Is indie rock in a cultural identity crisis?

I've never been able to determine what "indie rock" is anyway...

There's one thing that the author said that I very much agree with, about the work of the 80s/early 90s bands "carving out" a place for later bands who wanted to make album-oriented, ambitious music. Those bands formed a community and, in my opinion, indie rock was never a cultural force trying to overthrow the mainstream bourgeoisie, but that community of people making records that didn't fit into the mainstream paradigm, quietly at first, then demonstrating more influence as the 90s wore on.

Where the author goes wrong, I think, is that he never puts out an effort to describe what went wrong (if anything) with the indie community in literal terms. I mean, he mentions liking music made with "head, guts, and crotch," referring to music that is intelligent, but also intense and visceral. Yet, the Cure or the Smiths or REM, for instance, are hardly as intense as many of the groups he mentioned. In fact, a lot of that music was made in rebellion to the heaviness of the mainstream rock of the 80s, just like in the 00s. I also wondered what the musician who said she quit indie rock because it became "janglier" thought of the jangly post-punk groups in the 80s who were founding fathers of the scene.

Ever since music criticism came to play a part in indie rock's development, there's been a self-consciousness on the part of musicians. On the one hand you have the rock classics, the ones that get perfect ratings because they were so important to indie rock and rock at large. On the other hand, you have the hip-hop/electronic critical darlings. Namely, Kanye West whose critical reign has been something like that of an oppressive artistic overlord. Even if there were records made that were better than My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (I believe there has been, even just within hip-hop), it wouldn't receive better reviews or a higher place on a decade end list, particularly on Pitchfork, a key player obviously (and one who even wrote that Kanye West's name would be sufficient for the top slot in a mid-decade list). The presence of the unassailable critical darlings past or present invades the thinking of the musicians who pay attention to review columns, and indie rock, historically, has.

Confronted with this dilemma, there's a lack of artistic confidence. Artists are content to blandly revive their favorite records of yesteryear, avoid being or saying anything "pretentious," and thereby play it safe with critics, who can appreciate a good bit of nostalgia for the records of their youth. As a musician, that kind of worshipping treatment of artists hurts my own confidence. Bands who are capable of flawed albums and dropping in ratings are inspiring because they're human. I can view the flaws in my own music as something that can be worked out, and view hard work, thought, passion, and other human qualities as the means of creating a masterpiece, not celebrity or public antics. (Not that I view any artist as unassailable, but subconsciously, I find myself afraid that my music will fail to accomplish my aspirations).

Because of revivalism, and the presence of a lot of genres to revive, there is a lack of unity. I don't mean homogeny. A lot of present bands are already homogenous with past one, but there is a lack of taking on the same ideas and elements from varying backgrounds and perspectives. There's a scarcity of new ideas in the first place.

Don't get me wrong. I like a lot of un-innovative or subtly innovative (I would consider Tame Impala the latter) artists of today. Some revivalist works do bare some individuality in terms of personality and undeniable artistry. But they aren't very impressive or inspiring. Band's ideas of what they can be and what they can create are greatly reduced, and that idealism was, to me, what started to disappear in the 00s and even moreso in the 10s.


Edited by Polymorphia - May 25 2015 at 12:56

indie rock is now'a'days more of a hipster thang' while alternative is for the cool kidz. [B-)]

Polymorphia wrote: There's one thing that the author said that I very much agree with, about the work of the 80s/early 90s bands "carving out" a place for later bands who wanted to make album-oriented, ambitious music. Those bands formed a community and, in my opinion, indie rock was never a cultural force trying to overthrow the mainstream bourgeoisie, but that community of people making records that didn't fit into the mainstream paradigm, quietly at first, then demonstrating more influence as the 90s wore on. Where the author goes wrong, I think, is that he never puts out an effort to describe what went wrong (if anything) with the indie community in literal terms. I mean, he mentions liking music made with "head, guts, and crotch," referring to music that is intelligent, but also intense and visceral. Yet, the Cure or the Smiths or REM, for instance, are hardly as intense as many of the groups he mentioned. In fact, a lot of that music was made in rebellion to the heaviness of the mainstream rock of the 80s, just like in the 00s. I also wondered what the musician who said she quit indie rock because it became "janglier" thought of the jangly post-punk groups in the 80s who were founding fathers of the scene.

Yeah, that's the main head scratcher. Indie rock just to my knowledge never had as strong an "ideology" as glam rock, industrial, punk, psychedelia or metal.... at least not since it became a separate scene from punk/new wave which it overlapped with back in the 1980s. It's more about doing things differently than the mainstream rock world, but it's not rooted in as clearly defined a set of philosophical ideals presented as incompatible with the cultural mainstream as the other ones I mentioned and hence I don't think it's necessarily selfconscious about opposing the rest of society.

Notice the scare quotes around "ideology", since it's only really punk and some parts of industrial who frame that in political terms but I couldn't think of a more accurate term. I would even say that there's less of an antagonistic relationship between mainstream and independent music these days because the internet and other things have resulted in an overall de-centralization of the culture industry.

The fact that the author of that book's now migrated to the psychedelic hard rock community (I dislike the term "stoner rock") is very telling in my book, "psychedelic culture" is pretty vague these days but I do think it's a stronger identity.

Weren't most of the initial "shoegaze" groups just trying to liberate the basic concept of psychedelic music on the aesthetic level from 1960s nostalgia? That's what I've read in interviews with the members of groups like Cocteau Twins and Ride from back when they started out, and their music does often strike me as new age ambient just adapted to the guitar-based instrumentation of gothic rock instead of electronics.

I think it's more overtly a synthesis of very different influences than a lot of the music under the "indie" banner.

I thought "alternative rock" was what they started calling it in the 1990s when more of the groups started signing to major labels without altering their sound (at first), hence it not making sense to call "indie" because that's a reference to independent record labels...

Never really known what 'indie' really meant in terms of pinning down a specific sound to the genre. In this country the first wave of bands I remember being described as 'indie' were bands like Ned's Atomic Dustbin, New Fast Automatic Daffodils, Inspiral Carpets, Charlatans, Jesus Jones, Primal Scream...who all made a kind of vaguely poppy/punky/dancey sound all in one. and then a few years later 'indie' was bands like Shed 7, Gene, Sleeper, Bluetones, etc...then Oasis and Blur up at the top, being more guitar orientated and doing classic song structures/lyrics.

Dean wrote: HackettFan wrote: 'Indie' refers to independent. There's no "independent" way of being in opposition to the mainstream. Wasn't there something called RIO (Rock In Opposition)? Do we want to call Fred Frith an Indie musician? Or my particular favorite, Henry Kaiser? They could be as entailed by some definitions, which demonstrates how much sense those definitions ever were. If "Indie people" (whoever counts as one of those) actually thought they were going to drive a coherent musical style, let alone a cultural movement, they were sorely mistaken. I think any attempt to define Indie is nothing but cherry picking. It has always been simply an 'other' category. Aye, Indie was never meant as opposition to anything, it wasn't "independent" as in being detached and free from outside control. Independent simply meant being signed to a small record label that was separate (i.e., independent) from the corporate giants of the industry, just as a local coffee shop that isn't Starbucks is called independent coffee shop. By that definition Island, Charisma, Virgin, Caroline, Ralph, etc., were Indie labels in all but name and thus Fred Frith would have been an Indie artist if the term had been used ten years earlier than its common usage. There never was an Indie culture - that's pure invention, however there were several separate and unrelated subcultures and scenes whose major artists were signed to indie labels so would have been called Indie bands. See the Wikipedia page on Indie music scene for more info. Also, the Wikipedia's page on Indie Rock seems pretty accurate.

I agree with all. I would just throw in that I discovered Fred Frith in the 80s in his collaborations with Henry Kaiser, which was concurrent with the opening era of Indie. Henry Kaiser continues to churn out staggering numbers of self-produced independent works. I think he has you beat. (Although, you may have more solo works, not sure). I think it makes sense to look at it with a finer grain of resolution; by unrelated regional subcultures. By comparison, as one zooms out for a more expansive view things are way too blurry to see who's in and who's out.

BTW, I'm listening right now to an Indie album that someone threw in with an effects pedal I purchased off eBay quite awhile ago. It's from Nat Lyon titled, new england paradigm shift. I'm on the listening for jangly guitars or any other grunge element that supposedly characterizes Indie. I don't hear it. The vocals and the degree of complexity sound like R.E.M. It seems to have some sensibilities toward sound as produced from synths that resembles Prog a lot more than grunge.

Polymorphia wrote: Dean wrote: HackettFan wrote: 'Indie' refers to independent. There's no "independent" way of being in opposition to the mainstream. Wasn't there something called RIO (Rock In Opposition)? Do we want to call Fred Frith an Indie musician? Or my particular favorite, Henry Kaiser? They could be as entailed by some definitions, which demonstrates how much sense those definitions ever were. If "Indie people" (whoever counts as one of those) actually thought they were going to drive a coherent musical style, let alone a cultural movement, they were sorely mistaken. I think any attempt to define Indie is nothing but cherry picking. It has always been simply an 'other' category. Aye, Indie was never meant as opposition to anything, it wasn't "independent" as in being detached and free from outside control. Independent simply meant being signed to a small record label that was separate (i.e., independent) from the corporate giants of the industry, just as a local coffee shop that isn't Starbucks is called independent coffee shop. By that definition Island, Charisma, Virgin, Caroline, Ralph, etc., were Indie labels in all but name and thus Fred Frith would have been an Indie artist if the term had been used ten years earlier than its common usage. There never was an Indie culture - that's pure invention, however there were several separate and unrelated subcultures and scenes whose major artists were signed to indie labels so would have been called Indie bands. See the Wikipedia page on Indie music scene for more info. Also, the Wikipedia's page on Indie Rock seems pretty accurate. That's certainly what the term meant at first. It eventually came to refer to a canon of sorts, then a genre (even briefly a brand of bland piano pop), so, to be fair, it's definition is pretty ambiguous at this point. There definitely is a community of artists in the tradition of building upon past releases referred to as "indie" or "alternative." I gather this is what the author of the article is referring to and the way a lot of journalists use the term.

This.

^It does indeed. I've read the page a few times before a while ago, so I didn't see the need to look at it again, but obviously I was wrong about that.