Young Matt Zeitlin has a nice blast against self-important rock bands who've decided they can't bear to sully their combinations of chord progressions and trite vocals with anything so tawdry as publicity. "Has indie snobbery gotten so bad, that just more people listening to your music the same thing as selling out, or changing your music for corporate tastes," he asks? Well, yeah. Rockers suck.
On the other hand, it could all be stunningly cynical. Arcade Fire, with New York Times Magazine and New Yorker profiles to their name, doesn't exactly cower from reporters. But they spend a lot of time talking about how they might. This could be snobbery clashing with capitalism, and resulting in incoherence. But then, there's no reason to think that their record label lacks sophisticated PR types who correctly intuit the public's appreciation for elitism dressed up as artistic integrity, and so advise the band to publicly agonize over the distorting influence of fame and press coverage. Their fans, then, happily pat themselves on the back, secure in the knowledge that their band harbors the same healthy contempt for the median music listener that they do. Everybody wins.
