MOTW: “Whoo! Alright – Yeah…Uh Huh.” – The Rapture

In a bid for consistency, Music of the Whenever is a column title that never lies for me.

“Whoo! Alright – Yeah…Uh Huh.” – The Rapture

Critics and fans and particularly radio hosts on butt rock stations have made much ado about the death of rock as a serious cultural force. While it’s a rickety claim at its base (a much stronger claim is in rock’s balkanization), I suspect if more rock groups followed the jovially lusty path of The Rapture, they’d have a much easier time maintaining relevancy.

“Whoo! Alright – Yeah…Uh Huh.” sets fire to a dance floor and then questions the ambitions of rock as an art form, imagining a conversation at once self-effacing and self-congratulatory, “She said ’emotional distance, it doesn’t rhyme/Or resonate brilliance from in it’s time’/But is it lyrical genius or crap rock poetry?/I say the lineage runs Morrison, Patti Smith, then me.” The song anticipates the fall of rock from the proper mainstream in form and content. Its self-consciously heady lyrics wonder about the actual profundity of aloofness, while its carnal beat insists the head forget about all that and defer to the heart. Those raving guitars, cheerleader chants, and thrumming synth hits show us the heart wins in this one.