REVOLVER: BRIAN BOYDon music

There’s a bit of a kerfuffle over that heavily rotated TV ad for the Volkswagen Polo. A lot of viewers have been very taken with the song used over the visuals, an achingly-poignant-indie-ballad-by-numbers called Whispers and Stories by a band called Sniffy Dog.

There’s idle fun to be had in tracking the online queries by “music fans” (Bon Iver types, it seems) looking to buy the song. When they find out that Sniffy Dog aren’t a traditional band as such, the previously “beautiful and enchanting” Whispers and Stories suddenly becomes “evil and corporate”. You see, Sniffy Dog is a company that produces music specifically for commercial use.

The now well-known story behind Whispers and Stories is that the ad agency initially wanted a Beach House track called Take Care and offered the band and their label an impressive amount of money. But Beach House turned down the offer, so Sniffy Dog were summoned in to write Whispers and Stories, which does sound very much like Take Care. But that’s evil ad people for you.

Before we continue: I’m a big Beach House fan and I predict that their July gig at Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens will be one of the shows of the year. It’s the organic indie types who also like the band who distress me. The same organic indie types who go looking for a song they love and once they realise it was written by an ad agency suddenly lose interest.

While Beach House aren’t exactly making a martyrdom of turning down the VW Polo money, they are giving it a bit of moral high ground. So perhaps it’s best to point out that one of the probable reasons the ad agency approached them in the first place is because Beach House had previously taken money from an ad agency to allow one of their songs to be used to promote alcohol.

Ignore all the manifold problems caused by alcohol use at music shows and the fact that it is a dangerous, if socially sanctioned, drug. The real problem here is once Beach House allowed their music to be bought and used in an ad for a corporation (in this case, Guinness), any whining out of them about the VW Polo ad rings hollow.

To quote Bill Hicks about music acts who allow their songs to be used in ads: “If you do a commercial, you’re off the artistic roll call. Every word you say is suspect. You’re a corporate whore.”

Again, as a fan of Beach House, it pains me to read how quick they were to get out statements saying they turned down the VW Polo money; there was never a press release from the band saying: “Hurrah, we just got loads of dosh out of Guinness for selling out!” And their justification for doing the Guinness ad? According to Victoria Legrand: “We were adamant about it staying within a certain artistic territory.”

I’m sorry, but using the phrase “artistic territory” to justify selling one of your songs so it can be used to promote alcohol is just wrong.

I couldn’t care less if Beach House were to do Rolls Royce/McDonald’s/Tayto Crisp ads in order to continue creating such beautiful music. Any band who turn down easy money when CD sales are in free fall need their heads examined. But let’s drop the sanctimony.

Mixedbag

* The new Iggy and the Stooges album is due at the end of April.

* One Direction hating on Jake Bugg.