the british are gaining: noisettes

american musicians have gotten lazy. most bands, singers and mc's in the u.s. these days follow a proven formula instead of trying to create their own. the music lacks distinction and that's also translated visually. whatever genre the artist falls into, there's a ready-made treatment for their videos: choreography is required for singers, booties are required for mc's and disconnected imagery is required for rock bands. even older american musicians have succumbed to the collaboration album formula that was discovered when carlos santana released supernatural in 1999 (see the most recent works by sam moore and dionne warrick). predictability is boring and mind-numbing, and this country's musical landscape is overcast.

meanwhile, british artists have been studying american music, not cramming with a bunch of "best of" cd's. many of them know the entire body of work that comprises their genre. their hard work has paid off: they're not only doing american music better than americans, they're reinventing it. they are creating sounds that have never been heard and deconstructing american standards, putting their britishness in it while proving that americans don't speak for everybody and it doesn't have to be made in the u.s.a. to be relevant.

the noisettes have been compared to their american counterpart, the yeah yeah yeahs. both bands have scarce instrumentation: noisettes use bass, guitar and drums while yeah yeah yeahs use guitar while the drums double as a bass. both bands are fronted by brown girls with pristine vocals and wide-legged stances: yeah yeah yeahs' karen o straddles the space in her band's music, while noisettes' shingai shoniwa straddles a bass.

rock is a compellable art form, and the noisettes have perfected that more so than the yeah yeah yeahs. the opening songs on both bands' first full length albums prove that. noisettes' "don't give up" on what's the time mr. wolf? pulls you by the neck, but you can clean your kitchen counter to the yeah yeah yeahs' "rich." their opening song for fever to tell should've been "date with the night" but it's the second track. "don't give up" (as album openers should) sets the mood for the entire album, only gaining steam with each track. however, after "rich," you spend the rest of fever to tell drifting in and out of consciousness: "date with the night," "pin" and "maps" work, but the rest of the album flitters about. uncertainty is for rehearsal, not a recording.

in rock, passiveness should only be allowed in ballads. rock ballads spend the entire song fighting with being vulnerable and being hard, a trait well illustrated in yeah yeah yeah's "maps." now that's a tolerable formula that shouldn't be compromised.