| Detergent’s
final show at the Neutral Zone last month should have been the Ann
Arbor event of the season, a firm goodbye hug to a great teenage
riot of a pop band. As it stands, the crowd was pretty scant for
a Saturday night, but the handful of folks who did attend seemed
fairly comfortable with that. It is with more than a bit of regret
that I note that this same show was my first live experience with
the band, having only heard them in passing on recordings prior
to the event. However, if I’d known this past summer what
I learned at that show, things likely would have been different.
Just to clarify before I go any further: Detergent is an Ann Arbor
four-piece consisting of three teenage girls, with a slightly younger
teenage boy on drums. They are also the best argument I’ve
heard all year against my personal belief that it’s time for
us as a people to finally toss all of our electric guitars into
the Pacific Ocean and lay this whole “rock” thing to
rest. Detergent’s exuberance and good-natured humor, not to
mention their surprisingly deft songwriting, don’t make them
original, but these features are just enough to make claims of unoriginality
irrelevant. The band’s goofy onstage anti-charisma and
nerdy, flailing attempts to rock out were awkwardly perfect in every
way, full of herky-jerky half-dances and falsetto “1-2-3-4!”
countoffs. These kids rocked, as hard as their (usually) jangly
guitars and somewhat bookish demeanor would allow... more, actually.
That must be why they had to break up: if they continued to rock
in such a fashion, their heads would explode. There are precious
few people willing to die for their music nowadays...
No album can really capture that, of course, but The Party Will
Have To Be In Your Homes Tonight People, the band’s sole
studio document, serves as well as it can to capsulize the band’s
brief moment for posterity. As much as it sounds good in theory
(and actually was good in, say, the 1960s), rarely does the practice
of teenagers playing their own rock’n’roll sound so
good. As of this writing, I’ve walked around openly humming
songs from this CD in public multiple times, which is about as positive
a critique as one can really offer, I suppose.
For all that, though, let us not forget that Detergent is nary more
than a memory now, floating off into the ether like so many before
them. Certainly, this is unfortunate, but there is hope: on the
same day that The Party... dropped, Detergent lead vocalist/guitarist
Emily Powers was also there with a solo CD, conveniently titled
Emily Powers (apparently the third release of its kind, but
this is the first I’ve heard). Whereas Detergent’s overall
feel suggests sleepovers running over with bad movies and way too
much candy, Powers’ solo work seems an analogue for that other
central tenet of teenage existence: solitary bedroom experimentation.
Unlike the twaddle on which most of us waste our vital years, though,
Powers seems to be spending her “alone time” preparing
to go head-to-head with fellow Ann Arborite/indie-pop golden boy/star-waiting-to-happen
Fred Thomas (of Saturday Looks Good To Me) in an all-out battle
for supremacy in the field of making fun, cleverly arranged “lo-fi”
pop for the cardigan and sneakers set. So far, Thomas is winning
by a nose, but considering that Powers has achieved an effort this
accomplished and worthwhile at the tender age of 17, it won’t
be long before they’re neck and neck.
Let us also note, as something of an afterthought, that both of
the albums discussed above are self-released CDRs. In a society
when a turd covered in gloss and stuffed in a jewel case can go
triple platinum while selling primarily to the teenage market, it’s
refreshing to see a group of high schoolers taking this kind of
DIY modus operandi seriously (instead of just semi-grown nerds like
myself). At the ripe old age of 43 (or maybe I’m only 22,
but who’s counting?), I’m relieved that the DIY torch
is being passed down at all... that it’s carried with such
aplomb, though, is a true thing of beauty. A2P
—Dustin Krcatovich
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