I'll get this out the way, I hate White Lies with a seething passion.
It's not their average-appearing, uninspired music – that could only make me feel apathy towards them.
It's not the sudden splurge of popularity that seems to have befallen them from the off, considering I really do try hard not to be the dreaded “indie rock snob”.
It’s everything else about them.
Look how deep he is, I bet he feels stuff.
My first introduction to them, like most people I’d imagine, was the interview they gave the BBC for the “Sound of 2009” (in which they received second place, behind the frankly rubbish Little Boots). They were seated in a graveyard, talking about the “gravity of the place”, how it made them “feel stuff” (N.B. that is not a direct quote, I’m sure they would have used MUCH more pretentious language). As you should be aware White Lies are, in want of a better word, “dark”. They write songs called “Death”, and “To lose my life”. Why they feel the need to be so bliddy depressing is frankly beyond me, but in doing so they ooze the sort of smarmy pretention that sets me off. The look that makes you know he’s thinking “I’m so much deeper, more interesting, more experienced than these plebs”, but obviously he’s not, he’s in his young twenties. What has he experienced that makes him so much more qualified to speak about deep “philosophical” subjects than the rest of us? They assume that acting all worldly, and talking in deep knowing tones, means that they are somehow interesting, special, it qualifies them to write about what they think are deep and interesting subjects. They seem to think that somehow that writing a song called “death” makes them as deep and interesting as Ian Curtis. Ian Curtis was “deep” and “interesting”, because he WAS “deep” and “interesting”, not because he pretended to be, not that he put on a act. “Closer” is a harrowing experience, because of the mental state Curtis was in, not because he found that his previous band wasn’t working, and a more dark sound and general outlook might pay more dividends. I suppose too that I’d like to say that even if they could pull off dark songs about death - and they really can’t (some of their lyrics are awful: “I saw a friend that I once knew at a funeral” – Please!), I’d still hate them.
And in a roundabout way it’s this kind of pretention in music, not just because it’s the bands doing it (dammit, I’ll admit it, my beloved Radiohead can be pretentious as hell), but because idiots tend to copy what their bands are doing and I really don’t want a bunch of people walking around talking about death because they think it makes them interesting.
I suppose what I’m really saying is that I want my bands to write about stuff, not subjects. I want artists to write songs about themselves, tell me a story. I don’t want them to write about subjects. I don’t want them to tackle the big boys of DEATH, POVERTY, WAR, I want them to write songs about Judy, or a Love Shack. Because to be frankly honest, they’re entertainers, not intellectuals.
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