|
I noticed the word post-hardcore is starting to get mainstream too. But instead of referring to post 80's hardcore, it refers to post-now hardcore, which is just shitty emo kids screaming. WTF is this Norma Jean shit?
Sometimes I think that maybe I'm just not hip to the times. That if I don't like all this Interpol, Modest Mouse, Arctic Monkeys, Strokes, bullshit, maybe there is something wrong with me.
Reading Our Band Could Be Your Life, there was a lot of hate for New Wave and later on College Rock. But to me now, I see a lot of it has really delightful, consumable, pop music. Echo and the Bunnymen, Adam and the Ants, Elvis Costello, and in the realm of college rock the Pixies and They Might Be Giants. If I was in my teens or 20s when those bands came out, would I have dismissed them as pseudo-underground with a corporate sheen?
But then I think, do any of these indie bands have nearly as much texture about their music as the Pixies? Or can any of them scream like Adam Ant? Or write hooks like Gary Numan?
I'm trying to find the best way to say it, but I might as well be blunt: indie rock is boring. When indie rock singers scream or holler, it just sounds so unrocking. It is like they are fake screaming, and without any spirit, because these are completely brainless entities drugged out on some sort of SOMA like drug that doesn't affect your ability to play tightly in the key of boring slick digital corporate indie rock.
To me right now there are only a few bands making new music that really matter to me: Sonic Youth, Mission of Burma, Shellac, TV on the Radio, (somehow in the indie genre but incredibly awesome) and Beck. That's it. If Gang of Four or the Pixies write new material, I'd add them to the list. I do like Lightning Bolt and Hella, but their music isn't very important to me.
To me, it seems with barely anything that matters, the thing to do is really define your own scene. "My Little Undeground" so to speak. With the internet and the advent of cheap recording, the air is polluted with so much schlock. With all this crap everywhere, I think we've really regressed to a sort of proto-punk sort of era. The support network flooded. A new one needs to be built.
|