It’s been less than a decade since Chris Keating’s band released its debut album. And yet to hear the Yeasayer singer tell it, the Brooklyn-based indie-rock outfit that recently released “Amen & Goodbye,” its third in an eight-year span, might as well be operating at a snail’s pace.
“Everybody is always looking for the brand-new thing,” he said on a recent morning. “We live in a very ADD culture.”
In this Internet-centric, streaming-based music culture, in which fans are ingesting and promptly discarding new music at a manic speed, many artists are feeling pressure to constantly stay engaged with their fan base, release new music at a feverish rate, and tour until reaching mental and physical limits.
A handful of the biggest names in the business, however, are fighting back against that model. From Adele to Frank Ocean, M83 to Rihanna and Bon Iver, not to mention Beyonc? and her recent release of “Lemonade,” a certain segment of musicians is stepping back from the public spotlight for years at a time.
The motivation? Not only will this allow them to not get burned out, but the time away builds anticipation for upcoming work and creates a sense of mystery. To that end, what could be perceived as losing momentum in the 2016 here-today-gone-tomorrow music industry has in many ways served some artists well: nearly every hint at potential new material drums up manic levels of excitement from an ever-thirsty fan base.
“I’m sure there’s kids out there who are like, ‘Oh, we wrote a song today. Let’s put it out right now,’ but songs to me can last a lifetime, so why rush them?” said Ocean’s principal collaborator, producer James “Malay” Ho. Malay worked with Ocean on his landmark 2012 debut, “Channel Orange.” He is now in the studio wrapping up work on Ocean’s long-awaited follow-up LP. Malay’s mere mention last month of work on the album caused major music publications to declare near-universal excitement.
Malay said he believes in Ocean’s model and bemoans the idea that artists should feel pressure to constantly release music to keep up.
“Maybe it’s because I’m from a more old-school time,” he said, “but it’s difficult to have that mentality of, ‘Hey, let’s just throw the song out there. It’s good enough.’ You should always pursue all aspects of perfecting a song before it’s released.”
Rick Nielsen, guitarist for Cheap Trick, whose band released its first album in seven years in April, “Bang, Zoom, Crazy … Hello,” concurs.
“You don’t always have to have something coming out,” the legendary guitarist and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee said. “What’s the hurry?”
In many ways, the decisions to retreat from the public domain is a direct counterpoint to today’s social media-curated world in which artists are regularly expected — and often explicitly told by their record label — to interact on a near-daily basis with fans.
Not everyone sees the benefit in such behavior.
“The idea that you need to have all this back and forth with your fans … that sounds like it will (end up) very quickly being bad for both the artist and the fans,” said Gordon Gano, singer for the rock band Violent Femmes, which waited 16 years between releases, offering its most recent, “We Can Do Anything,” in April.
“(Bands’ need to use social media) doesn’t make sense to me,” he added.
In fact, Gano said, when the Femmes returned after several years out of the public conversation, excitement around the band only increased.
“The response was great,” he said of a 2013 gig at Coachella and a subsequent tour. “It was like we never stopped playing.”
Keating said he romanticizes “a long-gone past in which there was a certain kind of mystery behind musicians. This exposure to their everyday life starts to make everything a little more bland.”
Nielsen said he can only laugh at what he sees as an excessive oversharing from today’s musicians to stay relevant.
“It’s like, ‘What did you have for breakfast?’ ” Nielsen said. “Who cares?”
Whether artists opt to stay engaged with fans or remove themselves, there are still those who believe the eventual end product will do the heavy lifting.
Metal guitarist and frequent Ozzy Osbourne collaborator Zakk Wylde waited 20 years between his debut solo album and April’s “Book of Shadows II” but said he believes that no matter how long he’s been away, his album — or any for that matter — will find its audience if it’s high-caliber.
“No matter what, the music business has always been the same,” Wylde said. “Wherever it is we gotta go to survive, we’ll make it happen. But in the end, the cream of the crop will always destroy everything else.”
