When The Who sang about their generation back in the '60s, it marked a dividing line between the cool young Mods and the old, crusty Establishment. Listening to the song today, you have to think they knew what they were talking about.
Today, the British music press - an institution sustained purely by hype - has recently dubbed teen-led bands like The Subways and Arctic Monkeys the voices of their generation. And now that the UK has begun exporting this newest crop of generation spokesmen to American soil, it might be a good time for people in their teens and early twenties to start lying about their ages.
Listening to The Subways' debut record, "Young for Eternity," you would think that our generation is simply a badly repackaged facsimile of the generations before us. The Subways take the best elements of Nirvana, Oasis and the Pixies, the three bands that were arguably the leaders of the most important rock movements in the past 20 years (Grunge, Brit-pop and college rock/indie, respectively), and pay a mild tribute to them.
The Subways, whose members range in age from 19 to 21, don't have the energy to match the enthusiasm and charisma that made their forerunners so important. Just because the lead singer can do a reasonable Kurt Cobain impression does not make the band the next Nirvana. Having a girl bassist in the group doesn't mean they're the Pixies. And even if Americans never really got them, at least Oasis had an attitude; The Subways end up sounding more like The Vines than any of their heroes.
The opening of "Young for Eternity" will have you almost believing the hype. The first track, "I Want To Hear What You Have Got To Say," finds bassist Charlotte Cooper trading verses with fianc?© and lead singer Billy Lunn. It's a solid rock song with a real sense of momentum that continues right through "Holiday," a rollicking pseudo-punk song reminiscent of The Libertines.
But first single, "Rock & Roll Queen," is where things start to fall apart. The track is notable for having received time on "The OC," a distinction that is becoming both a gift and a curse for indie bands. The best way to describe this song is competent. In grade school, you can get a check on your homework if you copy the answer right out of the book. The Subways get a check for this one; basically, they don't screw it up, but they don't do anything to merit that coveted check-plus grade either. The middle of the road was made for songs like this.
After this point, the record becomes a blur of mediocrity. Most of the songs sound the same, except for the truly bad ones. "Mary" sounds like Nirvana covering an Oasis song as a joke. Title track "Young for Eternity" tries to give the band an edge, but it comes off as pedestrian and just a little pathetic.
Billy Lunn expresses his gratitude to Dracula for biting him, a morbid blessing that lets him stay up all night and live forever. This is where the "spokesman of a generation" nonsense best applies. They've got the youth part right, but they're becoming soulless in the process.
In their review of "Young for Eternity," music Bible Rolling Stone expressed hope that the band would avoid marital tension and sibling rivalry (the drummer is Lunn's brother), but that's exactly what this band needs! Bring on the in-fighting and creative disputes, maybe even a love triangle involving all three band members. Maybe then the band will have some focus, some problem to sing about, and they'll be able to forget about making music with the nebulous aim of becoming the voice of a generation.
The band seems like it was constructed in a front office in London to catch onto a wave of hype. The record is over-produced, overly in debt to its influences and underwhelming in ideas and thoughts of its own. A little band tension goes a long way - ask anyone from The Beatles to Fleetwood Mac - but for right now, to paraphrase The Who, the kids aren't all right.
