Rock, Roll, Repeat: The Re-emergence of 'Stadium Rock Cheese'

Bands like The Dirty Nil and White Reaper are making stadium rock cool and fun again. So I had a little chat with The Nil's Luke Bentham about it.

On Feb. 19, 2014, Alex Turner cooly (in the Fonzie definition of “cool”) sauntered onto the stage with the rest of his band, Arctic Monkeys, to accept a BRIT award for Album of the Year for 2014’s AM.

After giving a quick mic-check-one-two, he crooned this:

“That rock n’ roll, eh? That rock n’ roll. It just won’t go away. It might hibernate from time to time. Sink back into the swamp. I think the, uh, cyclical nature of the universe in which it exists demands it adheres to some of its rules. But it’s always waiting there just around the corner ready to make its way back through the sludge and smash through the glass ceiling looking better than ever. Yeah, that rock n’ roll. It seems like it’s fading away sometimes, but it will never die. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He then dropped the mic with the Pompadour-sporting confidence that only comes with someone who has made a vault of money and spent a lot of time hanging out with Josh Homme.

But in his slurred Best Man Speech, he did make one point that I think holds true, albeit not in the sense that he might have intended at the time.

Rock n’ roll is cyclical. Every style and trend is. And it does make its way back into the mainstream in various permutations. But while Turner might have been picturing guys like him–sentient leather jackets and toothpicks and pomade–the reality is that while he was lounge singing his way through their next album about the moon or whatever, other rock bands were going back to high-kicking, big-riffing and pushing a having-fun-again agenda into rock n’ roll that would overtake his meticulously groomed brand of it.

That rock n’ roll.

Turner and the Arctic Monkeys are hardly the first band to shed their teenage ‘00s indie rock outfits in favor of a more cultivated aesthetic. And they won’t be the last band to recycle a previously-outdated sound to great fanfare. But on the other end of this spectrum are the bands that went from unassuming young bands pounding it out on the indie rock circuit, and then just continually getting better at writing songs, becoming more comfortable trying new things, and instead of doubling down on the very particular aesthetic, they’ve leaned heavily into the fun side of rock music. Bands like White Reaper declared themselves “The World’s Best American Band” on their awesome eponymous 2017 album and shed their midwest grungy reputation, and legitimately backed up the claim with one of the best rock albums in recent memory, taking their abilities and production value a step beyond the dingy sound of other rust belt and midwest acts. They traded a peer group of Twin Peaks for the likes of Jimmy Eat World and Pearl Jam.

And The Dirty Nil, whose first impression for a lot of listeners was the harsh “Higher Power” set them in with other Dine Alone bands and the really good Canadian pop/punk and punk scenes. What followed was an evolution toward bigger riffs, tighter production, a little more flair and pageantry, shirts with stars all over them, and the eternally cool line of “Hello, Jesus. Hello, Elvis. It’s good to see yas,” on 2018’s Master Volume.

I caught The Nil in Philly not too long ago. And the show was awesome, but it was in a very small venue. I couldn’t help but think that they really do need to have the extravagance of a big light show and pyrotechnics. Maybe some big stage pieces they can run around on. I thought the same thing every time I’d see Diarrhea Planet (RIP) or when I just caught White Reaper at Underground Arts, another tiny Philly venue.

And I’ve been thinking even more lately about how the only rock bands that headline arenas are the bands that have been around since rock music was last popular, and the ones that the industry deems worthy of a Super Bowl halftime show or co-branded event. Or worse, they get Fall Out Boy, who told everyone they were going to “Save Rock n’ Roll” by making an EDM album or whatever.

Part of it is that, for a long time, maybe we thought that sort of stadium rock sound was a joke. First it was the things your dad listened to that embarrassed you while he drove you and your friends to the mall or he was DJing the cookout. Then maybe you heard “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” and it started to appeal to you, but only drenched in the self-aware irony of big costumes and a sci-fi music video, so you could love it without actually loving it on a surface level. Then bands like Diarrhea Planet, with a silly name and four guitarists, bridged that gap between carnival act silliness and bona fide, viable bands that just love harmonized solos and the idea of shooting sparklers out of a guitar headstock or something. It was a cool band reminding you that it was cool to want to be the biggest band on the planet.

The Dirty Nil just teased their next album with “Done With Drugs,” which came out on June 17. It rips. Listen here.

Hell, here’s a live version where they edit in an appropriately sized and stoked crowd.

In an interview with Kerrang! coinciding with the single release, the Nil’s guitarist/vocalist said that after touring a bit with White Reaper, he felt even more comfortable letting his inhibitions go and tapping into what he called the “Stadium Rock Cheese.”

“In general, I feel excited to follow any direction that feels exciting,” Bentham tells me via e-mail. “I must admit that in my early 20's, I felt more of an inner voice or compass of cool, which resulted in a more constricted view of rock and roll and my place within it. Touring the way we have has shattered that shell, as being exposed to so many types of bands and artists really challenges you to look at things and be honest with yourself: 'Do I like this or not?’ That self examination revealed to me that I love April Wine just as much as Fugazi. Also, [bassist] Ross [Miller] joining the band had a big impact on my own creativity. Blasting Missy Elliot back to back with Guided by Voices made me really accept that life is too short to create some bullshit curated version of yourself and your tastes. As a band we feel completely free to explore anything that puts a smile on our faces, or even better, makes us laugh.”

For a genre that’s supposed to be about breaking all the rules, there have been a lot of them. Most of them have been unspoken, but much like in baseball, certain people take them seriously. And a lot of people who have spent so much time trying to pretend that rock music isn’t fun. And that sucks.

“I think as liberating as first wave punk or grunge appeals to us retrospectively, these movements clearly had a set of rules, visually and sonically, once they were established,” Bentham adds. “Rock and roll in 2020 gets a lot of flack, but I think people are missing the point. How liberating is it to have such a wealth of past artists to inspire you, whilst having no rules yourself? […] I think complying to a tight little cool compass is a path of fear and constraint and will probably lead to an early heart attack. Also, to be honest, most of the people I grew up with who still cling to these dogmatic ideas and aesthetics have all been, thus far, doomed to a fate of obscurity. Rock and Roll has to come from a place of fun and excitement, its not a fucking tax return.”

Existing as an artist or band in the 21st century, when blogs and critics and Twitter users are so quick to nitpick and ruthlessly tear something to shreds is difficult. Because of that, Bentham says, a lot of bands think they need to “reinvent the wheel” with every release. Adding to that, the minuscule attention span the listening public has, you need to write a good song first, because there very well might not be time to craft an aesthetic. Realizing that and going the other way has influenced his writing to maybe feel more authentic. Or at least more authentically his.

“I think that for a long time people viewed rock and roll like they view Apple products: The next one has to be more advanced and novel than the previous one,” he says. “However, there's only so many things you can do with an electric guitar. Eventually, you're gonna start referencing things from the past, even unintentionally. For me the problems begin when an artist or band borrows too heavily from one source. How many bands that sound like 1974 Deep Purple do we need in 2020? I think at this point, songs have become more important and generally speaking, the whole novelty of aesthetics has minimized in importance. This is a good thing, because songs last, hairstyles don't.”

You hear that, Turner?

Another difference between bands like White Reaper and The Dirty Nil (to keep them as my main protagonists here) and bands that are a more Capital-R Revivalist band like The Lumineers, is that they don’t shove that idea of a revival down your throat. Taking a wide swathe of influences and condensing them into a new thing isn’t a new concept, but neither is guitar rock. But it’s a lot more refreshing, in my opinion, to see someone like Bentham take James Hetfield rhythm guitar parts (“the greatest right hand since Townshend”), Frank Sinatra arrangements and the “bashing” of Turnstile into something much greater than the sum of its parts. It’s chemistry.

Right now, everyone wants to talk about how rock music or guitar music is “dead” or “isn’t dangerous anymore” or how “everything on the radio sucks” and therefore “they don’t make rock like they used to.” No, they totally do. You’re just a doofus and are looking in the wrong places. Like, well, stadiums. Meanwhile the artists you should be looking to for stadium rock are in much smaller rooms, but they shouldn’t be. And maybe they won’t be in the near future (pandemic allowing). Maybe that rock n’ roll really will fulfill its cyclical nature that Alex Turner waxed poetic about, and bands like The Nil and White Reaper and all of the other bands will inherit the rock n’ roll Earth. Bentham believes in it, at least.

“I can’t wait to show people what we’ve been working on. Hail, hail Rock n Roll.”

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Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is Tigers Jaw.