One: Worship pioneers of your designated musical genre — in the Postelles‘ case, the Police, the Kooks, the Strokes, and similar New Wave-experimental phenomenons.
Two: Learn to play an instrument and/or sing. Or master Auto-Tune. Or come up with a reasonable defense for your deficiency, like, “Hey, we’re gritty, the off-key singing is a metaphor for cold government corruption and garage-rock chaos is our blanket.”
Three: Fueled by your idols and muses, experiment until you find your own sound. Someone listening to your music should not completely confuse you with someone else. Imagine the embarrassment of the “Who Wore It Best” pages in People. Two A-listers should avoid arriving at a swanky event in the same fuchsia Valentino gown. Likewise, a band’s guitar reverb and syncopated back-beat should pay homage to their genre while reminding people why they are listening to said band and not the masters who inspired them. Vanilla Ice might have gotten away with that heinous rip-off of “Under Pressure,” but rock aficionados are still in an uproar.
As I enjoyed the four frisky jams on the Postelles’ EP, I mindlessly assumed the disc was a side project of a Vampire Weekend member. It’s not, though the band does hail from NYC. White Night (out now on Capitol) has three decent enough tracks and a pleasant remix, none of them inspired enough to become a stand-out single. Yes, my foot was tappin’, and yes, I caught myself muttering along with the repetitive choruses (”sleep on the dance floor, sleep on the dance floor”… as if this were ever possible, by the way, unless you’re at a retirement center polka party). But the music is so derivative that half the time, it really felt like I was listening to the Kooks.
The Postelles have clearly mastered the first two steps of good music-making, but until they begin to sound more unique, they’ll have trouble carving a niche out for themselves in music history.
