Trickle Up

As indicated in comments, I showed that Petra Haden song to my friend (and sometime bandmate) James, who records and produces a cappella groups for a living. A sampling of some of his work (done with another producer from NC) is available here.

His take on the Petra Haden track:

I listened to it again and it's pretty amateurish by current collegiate a cappella standards. To make the guitar sound at the beginning she's singing "neer neer neer" into a computer program that emulates a guitar amp (the same one I use on our demos, most likely), which has been around since probably 2000 or so. The arrangement is pretty boring and the talking verse is annoying. To be honest, I don't really like her singing voice all that much either, but I'm willing to believe that other people think it's good. I will say one thing to her credit, though - I did a little reading on her and from what I understand she recorded this to an 8-track tape recorder, which presumably means that she has not used computers to correct the intonation, and most college groups couldn't sound this good without fixing their intonation or taking a really long time to get it right naturally. But again, those intonation programs have gotten to the point that you can't tell they were used, and the end result still "sounds" better to my ears than her track, even though she achieved hers without help.

A pretty diplomtatic critique, I thought. But he was the first person I knew whose reaction to the song was basically a write-off. He also pointed me to a college a cappella forum where similar criticisms were tossed around:

I think alt rock critics are getting a bit hung up on the fact that she actually did it - sang every part, all herself. Todd Rundgren, anyone? Bobby McFerrin? I find her voice a but thin, her arrangements (what I've heard of 'em) uninspiring, the whole thing (excuse the expression) more than a little collegiate.

[...]

I think if most rock critics would hear some of the better collegiate a cappella out there they would be blown away as well, maybe even more so than with the few things that are making it into the mainstream by higher profile artists who think they are doing something never done before.

Which all, upon reflection, does make sense, even though this reaction initially surprised me. You've got this niche of specialty music, living and breathing the creation of a cappella music. So of course they get uppity when some semi-famous singer comes along and, in their view, does their schtick from five years ago—except now it's met with critical acclaim.

But I also think that any niche music that trickles up toward the mainstream is likely to get diluted [ed. spelling corrected], so it's kind of an intractable problem. I offer an analogue, for everyone knows analogies are always helpful and illuminating:

Imagine Radiohead released a klezmer album. Assuming they'd write songs that sounded really good to the average listener, this album would be a big hit. Radiohead would be toasted once again for crossing new musical boundaries, yadda-yadda.

Meanwhile, the klezmernets kvetch about Thom Yorke having the chutzpah to ape their style (and badly, in their view)—and this kvetching goes largely unnoticed, because, there musical style is and remains a niche genre, notwithstanding Radiohead's success with the style.

And with that to ponder, here's a klezmer band.