Kindercore Whoredom

I can't believe this is happening. One day I'm loading up my 10 disc changer with The Shazam and a little bit of Cheap Trick and maybe some Cotton Mather for good measure. The next day, I'm ordering Dressy Bessy cds from the Kindercore store and I'm hounding my local record merchant for the latest I Am the World Trade Center release. I've been trying to pinpoint the exact moment it happened, and I've come up with a few incidents that might explain why my tastes have suddenly changed. Why I became a Kindercore whore.

Incident one: I'm obsessed with Hawaii. The music, the culture, the weather, it all adds up to a little slice of heaven, as far as I'm concerned. So I'm looking through the Parasol catalogue and find a band called kincaid. with an album called "Plays Super Hawaii." The description said something about pop, and I entered that gray state where I have no control over my spending, I just HAVE to have it. I play it and it's good stuff…not what I usually listen to, but there's a spark there. Something that makes me feel like the musicians were having fun. They weren't trying to nail the perfect harmony or sound like Marvelous 3, they were just plinking away on the glockenspiel. It was just so damn cool.

Incident two: I went to the Monsters of Pop music fest and a friend of mine recommended I check out Great Lakes because "they're a Kindercore band." This alone didn't impress me much, in fact I winced because I immediately pictured a room full of kids in low-slung vintage corduroys, old Adidas sneakers and Mr. Rogers sweaters, gently swaying to the lovely twee sounds of some skinny white boys in plaid shirts. I was right on the cords and the plaid shirts, but I was wrong about the sounds being twee and lovely. Great Lakes are a sort of multi-instrumental collective; there was instrument switching, flute, brilliant melodies, and a certain innocence in the lyrics that I found particularly appealing. Not to mention the cutest, most Paul McCartney lookin' drummer I've seen in ages. (Jamey Huggins, I love you!)

Incident three: I find out the KindercoreFifty cd retrospective costs a low low $14.99. 3 cds for that price? I'm there. And I'm inundated with cute pop song after cute pop song…Of Montreal, Birdie, Essex Green, and a band called Vermont sounding for all the world like my worst lonesome alt-country nightmare, but I can't stop listening.

What was I thinking!!?? All this time wasted, assuming I wouldn't be interested in anything coming out of a no-doubt cluttered, indie-rock-heaven office in lil' ol' Athens GA. I think I figured it out, though. All through my twenties, I suffered with severe fear of rejection. I'd try to fit into some scene, and undoubtedly I'd make the faux pas of not having the right hair cut, or I'd eat meat, or my attempts at vintage chic didn't create the pulled-together mod look I had hoped for. At the time, nothing was more dramatic than the withered looks shot at me from tight-knit groups who obviously had more time to assemble the perfect hounds-tooth mini suit than I did. Then I turned thirty, and my first words as I awoke were "Fuck it." Meaning…fuck what other people think about my shoes….screw it if I make a lame joke and nobody laughs. And in some strange way, it kind of opened me up to more experiences and in turn my tastes broadened. The really strange thing is that I now realize a lot of this music seems to be written for outcasts, and here I am, an outcast of the outcasts! I might not be the poster child for Kindercore Records…maybe not even their target demographic, but my money's good and my opinion is just as valid as the next.

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Anna's Reviews: November, 2000, October, 2000, September, 2000

Anna's Column: November, 2000 October, 2000, September, 2000

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