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A Fitting End? The Ex's Latest Record Testifies To a Remarkable Career

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When a band releases a compilation celebrating their thirtieth anniversary, it goes without saying that its founding members are well into middle age. Such is the case with The Ex, one of the Netherlands’ most beloved exports, an act so revered in certain musical and political circles – they have been committed to the anarchist cause since their inception – that fans have been known to travel great distances to see them perform. 30 is the ideal introduction to an act that has managed to produce consistently fresh work over the course of its career.

Such longevity takes its toll, as the recent departure of the band’s original lead singer G.W. Sok – the stage name of Jos Kley – made clear. Although Sok had done a wonderful job of celebrating the band’s continuing, he declared early in 2009 that he no longer had the enthusiasm to be a full-time contributor and wanted instead to concentrate on his writing and graphic design work. By all accounts, his departure had none of the acrimony that usually accompanies the break-up of musical marriages. And he has pledged to continue supporting The Ex from a distance. But the fact that the band decided to carry on despite the loss of one of its two founding members, replacing Sok with Zea’s Arnold de Boer, raises the question of whether this double album might have served as the band’s final statement.

Back in the late 1980s, Sok published a provocative short essay for a collection of writings about punk. Most of the piece focuses on The Ex’s attempt to put do-it-yourself ideals into practice. But the preamble is a provocative attack on rock and roll’s most famous icon. “What I like about Elvis Presley is the way he died,” Sok begins, going on to claim that the superstar’s actual demise was merely the confirmation of a state of lifelessness he’d already attained by entering the Army many years before. “Anyone who has ever seen any old film of that living corpse of dressed-up misery, with its combed hair, army uniform and tie, well, they know that what they saw was not a King of Rock, but the umpteenth newest prewashed product of the good old moralistic entertainment industry.”

These are harsh words, especially coming from someone who tried very hard to dispel the notion that anarchists are misanthropic nihilists. But they testify to the anxiety that has plagued rock and roll almost from its inception. How can a form of music so powerfully identified with teenage rebellion be sustained into adulthood? Although the animus Sok directs towards Elvis’s purgatory in Hollywood and Las Vegas may come with a serrated punk edge, it’s ultimately not far removed from The Who’s Roger Daltrey singing “Hope I die, before I get old” in “My Generation.” The problem, as that band’s latest greatest hits collection reminds us, is that those who long for a romantic early passing don’t always get their wish.

Rock music began as the culture of youths who refused to follow in their parents’ footsteps. Now, over half a century later, it exemplifies a “youth culture” no longer bound to youth. The silver-haired shoppers who make up an increasingly large percentage of the market for records, the grandparents who are heartened to see their children’s progeny learning The Beatles’ hits through Rock Band, the Hall of Fame performers whose concert tours are as likely to be scheduled around “senior” medical procedures as trips to the rehab center: all demonstrate that dearly held conceptions of the relationship between age and taste no longer correspond to reality.

While it remains the case that people tend to grow into some forms of musical expression later than others – there aren’t yet pre-teens excitedly playing Jazz Band on their Wii consoles – the presumption that such development will go hand in hand with growing out of teenage taste preferences is now blatantly false. The financial executive who listens to one of the classical offerings on satellite radio as he drives to work in his BMW is also frequently the man who blasts Clash albums while cleaning up his home office on the weekend or perhaps even someone who does his best Joe Strummer while playing in a cover band at the local pub. Cultural maturity these days is not a function of what one has renounced, the fancies abandoned in the course of learning how to act like a grown up, but rather what one has managed to retain in spite of the aging process.

On that score, The Ex have done a remarkable job over the years. Most artists tend to stagnate after a while, trying to reproduce their youthful triumphs in a frame of mind too cautious to achieve greatness. Perhaps because Sok and his bandmates never settled into a musical routine, they have managed to innovate throughout their career. Whereas most compilations tend to draw less heavily on artists’ recent work, 30 does the opposite, concentrating on what The Ex produced after they had stopped making simple punk records. In particular, the track selection highlights the band’s increasing openness to “world music,” whether in the form of cellist Tom Cora’s nods to Eastern European folk songs or the Ethiopian styles they learned on a concert tour of that fascinating but culturally and economically marginalized land.

Heard from start to finish, 30 doesn’t suggest a detour from The Ex’s original goal so much as a widening of the route leading there. From the spare punk feel of “Rules” through the more tonally varied performances on “State of Shock”, “Frenzy” and “Ethiopian hagere,” the band’s sound has consistently foregrounded rhythm over melody. Most tracks, here and on their studio albums, give listeners little time to rest. But despite that insistently propulsive character, they are curiously refreshing, a reminder that moving forward often takes less energy than standing still.

The challenge, of course, is to keep up the pace. Slow down for a bit and the difficulty of getting back in sync can prove exhausting. Perhaps that’s why Sok decided that it was finally time for him to disembark. Still, it’s hard not think back on his ruminations about Elvis Presley’s depressing fate when pondering his reasons for quitting. While it can be extraordinarily hard to decide when something you love has run its course, concluding on your own terms is preferable to waiting until someone else forces an end upon you. The current members of The Ex may continue to make wonderful music without Sok, but they might have been better off letting the richly impressive 30 serve as their final statement.

Charlie Bertsch previously wrote about The Ex for Tikkun