Dan Geller and Amy Dykes are more attractive than most indie rockers. Geller’s chiseled features and Dykes’ head of platinum-blond hair do nothing to suggest them as unintended victims of last year’s terrorist attacks.
But the’ve paid a price?the duo call themselves “I Am the World Trade Center,” and have recorded under that name for several years. Others bands have had to deal with shifting post-Sept. 11 images since, most notably thrash-metal band Anthrax and emo heroes Burning Airlines. Both of these bands likely chose their names for the modicum of shock value they might have conjured well before airliners cut into the Trade Towers. However, Geller and Dykes never banked on their name for its shock value, aiming straight for the stock-in-trade irony of indie-dom, putting them in a particularly uncomfortable spot.
I Am the World Trade Center trades in a particularly innocuous brand of happily derivative electronic pop music. The touchstones are clear from the first notes of any of the group’s songs: the panoply of synthesizers and mechanical rhythms of Erasure, Pet Shop Boys and their legions of followers. It’s good-time music through and through. Their sound is rarely dark, opting instead for the syrupy-sweet?It’s very good, very poppy, very danceable music.
In the two months since I Am the World Trade Center released The Tight Connection, not a single review of that album has been written without mentioning the band’s name. After the band’s namesake went from ubiquitous locus of global capitalism to the scene of one of the most horrific acts of terror in human history, it is rightly impossible to ignore. So we choose instead to ignore the album.
However, the duo’s unassuming pop didn’t deter numerous letter writers from accusing them of insensitivity. One even claimed the band had a conspiratorial hand in last year’s attacks, because track 11 on its debut LP (released July 17, 2001) was titled “September.” But the band stuck it to the critics and whack-jobs, and stuck with the WTC moniker for the new album, giving the following as the official line: “The Twin Towers represented many things to us, their giant presence on the skyline reminded us every day of what an amazing and overwhelming place we were living in. Also, the two towers, equal and independent yet still one entity are a metaphor for the relationship Amy and I have developed both professionally and personally.”
That settles one question: It’s been long enough since the fact to justify such a lame explanation. And if that’s the case, Columbus, Ohio funk ensemble Osamarama and the Mujaheddin can finally come out of hiding.
