I'm sure you've noticed that the genre thing has gotten completely out of hand. It's not just that there are so many very specific and widely recognized subcategories, or that they're so somehow frighteningly easy to combine willy-nilly, like descriptive Legos (rootsy straightedge emo-Celt-punk, anyone?). The most significant, and perhaps disturbing, thing about the role of weird little stylistic tags in contemporary music is that they're no longer dependent upon the impressions of fans or (ahem) critics looking to coin a succinct phrase – these days, even the major labels hype the micro-genres, while the PR firms work to shoehorn their artists into them, and most of the artists are only too happy (or sick of fighting it) to call themselves whatever might help their cause.
But it's a caffeine-jacked world out there. Bands, labels and fans all benefit from the immediately associative hook, the instant context terms like "grindcore" and "newgrass" and "like Goldfinger, but good" provide. The industry knows how to sell it, and the fans know whether or not it fits their lifestyle, all in five words or less.
Everybody wins.
Except the fans who are looking for something less easily qualified, and the bands whose music just doesn't fit into any of the available boxes.
"The consumer of any entertainment form needs convenience through category," says Will Johnson, singer, guitarist and songwriter for Texan outfit Centro-Matic. "We've become so busy and fast-paced that we need something to trigger association. The marketing arm [of the industry] needs 'emo,' and other genres."
Johnson pauses before adding, tellingly:
"But I like to think that we do sit between a couple of different genres."
Centro-Matic is one of those acts whose sound can only be pegged as residing somewhere within the basically borderless territory of "rock music," and tends to run off the edges of even that large a map. Of course, if you're gonna have a multi-instrumentalist (in this case, pianist/violinist Scott Danborn), you're gonna be called an alt-country band; and if you're gonna record for a tiny, self-contained record label (in this case, talent-heavy Austin-based imprint Misra), you're gonna be called an indie band. There are elements from both these genre-boxes in Centro-Matic's poetic, beautifully ragged pop-rock – and look, there's another genre-box, you just can't get away from 'em – and the group has plenty of fans who consider themselves firmly of one stripe or the other.
But the whole of what Centro-Matic does can't be contained by those terms, or any others I or anybody else might use to try and pin it down.
"I hope it works to our advantage … I'm happy that we're able to go on tour with somebody like Drive By Truckers, or I can go out solo with American Music Club, or we can play shows with Death Cab for Cutie," Johnson says. "It seems like different crowds can appreciate us at a certain level."
Centro-Matic's oeuvre might be hard to typecast, but that doesn't mean it's vague, or mercurial, or even particularly eclectic. This is definitely a band with an identity, one that Johnson asserts is as much a result of the four characters involved as it is due to his role as primary songwriter.
"Chemistry is a weird and ominous word, but I will say that Cetro-Matic would not go on if one of us chose to leave," he says "I do feel like our personalities show … we bleed through to where we do have our own sound, in a way."
Another big contributor to the band's sonic consistency lies in Johnson's choosing which of his song ideas get the Centro-Matic treatment in the first place. An incredibly prolific composer, he's released something like 200 songs over the course of the last nine years; in addition to the comparatively fuzzed-out Centro-Matic, he's got two other viable outlets in his more sparse, largely acoustic solo albums and the more disparate and textured material of open-ended collective South San Gabriel. (All of the other members of Centro-Matic contribute to SSG, whose forthcoming album is a concept album about a cat, or something.) Each concern has a distinct feel, and Johnson rarely has a problem deciding which of his songs will be allocated to which project.
"I'll usually know that right off the bat," he says. "It's rare that it'll be a question mark in my head. And sometimes I think I'll subconsciously write toward the next record to be worked on. Like the next record is a Cenro-Matic record, and I've been writing more loud guitar songs, sort of getting ready to have material to choose from for that."
All three projects tour – independent artists usually make more money per record sold than those signed to majors, but with little commercial-radio airplay, roadwork serves as promotion and payday. While Centro-Matic might not be in the van constantly, Johnson himself spends a considerable amount of time on the circuit fronting all his groups. Unlike a lot of other musicians whose primary passion is for the songwriting itself, however, he's not ready to be shuttered up in the studio instead of hitting the clubs.
"I really thought I'd hate it by now, but … I love the interaction, I love the travel, I like hanging out and meeting people," he says. "I enjoy the balance that we've struck between recording and touring."
Johnson and his collaborators aren't reinventing the wheel. They make a record, they go out and support it, and then they make another record. And at the end of the day, if you only had five words or less in which to describe the music they make, you could call Johnson's solo work alt-country, and you could call South San Gabriel roots-pop, and you could call Centro-Matic a rock band.
But each is more than that, defying those conventions through its individuality, its insistence on expression over association. None more so, probably, than Centro-Matic, just because it's so hard to find good, original, heartfelt rock 'n' roll – not screamo, not post-rock, not dance-punk – just now.
"We're not redefining anything, re-creating the face of rock 'n' roll," Johnson says. "But at the same time, I don't go out and see a lot of bands that sound quite like what we're doing. Which is nice."
scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2005.