poptimists | a brief history of the recessive vocal

so instead of making use of my time intelligently or enjoyably, i was playin SOUVLAKI-TETRIS this mornin and listenin to UMMAGUMMA -- and as usual stuck on what an f.awful singer r.waters is, that his shtick is a distrust of emotive effectivness, and it occurred to me that there's a history in pop of the self-consciously characterless vocal, which operates by a kind of passive-aggressive second-guessing ("you admire this uninflected mumble as ART because it is not mere RECEIVED TECHNIQUE playing on your UNEXAMINED INSTINCTS... or some such)

it seems to me it's a feature "why indie is dislikable", and conversely an (haha unacknowledged) reason why r&b and pop divas receive so much kneejerk dislike from indie quarters (as if "being able to sing" = "suborned by THE MAN")

anyway what struck me as odd is that it's NOT a mainstream rock characteristic as of the 60s, 70s or even 80s -- vocal style characterful to the point of being gratingly dislikeable was the rule, and waters was really anomalous in his day

so A: was this the root of his prog credentials? did he make virtue of a necessity? (i'm not a syd fan but he belongs squarely in the post-dylan tradition of expressivity out of anti-technique technique... which is a very different thing)
and B: who does watersism start with? (cheeky burchill-baiting answer: julie london)

footnote: UK punk was notoriously suspicious of the borrowed expressivity of soul and blues in the white voice, but much less so of the borrowed expressivity of folk or country; in fact it pushed off into the exploration of modern urban cousins of folk and country, so it was in the dylan-tradition even when it was actively hostile to borrowed dylanisms

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Thurston Moore

faux recessive vocals: Ray Davies

thurston definitely! tho i don't think he cuts it as a founding father of the genre

ray davies not quite, at least in my book: but i think i'll have to clarify the definition to explain why -- he's not a loud or a bluesy or a white-soul singer at all, but his style is highly expressive, even if it operates via restraint

(certainly it seems a bit odd to be calling him faux-recessive if the recessive manner hadn't previously been established as 1965) (which we haven't yet proved it had)

(this actually grew out of yr comment on LCD soundsystem's singer)

Davies could have started the recessive genre while not being recessive himself by inspiring a whole bunch of awful imitators to actually be recessive. (Just as I would say that the Kinks and the Velvet Underground are founding fathers of college rock owing to the hundreds of college-radio bands who imitated them badly.)

I'd say that sometimes Ray is saturated in bluesiness - listen to the way he sings "Dead End Street" - but he's got a light touch on the blues tones. (I wouldn't be surprised if he's a Hoagy Carmichael fan.) Ray farmed out blues screamers like "Milkcow Blues" to his brother.

Would Morrissey as faux recessive?

I think maybe he started that way and gradually retreated into actual recession? One of the big influences on early/Smiths-era Morrissey are singers who were big in the interregnum between rock'n'roll and the Beatles - British Elvis imitators like Tommy Steele and (especially) yodelling novelties like Frank Ifield. So he's positioning himself as away from rock, unable to tap into the sexuality and authentic self-expression of bluesiness: in effect he's pulling the recessiveness trick on rock 'technique' as it had evolved. But he's not a shy or non-aggressive singer.

yes, i think of morrissey as a fairly flamboyant singer (especially in the context of indie): he pulls the passive-aggressive trick in lots of other ways -- or rather, the characters in his songs do -- but as a melody writer and tune-line embellisher he's pretty generous

a brief history of the recessive vocal

Re: some punk voicings (list NOT exhaustive)

Re: some punk voicings (list NOT exhaustive)

Re: some punk voicings (list NOT exhaustive)

Re: some punk voicings (list NOT exhaustive)

Re: some punk voicings (list NOT exhaustive)

Re: some punk voicings (list NOT exhaustive)

Re: some punk voicings (list NOT exhaustive)