Chaos, the antidote to rock by rote

For some years now, when American friends have asked about the U.K. music scene, it’s been with a kindly hand-on-the shoulder air. They fondly remember our past glories and sympathize about how we’ve suffered, in particular, from post-Spice Girls, manufactured, Svengalied pop glop.

But now, rather suddenly, it feels as though the whole thing’s a complete mess and looking good. Seething with creativity. This troubles major labels that have become locked into commercial formula. For them, the difficulty is that no one can spot trends that might be converted into a reassuring industrial process. Whereas for music fans, it feels like one of those titillating, teetering moments on the brink of passionate discoveries.

To a degree, the turmoil arises from the surprising collapse of various apparently stout parties. American nu-metal’s Bizkit suddenly went very limp, all but vanishing from the U.K. charts during 2003. But so did the market for a random selection of star turns as new albums by Britney Spears, Travis, Madonna, Texas, Pink, Kylie Minogue and even the Strokes slumped dismally.

They left room to maneuver and to go back to fundamentals: the array of quirky flavors these islands brought to rock ‘n’ roll from the Beatles and the Kinks through Led Zeppelin, David Bowie and the Clash to Oasis and Radiohead.

The ramshackle nature of what’s happening was captured by the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis, the most venturesome of our national newspaper pop writers, who departed London to boldly trek the country looking for signs. “I ended up,” he reported, “in a flat overlooking the Mersey watching two track-suited Scousers [that’s people from Liverpool] play a demented version of Leadbelly’s ‘Rock Island Line’ while their friend kept time by banging a radiator with a banana.”

The story doesn’t end with the two lads and their banana bestriding the Top 20. But their more accomplished spiritual siblings are starting to get a hearing and break through, often via live shows full of verve and imagination (audiences are up everywhere, from small clubs on).

Some talk of London’s the Duke Spirit, Sunderland’s Futureheads or the Anglo-Swedish Razorlight, but Glasgow’s Franz Ferdinand, its self-titled first album out this month, is the prospect of the hour. Fiery and witty, the members are working up a leather-jacketed music hall (vaudeville) idiom, hard guitars driving songs full of character observation and downbeat, twisted emotion.

They initially commanded attention with low-budget, high-impact gigs, often in a derelict Glaswegian jail, that involved guitarist Nick McCarthy wearing a cardboard box (“I’m a human jukebox”) and a light show comprising a wall of inverted sun beds. (Franz Ferdinand is heading to America, with a show at the Troubadour set for March 19.)

Similarly, recent album debutant British Sea Power, from rural Sussex, adorns its grand and elevating Anglo prog-rock designs with wacky notions, the members appearing on stage dressed as polar explorers, surrounded by stuffed birds and such.

There’s grace in a flamboyant urge to show off when it’s delivered with self-aware mockery. Take heavy rocker the Darkness, from the Suffolk fishing port Lowestoft. Last summer it opened the first day at the Glastonbury Festival. Frontman Justin Hawkins had everyone agape with his Freddie Mercury posturing, costume changes, acrobatics and the band’s cheer: “Gimme a ‘D’ ... ‘D’ ... Gimme an ‘arkness’ ... ‘arkness!’ ”

Two months later their first album was No. 1 here. They’re funny and they rock.

The state of the art

So it’s the 50th anniversary of rock ‘n’ roll and guitars are back leading the pack. Pretty boy and girl “bands” wane or desperately struggle to acquire credibility, for instance, by actually playing guitars -- like quasi-punky chart-topper Busted.

However, guitars aren’t the whole story. Through the good influence of Norah Jones’ success, quiet singer-songwriting has gotten an even break at last, with jazzy Londoner Amy Winehouse and Celtic moodsmiths Damien Rice (Ireland) and Alasdair Roberts (Scotland) rising above an inevitable plethora of self-indulgent introversion.

Meanwhile, hip-hop still bubbles despite its tendencies here to stay clear of the mainstream. Londoner Dizzee Rascal broke out so dynamically that he won the 2003 Mercury, the U.K.’s most prestigious album of the year prize. Now an Anglo-Iranian called Blade could be following him, along with a queue of white rappers, such as Nottingham’s Pitman, who are plugged into both American hip-hop and the Britwit-pop tradition from Ray Davies to Franz Ferdinand.

All this isn’t to ignore or demean coming new albums from U2, Morrissey, PJ Harvey and whatever may emerge from the never-knowingly static Radiohead and Blur/Gorillaz/Damon Albarn. They all still give it everything, and we’re itching to hear them.

But for once, it’s good to feel that U.K. music is in the sort of productive chaos that makes a state of flux look like a well-drilled army.