2007 has been a stinker for indie rock

[Welsh Rich]

An interesting discussion on the Guardian Music Blog:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/10/...ker_for_ro.html

 

It's around this time of year that music journalists begin to get requests for their end of year lists. Me, I'm drawing blanks. After much consideration and conversation, I can scientifically conclude that 2007 has been a stinker for rock music.

 

In fact, it has been a lot like 1997, the year I found myself working at Melody Maker (RIP), when Britpop was croaking its last breath and Bentley Rhythm Ace and Cast inexplicably gained attention every week. A decade on and 'indie' is a thriving lifestyle concept perfect for selling shampoo, phones, Hollyoaks and credit cards - and therefore artistically long dead and more discernibly derivative than ever.

 

The obvious comparisons for this year's breakthrough nerks are laughably easy: The View (The Libertines), The Enemy (Northern Uproar), The Fratellis (Supergrass), Pigeon Detectives (every bloke-rock band in every English town, ever), Reverend and the Makers (ditto). Whichever way you look at them, they're all terrible. Christ, have you heard The Twang (Flowered Up)? Jamie T, Kate Nash and Jack Pe

[quarter23cd]

I agree to a point - indie has become a phrase used to sell a lifestyle rather than be about the music.

This has been true for a while.

 

I think I swore off my allegiance to the term "indie" when it stopped meaning "sounds like Pavement" and started meaning "has a neat hairdo and an ironic t-shirt". Wait--crap, maybe those things can be traced back to Pavement, too. Its all just a house of cards I tell you..

[Calexico]

I think the author is correct to be honest. Every British band he mentions there and every one of the new American bands he name checks are fucking awful. Who in their right mind would think that Kaiser Fuckwits, Razorshite and Kasabollocks are worth anyone's time is beyond me.

[lost highway]

I always hear people gripe about how new music all sucks. I think this is a result of laziness. Everyone has their own taste but come on:

 

Band Of Horses

Blonde Redhead

new Radiohead

Scout Niblett

New Pornographers

Feist

Bonny Prince Billy

Magnolia Electric Co.

Animal Collective

TV on the Radio

Battles

Dr. Dog

PJ Harvey

Bill Callahan

Destroyer

the Weakerthans

Maritime

Mastodon

Shellac

Devandra Banhart

 

I think indie means very little. For this reason swearing off a genre that doesn't particularly exist is about as relevant as claiming it is your favorite thing. It is the same situation only more disgustingly banal with that awful term emo. I have no interest in defending the aforementioned active musicans as indie or not, or whether indie is still good or not. I just think there is a ton of cool stuff out there.

[boywiththorninside]

I always hear people gripe about how new music all sucks. I think this is a result of laziness. Everyone has their own taste but come on:

 

Band Of Horses

Blonde Redhead

new Radiohead

Scout Niblett

New Pornographers

Feist

Bonny Prince Billy

Magnolia Electric Co.

Animal Collective

TV on the Radio

Battles

Dr. Dog

PJ Harvey

Bill Callahan

Destroyer

the Weakerthans

Maritime

Mastodon

Shellac

Devandra Banhart

 

I think indie means very little. For this reason swearing off a genre that doesn't particularly exist is about as relevant as claiming it is your favorite thing. It is the same situation only more disgustingly banal with that awful term emo. I have no interest in defending the aforementioned active musicans as indie or not, or whether indie is still good or not. I just think there is a ton of cool stuff out there.

 

That's a long list and I'd add Jens Lekman (my favorite of 2007) to it. However, I've definitely been down on a lot of the new stuff. More and more recently, instead of some new thing, I've found myself listening to a lot of (old) jazz and the tried and true: classic era Stones, the Kinks, Velvet Underground, Scott Walker, etc. I don't think I'm a lazy listener. The new stuff just isn't moving me in the same way as it had in the near past. For me, the article has some validity.

[tongue-tied]

I also don't find much going on over in the UK, but in the US I think it's been a great year for music.

[boywiththorninside]

I also really liked the LCD Soundsystem and David Vandervelde records. And some of the new Wilco. The thing with the new stuff is that, for me, it doesn't endure. I'm over it really quickly. I mean, the new Radiohead has only been out a week and I haven't put it on in days. I liked it when I first listened to it, but nothing has compelled me to put it back on. A lot of new releases are like this for me. It's probably a personal thing and I shouldn't indict all new music, but this is a fairly recent occurrence. In the recent past I would listen to new releases as if they were old classics. I'd get into them and listen for days, weeks on end. Not anymore. Maybe it's my overreliance on the iPod and playlists, etc? Maybe the music is lacking? Who knows?

[boywiththorninside]

Another journalist, another critique of "indie" rock - it's too white and has lost rock's rhythm and soul roots. There is a Wilco mention on page 3. Interesting read.

 

New Yorker - "Indie" Rock: A Paler Shade of White

[Saint Genevieve]

I also don't find much going on over in the UK, but in the US I think it's been a great year for music.

 

There hasn't been anything going on in the UK in many years, IMO.

 

I haven't been keeping up on much new music lately, but Spoon, Okkervil River, and Feist have put out great albums this year.

[MattZ]

Another journalist, another critique of "indie" rock - it's too white and has lost rock's rhythm and soul roots. There is a Wilco mention on page 3. Interesting read.

 

New Yorker - "Indie" Rock: A Paler Shade of White

 

God I hate Sasha Frere Jones.

[tongue-tied]

wow that article goes all over the place. "The heavy bass frequencies cause car seats to vibrate, literally massaging the passengers."

[boywiththorninside]

God I hate Sasha Frere Jones.

 

Like most people who write for the New Yorker, he's pretty hit or miss for me. I didn't mind this piece.

[MattZ]

Like most people who write for the New Yorker, he's pretty hit or miss for me. I didn't mind this piece.

 

I love the New Yorker and it's writers to pieces but I cannot stand Sasha Frere Jones. I found this piece to be even more annoying than his usual output.

[Saint Genevieve]

I love the New Yorker and it's writers to pieces but I cannot stand Sasha Frere Jones. I found this piece to be even more annoying than his usual output.

 

Anyone who claims that artistic quality is entirely based on one factor, is a douchebag.

 

I believe I shall call this "St. G's Law."

[TheMaker]

I think the author is correct to be honest. Every British band he mentions there and every one of the new American bands he name checks are fucking awful.

 

Agreed. Maybe I'm being harsh, but the author of this article strikes me as a blithering fuckwit. It's been a tremendous year for music, and you're right, if he's looking to the bands he namechecked and considering them paragons of indie rock, no wonder he's disappointed...

[MattZ]

I want to post the new yorker article in its own thread just so I can call it I HATE SASHA FRERE JONES.

 

Ugh, what trash.

[tongue-tied]

if only Wilco weren't afraid of imitating black music. if only they had a drummer who understood syncopation, that'd shape up their formless music.

[boywiththorninside]

I want to post the new yorker article in its own thread just so I can call it I HATE SASHA FRERE JONES.

 

Ugh, what trash.

 

Wow. I really did not mind that article. Though I would like to go on record as saying that I don't believe the lyrics to YHF are "embarrassing poetry," as Frere Jones does. I love those lyrics and that album.

[MattZ]

Wow. I really did not mind that article. Though I would like to go on record as saying that I don't believe the lyrics to YHF are "embarrassing poetry," as Frere Jones does. I love those lyrics and that album.

 

Haha, well, I do have a long and tattered history with SFJ. So I may be overreacting.

 

I think the article had the potential to be an interesting study of how rock and blues have developed. Instead it turned out to be SFJs dismissal of an entire genre of music (if not more than one genre -- do we really consider Spoon, Devendra Banhart, Yo La Tengo and Pavement to be in the same genre?) by labelling it as not black enough? Seems lazy and flat out preposterous to me.

[Guest Jules]

if only Wilco weren't afraid of imitating black music. if only they had a drummer who understood syncopation, that'd shape up their formless music.

can you be more specific? (the drummer comment that is)

[lost highway]

if only Wilco weren't afraid of imitating black music. if only they had a drummer who understood syncopation, that'd shape up their formless music.

 

If thats part of the article I don't think I will read it. Number one: Wilco has admitted to being heavenly influenced by musicians who are black (As if that matters anyways). Likewise, Kotche could do a doctoral dissertation on syncopation, in fact he nearly did; it's called Mobile.

 

Every great, original American music is indebted both to 'whites' and 'blacks' and historically I've marveled at how critics and narrow-minded fools have obsessed over this race issue, while multi-ethnic bands have laughed their way up the charts. For example: Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Dave Brubeck Quartet. Saying music is too white shows you don't know how it happened and where its coming from. It also shows you are stuck on an archaic socio-biological term that has since been scientifically discarded and is only relevant due to a societal perpetuation of a ridiculous myth. Sorry that's not music but read your freaking Anthropology people.

[Guest Jules]

Likewise, Kotche could do a doctoral dissertation on syncopation, in fact he nearly did; it's called Mobile.

Yeah, that's why I asked for more specifics. Don't get that assertion by tounge-tied.

 

Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Saw them perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Wow.

[JerseyMike]

Every great, original American music is indebted both to 'whites' and 'blacks' and historically I've marveled at how critics and narrow-minded fools have obsessed over this race issue, while multi-ethnic bands have laughed their way up the charts. For example: Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Dave Brubeck Quartet.

 

The bands you mentioned were, for all intensive purposes, just playing music that was once considered "black" or "race" music. Its not like they invented the genre.

 

Race is a huge part of the history of rock and roll. In fact, "rock and roll" was called "race music" and "r&b" until Alan Freed termed it "Rock and Roll" (a black slang for sex) in order to sell the music to white teenagers. Ruth Brown said it best: "I thought what I was doing all those years was R&B and the Elvis came along and all of a sudden I'm siniging Rock and Roll."

 

Your point is correct, American music does owe a debt to both blacks and whites, but its roots originated in the music of the black south.

[MattZ]

Yeah, that's why I asked for more specifics. Don't get that assertion by tounge-tied.

 

Tounge-tied was referring to an article that was linked a few posts into this thread (not the first post) that asserts that indie rock isn't black enough (whatever that means). It is called A Paler Shade of White, How Indie Rock Lost Its Soul.

[Kalle]

I dunno I don't really agree with either articles posted. I think 2007 has been a far far better year for music than 2006. And I also agree that the UK isn't putting out nearly close to the quality that Canada and the US are.