pride itself on non-promotion and an elusive image; and Guided by Voices, an Ohio band that had been releasing their own albums for a good half-dozen years before suddenly getting “discovered” by listeners extending beyond their circle of friends.
Most likely, these bands achieved a level of recognition unattained by previous lo-fi pioneers because of the relatively pop-oriented base of their material. Guided by Voices, for instance, likes nothing more than to be compared to a lost power-pop British Invasion band; Pavement is frequently compared to Lou Reed. Don’t be under any illusion, though, that listening to these guys is like putting on a Big Star or Go-Betweens record: there are frequent side trips into experimentalism, free-form song structures, and even downright noise. There’s also no doubt of their love for lo-fi textures. Certainly the sound could be “cleaned up” by utilizing moderately more expensive, state-of-the-art studios and equipment, but they realize that deliberate distortion and muffled textures, used purposefully, have desirable aesthetic qualities that would be smothered by more state-of-the-art methods.
The rise of lo-fi brought belated appreciation to some of the progenitors of the genre. The New York noise group Pussy Galore was one of the root bands of lo-fi, especially with their almost legendary (if seldom heard) song-by-song cassette rendition of the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street. They gave birth to two more accessible, traditionally rock-oriented acts which draw on the lo-fi aesthetic to some degree, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Royal Trux (the latter of whom boasted that they never spent more than $1000 on recording an album until they hooked up with a major label). In New Zealand, Chris Knox a pivotal figure in that country’s punk/new wave scene, recorded intriguing alternative pop both on his own and with his partner Alec Bathgate in Tall Dwarfs often hastily working on four-track equipment. Many other Kiwi alternative bands, associated with Flying Nun and other labels, prefer to work in similar no-frills fashions; Alastair Galbraith even told Option that he intentionally leaves clicks in place when he puts overdubs onto his four-track recordings.
Beat Happening meanwhile, continue to work today, and Calvin Johnson is still busy organizing and promoting artists working with the lo-fi modus operandi for K records and cassettes with artists like Lois. He also provides an outlet for the less commercial recordings of Beck, who took lo-fi (in a cleaned-up fashion) to the Top 20 with his debut, Mellow Gold; his more acoustic-oriented, less-polished efforts can be found on his K release, One Foot in the Grave.
The mid-’90s also saw an enormous amount of critical attention lavished upon Jack Logan discovered in his mid-30s almost by accident after making over 500 home recordings with friends in his small Georgia home. Several dozen of these were culled for a double-CD debut release which made many national critics’ Best Of 1994 lists, although it didn’t sell more than a few thousand copies. Also hailed by national publications were Palace Brothers, a floating ensemble built around Will Oldham, linking lo-fi to acoustic folk traditions. Palace Brothers are far darker than the relatively cheery and pop-based ruminations of Logan but are positively jolly when juxtaposed with the more obscure Smog, a nom de plume for various projects of the reclusive Bill Callahan, who builds depressing but compelling, gripping soundscapes of the demons troubling his inner psyche. In this respect Smog, Palace Brothers, Beck and other lo-fi hounds owe an oft-unacknowledged debt to Skip Spence, the brilliant but demented ex- Moby Grape guitarist. Spence’s 1969 solo album, Oar, anticipated much of the lo-fi aesthetic with its minimal, goofy, and hushed, tormented ambience, constructed primarily as a one-man acoustical band.
One of the greatest lo-fi recordings was never released to the general public. Before gaining instant fame with her 1993 debut Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair recorded lo-fi tapes of much of the material that ended up on the record (along with songs she recorded for her second album and ones she never released), using only multi-tracked tapes of her voice and guitar, for limited circulation (primarily to friends and acquaintances). Literally thousands of unauthorized copies of the tapes, dubbed Girlysound, have made the rounds with Phair fans, many of whom rank the songs among her best and most unaffected performances, despite the hissy fidelity. Phair is in some important respects a lo-fi anomaly; her two official albums are too elaborately produced to be classified as lo-fi, and Girlysound could be categorized with the many excellent bootlegs by famous artists which happen to have primitive sound quality, such as the Beatles’ acoustic White Album demos. But unlike most of those superstar bootlegs, Girlysound has a deliberately minimalist and naked D.I.Y. outlook that could only have been produced in the age of lo-fi.
Lo-fi may have a much higher profile than ever as we go to press, but the vast majority of the music is still unheard even by much of the underground. And not only by groups that have generated a modest buzz, such as Superchunk, the Grifters, the Silver Jews and Portastatic, or the multitudinous and incestuous side projects of many of the top lo-fi bands. The fountain of lo-fi remains the bedrooms and basements of home recording artists, where those who prize feeling over polish pour their hearts out in a format that works in direct opposition to the unwritten rules of today’s music studios, equipment manufacturers, and record labels.
12 Most Essential Lo-Fi Recordings
Beat Happening, Dreamy (Sub Pop)
Pavement, Westing (By Musket & Sextant) (Drag City)
Sebadoh, Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock (Sub Pop)
Beck, One Foot in the Grave (K)
Guided By Voices, Bee Thousand (Matador)
Liz Phair, Girlysound (bootleg tape)
Alastair Galbraith, Seely Girn (Feel Good All Over)
The Tall Dwarfs, Hello Cruel World (Homestead)
Smog, Burning Kingdom (Drag City)
Jack Logan, Bulk (Medium Cool)
Lois, Strumpet (K)
I want to live in Scandinavia. I want to be blonde and thin and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and be effortlessly cool and make awesome pop music that sounds like it should be soundtracking some French film about people who are thin and who smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and are effortlessly cool. But i’m not. I’m Irish, I drink tea and eat too much and turn a bright shade of pink in the summer so I make do by listening to the Raveonettes and wondering if life would look cooler in black and white.