I think we can probably pin this one on James Blake. Before he came along, solemn young men looking to channel their post-adolescent turmoil either formed a sappy nu-folk band or made grime on their PlayStations. There wasn’t much crossover. But Blake offered something new: he was into Digital Mystikz and Joni Mitchell, combining both influences to forge a much-copied template for the 2010s singer-songwriter. These days, sensitive lads across the land have abandoned their cardies and acoustic guitars for varsity jackets and libraries of soft synths. The age of the sad banger is well and truly upon us.
You can tell a lot from the choice of SoundCloud background for these things. Whereas three years ago it was all neon-lit drizzle at south London bus stops, the new visual shorthand for sad bangers is rocky crags and desolate tundra. Producers have begun to expunge any hint of urbanness from their backstories: Honne are from “Somerset and Wiltshire”; Astronomyy’s press release stresses that he’s from “rural” Worcestershire; Aquilo are from “the Lake District village of Silverdale”; while Sohn moved from London to Vienna, presumably to be nearer some mountains.
You’ll notice that all of these acts – see also: Oceaán, Sylas, Odesza – have one-word names that appear to be freighted with import, especially when written in serious block fonts over a picture of Siberian ice floes, but don’t actually mean anything at all. It’s a feeble attempt to persuade you that the music’s lack of commitment or thrust is somehow enigmatic, rather than a cop-out.
The main problem with sad bangers is that they are usually neither sad nor banging enough. They carry the faint imprint of dubstep, house or R&B without ever threatening to rattle your speakers. What with their whimpering vocals – another pernicious Blake-ism – they’re often just a lonely penguin away from being Tom Odell. If you want to hear a genuinely sad record, have a listen to Sun Kil Moon’s recent album, Benji. The first track finds disconsolate crooner Mark Kozelek struggling to come to terms with the death of his second cousin in a house fire, with the album going on to take in the deaths of his uncle, his grandmother, his dad’s friend, two kids from his class, an old bandmate and the victims of various school shootings. After that, hearing Sohn complain that “my love don’t love me” doesn’t quite have the same impact.
As long as there are Nordic noir-style dramas requiring a theme song, there are likely to be sad bangers. Too much more moody mountaintop warbling, however, and we should probably look to invoke the wise words of Beavis & Butt-head when appraising one of Morrissey’s feyer, desert-based efforts: “Quit whining, go out and get a job … and stay away from those rocks”.
