Fake Elegance and Coockoo: Chance & Negation as a Pop-Rock Credo

Starting with a simple thought - as we often do - we might suggest that both bands in this article be filed under "pop-rock," a term that has never been used with ease or widespread agreement. Given that songs of that crossover style are often defined in terms of guitar-driven melody, rather than lyrical profundity, pop-rock is accused of a likable, yet throwaway aesthetic. In simpler terms, it's pleasant enough, but hardly aiming for long-term value.

Given the high levels of self-importance from which rock music often suffers, especially in Russia, pop-rock artists have a hard time defending themselves against accusations of commercialism. And yet, when we consider the depressing depths to which much Russian pop music has fallen - thanks to the tasteless, fiscally-driven workings of primetime TV - perhaps a little noise and discord is precisely what's needed?

Such, in a word, are the opposing camps in any ongoing support and/or criticism of Russian pop-rock. Two ensembles that help to map this vague landscape are Kiev's Fake Elegance and Moscow's Coockoo: both have just released debut albums.

We first wrote of the Ukrainian band back in August 2009, when we translated a few of their PR materials, since they helped to sketch both the musicians' general outlook and future intent:  “Fake Elegance are a young and ambitious Ukrainian band. They define their style as ‘fake-pop’, because even though there are undoubtedly elements of pop music in their songs, the band as a whole doesn’t associate itself with mass culture. This ensemble plays music from the heart, all about human feelings and emotions. Their pleasant and catchy melodies make their entire catalog accessible to a wide range of people.” The band's goal, as we noted, was a mass audience, but not the (nasty, cynical) business thereof.

The group's most famous song, "Beautiful Morning" (first audio file), has enjoyed significant airplay on Kiev radio since that time, yet the members of Fake Elegance have been actively avoiding any involvement in the nation's stormy politics. Over and above the risks of joining any (fleeting) faction, the group is not even composed of born and bred locals. Once again, as we said last year: "Fake Elegance are fronted – at least visually and vocally - by Irina Shevchuk, born a very long way from Ukraine, in the Far North of Russia. More specifically in the Chukotka region, looking out onto Alaska and Sarah Palin’s house.  Shevchuk, however, is not only band member to have traveled these enormous distances. Guitarist Anton Blotskii was born in Komsomol’sk na Amure, almost on the Pacific coastline."

The band's history, geography aside, is also formed in similar ways: it tells of disparate musical elements that were added to - or subtracted from - an early line-up. The members of Fake Elegance, looking to position themselves somewhere in between rock and pop traditions, chopped and changed the building blocks of various colleagues (or their respective instruments) until a golden mean was in place. This, as already suggested, will never be an easy task in the context of Russian-language popular music. Rock remains firmly attached to its roots of the mid-1980s, when it acted as a wordy instrument of social protest; pop - unavoidably juxtaposed to that morose heritage - is endlessly lambasted by grumpy Slavs as light, fluffy, and utterly inconsequential.

When the members of Fake Elegance look back at their formation, en route to this debut album, they prefer, therefore, to speak of their early choices as a process driven by intuition or chance, even. Both are more appealing than any admission of decisions made on the basis of calculated profiteering or, from a rock standpoint, a social "position." And so we read: "There's no one creator of Fake Elegance, really. If anything brought us into being, it was a series of coincidences - or maybe something in a lunar cycle!"

There's no one creator of Fake Elegance, really. If anything brought us into being, it was a series of coincidences - or maybe something in a lunar cycle!

A rare and fickle illumination.

Chance meetings, the suggestions of ex-girlfriends, and consultations with shop staff in music stores: they all play their part in an "unplanned" evolution. As these various blocks fall into place with Fake Elegance's lifeline, two possible elements come to represent a leaning towards the domestic seriousness of rock music, and are therefore avoided. One is a male vocalist - and the other a bassist.

The reason for avoiding both is as follows. Even in the West, musicians' forums often note that bass players find themselves stereotyped as large, developmentally challenged types. There's a certain male "heft" to those cliches that make possible the synonymy of rock music's monumentalism with low frequencies: serious songs require really low notes. These same patriarchal poses often transfer, with little difficulty, to a penchant for male vocalists, too.

Such hackneyed assumptions need not come from the world of rock music, though. Even in the most conservative of Soviet traditions, male singers were usually granted songs of social or civic importance; lyrical musings were left to the ladies. Fake Elegance, aware of the baggage that accompanies bass players and bearded poets, opted to avoid both. "When we were all together [for the first time], we started to discuss the reasons for our efforts. We decided to stress the 'Western' aspects of our music... Within six months we had listened to about a dozen female singers, and that was when Ira came alone. With her arrival, at long last, we had the makings of a fully-fledged band!"

Somebody up there liked them.

But what of that bass guitar? "First of we had a real[!] bass player, but his outlook began to change. He soon left the band and that, in turn, caused something to alter within the group as a whole. We looked for a replacement, and - once more  - went through loads of possible candidates, but nothing worked out. That was when we tried an electronic bass - and understood it was exactly the sound we needed."

This brings us back to the group's odd self-definition as "fake pop." In a land where pop itself is a whipping boy for all manner of cultural failings, the term "fake pop" almost negates the negation, so to speak. A counterfeit fake is an original: dignity is restored to the pop song by dismissing its excessively "virtual" aspect (all of its falsehoods), whilst the hirsute, arrogant swagger of rock is audibly sidestepped with female vocals and a softer bass register, coming from a keyboard.

Moscow's Coockoo (above) form a useful counterpoint to these generic runarounds. The band's debut LP, "Cosmoventura," was presented to the public on March 1st and allows them to build on the earlier, cheeky reputation of their 2009 web-hit, “Groupies’ Anthem (F.U.C.K.).” A wantonly silly look at the life of groupies, Coockoo were - like Fake Elegance - looking to borrow from the subversive appeal of rock, whilst holding its local, Russian consequence at arm's length. It was invoked and mocked at the same time.

The individuals responsible for these contrary noises, both on stage, and online - for example at Vkontakte - are Petia Krykin (the "granddaddy"); Maria Mel'nikova ("the redhead"); Evgenii Orlov ("the drums"); Anton Tolmachev ("the boss"); and Egor' Kosarev (simply "Egor'").

Having now produced a debut album, the band defines it as "cosmic adventures for your head." The title's inclusion of the word "adventure" was deliberate, they say, "whereas we ran across the 'cosmic' bit purely by chance." Themes of enterprise and exploit are deliberately chosen, whereas the potentially bombastic scale of outer space was a mere "chance discovery"; they downplay it immediately.

They add another silly thought: "Your can hear our songs on the iPods people use in space stations!" Majesty and anything monumental are politely shunned - with a giggle.