Nickelback
Here and Now
Roadrunner
11.21.11
Nickelback songs have always been the clarion call of the American douchebag, the soundtrack for endless armies of male suburbanites pretending that their anger at their ex-girlfriend -- or more likely, the woman they wish was their ex-girlfriend --somehow elevated them to the level of existential angst. It was a canny move, too, retooling the sound of more serious, artistic postgrunge angst merchants into simple, effective anthems that were loud enough to sound dangerous but pop enough to not actually be dangerous. The rock world howled as it always does when this trick is pulled, knowing that Nickelback wasn't hard but rather try-hard. Yet they've sold more albums in the past decade than almost any other rock band -- 21 million -- and the only explanation for moving that many discs in the Naughties is the strip-club theory: until recently, titty bars and NFL stadium booths and the like usually relied on physical music for their playlists. This is not the kind of music you listen to on an iPod while jogging.
So now that Nickelback hate has reached critical mass, culminating in Detroit fans petitioning to not have the band play a halftime show at Ford Field, what to do? Go pop, of course -- but without sacrificing any of the "virtues" that makes the brand so marketable. 2008's Dark Horse went a bit too far in that direction: calling in veteran producer "Mutt" Lange made them sound a little like a modern version of Def Leppard's Hysteria. Which also meant it was their biggest seller, but their frat-boy base started to look at them a little funny, as if they were starting to appreciate women as human beings or something. So out came the public announcement that Here and Now would be a "return to form," when in reality it's just a compromise between the two extremes. They didn't didn't get this huge by being stupid, bro.
Of course, being stupid and acting that way are two different things. Singer-songwriter Chad Kroeger still has lots of shamelessly dumb and offensive things to say about women, lines that are the polar opposite of clever: "She's a scene from a Baywatch rerun / Hotter than the barrel on a squeeze machine gun." "She's gonna climb all over me. I'm like a pony in my own rodeo." "You and me sitting in a tree / F-U-C-K-I-N-G." (That last one is also real.) The difference this time is that the band, like the dbags, have stuck around long enough to become a bonafide subset of society, which means they're free to sell out now: the band's flair for the giant stadium hook and thirst for porno-soundtrack level aggression have finally merged perfectly. Production is the only thing separating "Midnight Queen" from Warrant's "Cherry Pie," but it's also the only thing separating meaningful, socially-aware (!) ballads like "When We Stand Together" from a Coldplay track.
So Nickelback isn't quite as laughable now that they're not pretending to be tortured; as long as they keep making aggressive postures, they can get away with being shiny. After all, this is a band that has always been content to stare dumbly at the sleaze around it, like a drunk at 3 am, neither reveling in it like Guns N' Roses when they were feral street urchins or romanticizing it like Limp Bizkit when they decided they wanted to be taken seriously. They just want to look at the strippers and go home, which is not unlike the kind of carefully orchestrated, emotionally suspect experience you get from their music. Their recent conversion to semi-respectability, however, does make their ear candy a little more attractive. Looks like somebody went up a cup size over the weekend.
Graded using the Third Eye Method:
Impact: 38. Not quite as hard as their earlier stuff, but just as sleazy.
Invention: 28. The lyrics are worse than ever, but there's less posturing, which is a good trade-off.
Integrity: 44. Chad does not really hate strippers or care about the planet. But you don't come to this hole in the wall for the single-malt, anyway.
