"Electronic Rock" by Nam de Plume

One of the best trends in rock and roll over the past few years is the integration of electronic, machine-generated sounds into mainstream rock records. We are not talking about Kraftwerk or Brian Eno and their brand of perverse pop or the industrial metal of Nine Inch Nails or Ministry, which are also excellent, but rather meat-and-potatoes rock and roll songwriters or bands who use the type of electronic noises which make up the beats in hip-hop to freshen up the bass/guitar/keyboard/drums pallett of traditional rock songs. In the hands of bad songwriters this can be deadly, a grasping for the next big thing. But in the hands of artists like Beck, Radiohead, the late, lamented Pavement and today's heroes Wilco this trend is nothing less than revolutionary.

Beck kicked the trend off in earnest with his hip-hop/rock fusion Odelay in 1996. Birthed from the successful parts of 1994's Mellow Gold, Odelay was one of the first albums-which-work-as-song-cycles to fully integrate hip-hop beats into what would have otherwise been a great rock record. Take out the machine-generated or sampled sounds from Odelay and you would still have a super rock record. When they were added in you had something else: rock's familiar emotion-churning classic album with ear challenges ready to make the non-hip-hop initiate concede that electronic music could have grit and soul. (See also 1997's Madonna record Ray of Light for an early example of this in straight pop).

In 1997, Radiohead blasted their career to another level by going all electronic crazy on OK Computer. As is their polemical wont, the album also had a classic rock staple - the unifying concept. Ironically enough, OK Computers' concept is that technology sucks the soul. A great oxymoron then, a hard-as-nails rock/electronica record which bemoans the inexorable forward march of technology. Although this record is light on melody, it has the staple of classic rock records - a fuck you stance worthy of the Clash.

Perhaps the apogee of this trend came in 1998-1999, with the twin peaks of Beck's Mutations and Pavement's Terror Twilight. Mutations, originally intended as a minor album between the over-the-top parties of Odelay and Midnight Vultures, is no less than Beck's masterpiece. From the folky twang gone wrong of "Cold Brains" through the genre-checking glory of "Tropicalia" and the outright weird-yet-catchy "Oh Maria", Mutations is a giant record, a Zeppelin 4 for the 90s. We could spend a whole other article describing how Mutations is really what makes Beck the rightful heir to Dylan's songwriting throne, a place where he synthesized the Bard's lyrical transcendence with his restless thematic experimentation, but suffice it to say Mutations seriously upped the ante in the electronic-suffused rock genre. Nigel Godrich, who most famously produced Radiohead, deserves credit as co-architect on the record.

Pavement raised the stakes to their top, a place to which all others can only aspire, with Terror Twilight. Featuring contributions from Radiohead member Jonny Greenwood on harmonica, Terror Twilight was the sound of Stephen Malkmus coming into his own and simultaneously and autocratically breaking the band apart. Each Pavement album showed Malkmus' true genius, ever-resistant to mass appeal, but Terror Twilight (what a name) was where as you listened you could envision talking about the record 20 years from now as the best album few people heard. "Spit on a Stranger" got things started in typical contrarian fashion. A brilliant, analysis-defying lyric married to an irresistable pop-rock melody. Too good for the masses. "Carrot Rope" did the impossible, making pedophilia the subject of a joyous pop song. But the peak-of-peaks was the appropriately-titled "Major League", Malkmus appropriating the Big Star Sister Lovers theme of a band reaching for the light while breaking apart but somehow making it more beautiful, more laconic. Spine-tingling stuff.

Since 1999, the use of electronic sounds in rock has receded a bit, overtaken by a return to rootsier rock sounds like the excellent Kings of Leon or the ever-resilient art rock of Franz Ferdinand. Perhaps the last thrashing of this trend's greatness, which is too good to be totally ignored in future releases, is Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a peerless album which continued the ascendance of Jeff Tweedy to rock's songwriter of the moment. Perhaps Wilco's forthcoming release, A Ghost is Born will take up the torch for this type of music.