In 2014, ten years after releasing their debut record You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine, Death From Above 1979 finally released their long-awaited follow-up The Physical World. Even with such a large gap between albums, the band didn’t have to struggle like they once had: record companies, fans, gigs and media attention were all ready and waiting for their return. The band did, however, have the difficult task of situating themselves in some sort of context, since the musical landscape had moved on without them. The pervasive dance-punk sound of 2004 has long since fizzled, but the rhetorical language of do-it-yourself culture has not. So they chose to soldier on by returning to their DIY roots, not so much as an ethos but as an aesthetic.
The music video for “Trainwreck 1979” prominently features DFA1979s iconic elephant logo worn as a button on a jacket, an acknowledgement that in the band’s absence, they managed to endure, if only on someone’s denim lapel. For an act aiming to return to their roots as punky twentysomethings, the video's emphasis on handmade ephemera appeals to the band’s history as independent artists. It just does so while casting aside whatever punk ideology might’ve brought those ephemera into existence in the first place.
Death From Above 1979's emphasis on handmade ephemera appeals to their history as independent artists. It just does so while casting aside whatever punk ideology that might’ve brought those ephemera into existence in the first place.
In September, Death From Above 1979 hosted a pop-up shop at a downtown Toronto art gallery, giving fans ample chance to snatch up their latest DIY-looking merch, as carefully reminiscent of their heyday as their new album.
Co-opting those aesthetics is not new. Dave Grohl would’ve seen it happening around him when the DIY ethos of the '90s that helped give rise to the grunge movement was fed back to his generation as a watered-down media fad. Now his Foo Fighters are the ones doing the co-opting, adopting the DIY aesthetic by contracting out to a graphic design firm to mimic the handmade look of punk show posters, flyers and zines - the rock equivalent of a GMO company labeling their food crops "organic."
Sonic Highways (referring to both the HBO documentary Grohl made and the Foo Fighers album recorded around it) works on the same level. Each song on the record was recorded in a different studio, in a different city, lyrics compiled from interviews with significant figures from each city's musical history. As much as Sonic Highways tells the story of musical history in America, it simultaneously inserts the Foo Fighters into that history, cleverly redirecting our attention from their ploy for credibility towards a carefully crafted narrative of "rock significance."
DFA1979, too, strive for credibility by hearkening back to a different time. It’s not unreasonable to assume that a band that spend the better part of a decade broken up would sound different than they did before they called it quits. Sonically though, The Physical World strives for familiarity. There’s very little to distinguish what they’re doing now from what they were doing ten years ago. Only now Sebastian Grainger sounds incredibly awkward singing about the problems of 16-year-olds, rather than that of a 35-year-old. DFA1979’s decision not to stray from the groundwork they laid on their debut record reeks of conservatism and nostalgia.
The sorts of negotiations between the mainstream and underground culture are constant, but Foo Fighters and DFA1979 choosing this path in 2014 is a sign that the DIY aesthetic still carries a great deal of weight, and that the ethic attached to such signs remains an empowering tool for those who wish to use it.
The Albums That Defined 2014: Death From Above 1979, Foo Fighters and the conservative co-opting of DIY by Michael Rancic | Chart Attack.
