Perfection Does Not Equal Emotion

I was rather surprised at the fact that the class seemed to unanimously dislike "Wondrous Love" and the Southern Devotional Style. While the recording may have lacked the soulful chops of a vocalist like Aretha Franklin or James Brown, it was definitely not lacking in raw emotive power. I found the vitality in this music refreshing, and an effective tonic to rid my palate of that awful silliness known as "The Beggar’s Opera."

I guess I have a tendency to embrace performers that flaunt their unique imperfections. I like Bob Dylan’s nasal mumbling. I like Neil Young’s sloppy electric guitar noodling. I like the fact that the band Pavement doesn’t seem to even have the initiative to tune their instruments before they record an album. These qualities give the effect of the performer proclaiming:

HERE I AM; TAKE ME OR LEAVE ME...
I LOVE WHAT I'M DOING...
IF YOU LOVE WHAT I'M DOING, THEN JOIN ME...
IF YOU DON'T LOVE WHAT I'M DOING,
THEN I DON'T NEED YOU AROUND...

The Southern Devotional Style is a group that involves all of the individuals lending their unique voices. It is a choir full of soloists. The Southern Devotional choir does not meld into one giant tone. Its separate pieces maintain their structural integrity. And the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

When the grunge movement took hold in the 1990s, it celebrated sloppiness as a culturally relevant aesthetic. The twenty-first century finds a group of alternative bands borrowing the sloppiness of grunge, adding the larger group dynamic, and shifting the attitude from hopelessness and despair to transcendence and celebration. These new bands embrace the mentality of the Southern Devotional Style. They've expanded beyond the traditional rock instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums and express their uniqueness through the inclusion of non-rock instruments like fiddles, accordions, bugles, and harps. And these additional musicians sing, almost scream, in an attempt to be heard over the myriad of sounds. These bands are sort of ramshackle rock choirs with all of the individual passion and communal fellowship characteristics of the Southern Devotional Style.

Arcade Fire began with six members and on this Conan O'Brien appearance features, uh 8, or 9, or 10 people... they're bouncing up and down so much I can't even count. My favorites are the two keyboardists wearing motorcycle helmets and beating each other with drumsticks.


Broken Social Scene contains as many as eleven people at a time and more electric guitarists than I've ever seen in one band.


The Polyphonic Spree has been described as "less a band than a happening, in the 1960s sense of the word." Its two-dozen members wear white robes and actually look like a church choir... or possibly a fanatic cult.