Last Saturday, Bishop Allen filled the Music Hall of Williamsburg with signs of the times. Perhaps due to the band's inclusion on the soundtrack of mainstream indie Michael Cera cute-fest Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, the show attracted an unusually large share of regs for the neighborhood; turtlenecks and business casual attire were on full display and guys clutched their brittle girlfriends in anticipation of the passionate night of missionary sex they’d earned with dinner at Sea, followed by an “edgy” indie rock show in the hip, up-and-coming neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I never thought I’d say this about anyone, but Bishop Allen makes Vampire Weekend look like N.W.A.
As the band threw itself into a long set of jangly pop songs, I recalled a review of Juno that posits the film as operatic performance of a certain brand of neo-urban whiteness: Think stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. Never straying from the tonal range of a children’s song, leading man Justin Rice kept a straight face while delivering lyrics like “take another picture with your ca-ca-ca-ca-camera” (if it sounds like a commercial, it’s because it is one) and multiple choruses consisting largely of “da-da-da-da” or “la-la-la-la.” Rice did an awkward sideways hop when he got excited, and when he got really excited, something resembling Irish step dancing. The audience responded by “wooing” and bouncing around without moving their hips one iota.
I wondered aloud what type of person claims this music as the inner voice of their soul. Do they collect small cat figurines? Play Frisbee sports? Shop at Whole Foods? Think they’re too cool for the Dave Matthews Band? Even the band’s name sounds like a place you’d go to buy furniture for your first post-collegiate apartment in Boerum Hill.
Maybe I’m just pissed that people even more bourgie than me are advancing the neighborhood past my preferred stage of gentrification, replacing dive bars and vegan joints with specialty cheese shops and condos. To blame a pop band for this would be absurd, but when I hear music that’s safe and devoid of catchy hooks echo through what was once a dirty rock club called Northsix, it’s hard for one thing not to remind me of the other. Bishop Allen will gentrify your ears.
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