Does This Column Make Me Look Gay?

The Magic Numbers are the latest band to take a reacharound from the British press, before they even put a record out stateside. As the enthusiasm of Brit-crits is an obvious fact by now, I won’t bore you with the hyperbole of men with posh names, chasing every statement with triple exclamation points. Suffice it to say, they like these dudes. The fact that MOJO gave them five stars, though, says there may be some fire behind the smoke, given that MOJO alone has avoided the hype factory of London, each rag trying to out-proclaim the others.

And to tell you the truth, upon actual listening—versus overseas declarations—the Magic Numbers turn out to be pretty fucking good, a bunch of longhairs with Southern guitar lines and French-braid harmonies.

They’re likely to be lumped in with My Morning Jacket by every profiler this side of glossy, but that’s hardly their fault. Some over-caffeinated writer, pressed by a deadline, will write some story about the new scene, this harmonic Mason-Dixon thing, and to get it past his editor he’ll have to give it a clever name. He’ll call it Moonshine-Prog, or Indie-Allman or something, and then he’ll kick his feet across his desk. And the editor will chomp down on his cigar end and squint, and he’ll say, “Goddamit I like that, kid. That’s some damn good copy.” Then he’ll flip the writer a dime and tell him to take the lady out for a steak. (By the way, isn’t that best way of asking a girl out: “Can I buy you a steak?” Foolproof, I’m telling you.) Point is, no matter how they’re treated in the press, their music’s killer and they deserve to be huge.

Their only problem is how desperately unattractive they are. And don’t misunderstand, I’m not talking about a Jaggeresque ugly-hot thing, where sheer electricity is enough to erase the most tragic flaws. I’m talking flat-out unattractive.

They’re two brother-sister duos combined in a four-piece, all pasty and friendly and non-descript, like overweight throwbacks to the Seattle scene. The lead singer looks like a glandular Bo Bice, with long flowing roadie hair and an awkward beard. The rest follow his lead: a Kevin Smith lookalike here, a couple of Donnas castoffs there. They don’t have enough flatout style to make you forget their faces, anything at all to make you ignore their improbability as rock stars. In fact, they make me more conscious of it.

They make me long for a Stroke or a Libertine or even a King of Leon. I want my rock stars to be completely fucking timeless, with jagged hair and jeans that fit.

So what if that does make me sound gay? I do pushups, motherfucker.

But really, is it asking too much for my rock stars to drive Bentleys into swimming pools, or to derail the careers of supermodels? Is it asking too much for them to look like rock stars, to be rock stars? I understand that in the perfect world, the music is the only thing that matters. I get that. And I do like to think of myself as a pop purist, worshipping the actual record before everything else, the context or the visuals or the romantic backstory. I really know in my bones that the pop song is king, and that everything else is peripheral and fleeting. Still, I have a huge problem with the Magic Numbers, just because they have a look that isn’t there, an aesthetic black hole, more Blockbuster Manager than Rock God.

In their first appearance on Top of the Pops, presenter Richard Bacon made some crack about their collective weight problem, and they walked off the show. Without playing. On Top of the Pops, one of the biggest stages in all the UK. They just walked off. They set up the most obvious dichotomy on that stage—douchebag media snark vs sincere artistic integrity—and they showed themselves clearly victorious. If they do end up being the huge band that they should be, the Tops of the Pops episode will be held up as a defining moment, and Richard Bacon will go down in infamy as that guy, that grinning prick. The problem is that they won’t end up as huge as all that, because the pop audience at large is as shallow as I am. I guess we deserve it then, whatever gruel we get fed, for ignoring our Magic Numbers and clinging to our stylish and forgettable Kasabians.

So where do I fall in the dichotomy, with my homoerotic pleas for sharp cheekbones and good tailoring? Probably closer to Dick Bacon. The snark that drips from these fingers could choke Craig Kilborn. It could drown Mo Rocca in a bathtub of one-liners and inane references. I know I’m wrong! So fucking what? I still want my rock stars to be rock stars! I just can’t resolve this thing. I know in my brain that the Magic Numbers are worthy, and yet I still haven’t gone out and bought the album (or burned it even). O, I’m too conflicted to live! There’s just no satisfying answer, like with the women who know that they should want sensitive men, but all they really do want is to have their panties torn and their hair pulled. Either way, I hereby give up.

But seriously, though. I told you I was straight.