All Inclusive

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki

For students of 20th-century history, the word “collective” evokes images from Soviet propaganda posters of brawny women with sandbag-sized forearms wielding their scythes in happy unison. Or, if you watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, you might be reminded of the Borg, those villainous conformists bent on retrofitting the galactic population into robotic, tennis-playing drones.

What it doesn’t bring to mind is the guitar-smashing, kick drum-exploding transcendence of rock ’n’ roll. At least, up until now. In recent years, indie rock has been overrun by soccer team-sized groups calling themselves — or being labelled — “collectives.” There are famous musical collectives from the U.K. (Belle and Sebastian) and the States (the Polyphonic Spree), but Canada is punching above its weight in producing acclaimed collectives like the New Pornographers, Broken Social Scene, The Arcade Fire and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

Last December, I was offered a ticket to see The Arcade Fire when they rolled into Vancouver. The normally expansive stage at the Commodore Ballroom was needed to fully accommodate the critically lauded Montreal collective’s nine members, which include an accordion player, someone who occasionally played the steel drums and a percussionist with a tom-tom strapped to his person.

Among a crowded room full of scenesters, the members of the band — all of whom seemed energized by their astounding, newfound popularity — pogoed onstage to each of their songs. As my eyes flitted from the guitarist to the percussionist to the accordionist, I had the feeling I was witnessing the Cirque du Soleilization of rock music. In place of the light show or video installation that might otherwise keep the audience of a standard four-piece band (i.e., Ringling Bros.) visually preoccupied, my attention was held by a small truckload of eclectic instruments played by a small busload of eclectic-looking people.

The Arcade Fire perform at Lollapalooza in Chicago on July 24, 2005. Photo Matt Carmichael/Getty Images.

What distinguishes a musical collective from any run-of-the-mill band? “People seem to think that we all live together on a farm and knit our own ponchos and cook each other tempeh delights and practise Wiccan moon rituals,” jokes Joshua Wells from Vancouver’s Black Mountain.

There certainly isn't what you might be able to call a “collective sound.” The joyfully mischievous lo-fi recordings of New York's Animal Collective, whose music has been called “freak folk,” disassemble the guitar strums and haunted wails of traditional American music in a way that’s tuneful but also sounds spontaneous. Belle and Sebastian’s sardonic, softly sung pop is reminiscent of singer-songwriters from a generation ago like Donovan or Nick Drake. Broken Social Scene switches effortlessly from guitar rockers to jazzy instrumentals to billowy alt-pop.

Given that many collectives often include a dozen or more members who often play the kind of instruments (cellos, trombones) you'd find in a high-school music room, album and concert reviewers often describe the work of musical collectives as “chamber rock.” This term could accurately describe music as disparate-sounding as the anthemic, U2-ish indie-rock of The Arcade Fire and the slow-then-fast, quiet-then-loud symphonic thrash of Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

New Pornographers members (from left): Blaine Thurier, Kurt Dahle, Neko Case, Todd Fancey, A.C. Newman and John Collins. Photo Chris Buck. Courtesy The New Pornographers.

What sets collectives apart from bands might not be the product, but the process. If, in the era of divorce, being in a band is too much of a commitment, the collective is like the musical equivalent of an open marriage. Members of musical collectives effortlessly splinter off into solo and side projects. Take Vancouver’s New Pornographers: the swooning country singer Neko Case and Dan Bejar of Destroyer had established themselves as successful solo acts before the Pornographers’ breakthrough album, Mass Romantic. Since then, Pornographer singer A.C. Newman has released his own solo record.

“The bands we liked in the ’90s, such as Pavement, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 and Sun City Girls, were an influence in that sometimes certain members played on records and others didn’t,” says Brian Weitz, who goes by the name Geologist on Animal Collective’s recordings. “They showed us that you don’t have to follow these rules of four people in a band doing the same thing every time.”

“The only ‘collective sound’ that you could say exists is the sound of musicians working together and off of each other,” says Wells, “in a way that shows more creativity and commitment to the songs than if one person was calling all the shots. The way I view our status as a collective — which we never really defined ourselves as — is more in the way that we labour over song arrangements and production together, as a band.”

The collectivization of the rock band signals a move from either the traditional hierarchical rock configuration that features either a frontman and the rest of the band (e.g. Iggy and the Stooges) or two songwriters whose battle for band dominance is the band's driving dynamic (eg. Lennon and McCartney) to a less persona-driven type of music.

“The lone artist has had its day,” Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew told the New York Press in 2003. “‘Written, produced, arranged by’ [one artist] is over. There's been enough of that. The self-exhibitionist has come to an end. People want to see energy on stage.”

For the time being, it’s better to take Drew’s statements as a call to arms, rather than a prediction. There is no shortage of solipsistic singer-songwriters or frontman-led bands; the musical collective at least provides an alternative to more ego-driven, combative paradigms of group music-making.

It's also worth noting that the musician currently hyped as the next Bob Dylan, Conor Oberst, still performs in Bright Eyes, which the press often describes as a collective. Even though Oberst is the primary songwriting force in the otherwise-faceless group, he seems to remain in Bright Eyes in order to obscure his still-burgeoning indie celebrity. It used to be that the dominant personality of a band needed to leave in order to strike it big; now musicians like Oberst have elected to hole themselves up in their collectives, shunning the more-travelled path to glory in order to belong to something bigger than themselves.

Kevin Chong is a Vancouver writer. His book, Neil Young Nation, will be released by Douglas & McIntyre this November.