That's Unheard Of!

The battle lines might be drawn for a rock ’n’ roll civil war.

In a Feb. 20 Pitchfork column titled “Embarrassment Rock,” music critic Nitsuh Abebe addressed the mostly made-up crisis surrounding “rockism.” The rockist, Abebe argued, is “comfortable with the way rock works, values the stuff rock values and gets all hostile or dismissive toward all the wonderful music in the world that happens to work some other way.”

This insulting definition not only singles out people who like, say, Girls but not Grimes, but brands them with a needlessly snarky neologism. Abebe didn’t coin the term, but his defense of it speaks volumes.

His argument becomes more nuanced later in the piece, but that there’s even an argument shows we’ve entered a new, contentious age for what it means to specifically “rock” within the generic “rock ’n’ roll” idiom. Today, in an effort to avoid describing acts such as tUnE-yArDs and Oneohtrix Point Never in rock terms, we’ve also narrowed the definition of the genre so much that honest-to-God rock ’n’ roll bands are thrown under the bus for somehow not meeting arbitrary rock standards.

The Men’s excellent “Open Your Heart” LP is already stirring up rockist mini-controversies in its first week of release. The Brooklyn quartet has drawn favorable comparisons to Foo Fighters and Fucked Up, but many of the same people who have called for the end of rockism have criticized its production and songwriting for — get this — not rocking hard enough.

Part and parcel with the rockism debate is the even duller debate about authenticity. It dominated this year’s Grammys, in which dubstep producer Skrillex accepted his three awards before the broadcast began, Adele was lauded for her massive pop record that she insists isn’t a pop record and Dave Grohl jammed with the Rock Hall-approved corpses of Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen and Joe Walsh. For a growing segment of the music industry machine, it’s more important to be real than interesting.

If the mixed reactions to “Open Your Heart” are any indication, indie music is no longer safe from this mode of thinking. The Men’s second LP nods in some of the right directions for a stereotypically-rockist crowd, but it’s more expansive than that, cutting its lo-fi and punk tendencies with a bombastic tunefulness that hints at an affinity for Steve Brooks-fronted acts such as Floor and Torche. Like its predecessor “Leave Home,” it’s also downright experimental in places, which is a definite rockist no-no.

And it’s not just rockists who have criticized this rock record for not adequately fulfilling its rock ’n’ roll narrative. Rolling Stone associate editor and noted Skrillex enthusiast Matthew Perpetua went on a Twitter rampage March 5 to eviscerate “Open Your Heart,” eventually declaring it part of a movement marked by “the vibe of rock without the guts.”

Overreacting to accusations of rockism and debates about authenticity has turned rock ’n’ roll into a bigger pissing contest than ever, in which only a chosen few can make great records that are sufficiently rock ’n’ roll, and everyone else should strive to thrive within some other niche.

But here’s the thing: The Men did put out a rock record — a great one, at that. Finding a half-dozen other subgenres to describe them doesn’t grant them any more legitimacy than if they all had matching Iggy Pop tattoos and slept with copies of “London Calling” under their pillows.

Nitsuh Abebe’s closed-minded rockist isn’t an inspirational figure, but I’d rather be accused of being one than forget why we listen to rock ’n’ roll in the first place.