Is Dark Was The Night a Metaphor for Indie Rock?
Bill Bradley, Vanity Fair, 4 May 2009 [Link]

Since Live Aid kicked off the charity compilation meme, back in 1985, each generation’s rock darlings have attempted to prove their staying power by playing for a cause. And, as often as not, they’ve done it with The Red Hot Organization, an international non-profit that raises funds for H.I.V. and AIDS awareness. Everyone from U2, Sinead O’Connor, and David Bowie to Nirvana, Wu Tang Clan, and Debbie Harry have contributed tracks to Red Hot’s compilations since its founding, in 1989.

Past Red Hot Organization compilations have had specific themes and causes. Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon (1998) was made to raise AIDS awareness in the Portuguese world and featured all Latin-inspired music sung in seven different languages. And 2001’s Red Hot + Rhapsody: The Gershwin Groove, commemorated George Gershwin’s birthday and featured Gershwin covers by David Bowie, The Roots, Natalie Merchant, and others.

Red Hot Organization’s 20th charity record, Dark Was The Night, may be the Very Special Christmas of indie rock, but its goals and methods are as obscure as the genre itself. The title makes it sound like a benefit for rape victims; the songs have nothing to do with the cause (the most accessible song here is about building a table out of pine wood); and the cause itself is as nostalgic as a free MP3 from Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Leave it to indie rockers to do an AIDS benefit concert in the middle of a swine flu epidemic!

Still, Dark Was the Night works in ways that most compilations don’t. When it came out in February, tastemakers like Pitchfork and Spin hailed it as the first cohesive charity album. The relentlessly mid-tempo tracks by Andrew Bird, My Morning Jacket, and Antony Hegarty actually add up to something. It’s also the kind of album your mother would like, even though there’s no way she’d know who any of the artists are.

Except David Byrne, the guiding light, who was the first artist ever to agree to record for Red Hot. And when a handful of the acts on the record got together to play at Radio City Music Hall last night, David Byrne again served as the guiding light. He ran through a couple tracks with Dirty Projectors, his collaborators on the song “Knotty Pine.” And he stole the show just before the intermission, parading out with a drum line and dancing around the stage in a button up with red and blue sleeves and ANYTHING ELSE IS RUBBISH scrawled across the back. He gave the other performers, many of them half his age, something to aspire to.

Bon Iver proved to be the standout wunderkind, receiving as much applause as Byrne for his post-intermission mini-set. But, like any show with too many artists in the same place, not everything got off the ground. Just because two great musicians are in the same building doesn’t mean they should be on the same stage. And when Bon Iver joined Feist for “Train Song” (originally a duet with Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard for Dark Was The Night) during her mini-set, it didn’t quite gel. They both have voices that can hold a room, but when they tried to do it together it fell flat.

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings resuscitated the audience with her throwback Motown-revue live set, which closed the concert. If it hadn’t been for her ability to recreate James Brown’s moves, the place may have walked home in a bitter, indie-induced stupor (which it probably did anyway, considering it was Sunday and raining). She even managed to revive the “We Are The World”-esque moment that closed the show. In honor of Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday benefit, across town at Madison Square Garden, the concert’s headliners all decided to sing “This Land is Our Land.” Which was decidedly ridiculous. I couldn’t help but laugh. Until Sharon Jones came out and gave the entire Dark Was The Night crew the equivalent of a “Hell No” and launched into a rendition worth sticking around for.

Is the lack of purpose and accessibility of Dark Was The Night a metaphor for indie rock? I wouldn’t go that far. But I would say it’s a clairvoyant effort to predict the next generation’s Byrneses, Cobains, and Debbie Harrys.