2008-the dumbing down of indie?

[Dave Smith]

Has to be said that this year really hasnt been great for new music.Whilst the continual over-compressing of tracks at the mastering stage renders some albums unlistenable after five tracks without getting a headache,most of the much vaulted bands have failed to deliver.Albums have tended to sparkle but be inconsistant(Hot Chip,Friendly Fires,Last Shadow Puppets),excite then become monotinous within a week(Glasvegas-they really need to sack the drummer and get more definition in the guitars for the next album) or be plain garbage(check out any new band from London).Only MGMT and the really quite good Fleet Foxes albums last the distance for me,which means another yaer of taking more enjoyment from buying up my old vinyl on CD(Simple Minds- Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call-awesome).

However whats more worrying is how the biggest selling indie bands are leaving art at the front door and writing kindergarten,retarded garbage.The Ting Tings have taken the UK,US and Europe by storm with a number of tunes my 4 year old daughter could better for depth.Single 1 "and the drums,the drums,the drums,the drums,the drums".Single 2 -"thats not my name,thats not my name,thats not my name".Single 3 "shut up and let me go".Please.What next?Kipper stage 3 learning books recited over some Venga Boys outtake?And this rubbish is selling by the '000's.And the band take themselves seriously.

Biggest culprits though are those self-styled 'cheeky chaps' from Leeds,The Kaiser Chiefs.Their new single has to be the worst song ever committed to cd.The chorus consists of the refrain "never miss a beat,never miss a beat,never miss a beat,never miss a beat,beat,beat".It is trully shit and the video has zero humour in it.They mean it maaannn.What was punk for?No irony.Nothing. a turgid slab of highly expensively recorded thin air.It will sell by the bucketload.

Here's to next year eh?"Whatever you want,whatever you need,whatever you want,whatever you need'.

[fat cherry]

Here's to next year eh?"Whatever you want,whatever you need,whatever you want,whatever you need'.

didn't know the Quo were releasing that again.

Interesting point of discussion Smiff but have to confess I dont care that much what the kaisers do, or anyone else, and if bands create music i dont like I switch over to radio 4 comedy hour or pick out some old stuff I do like. The other thing I've found myself doing is looking up old bands I ignored at the time. And I like the ting tings for the very reasons you dont - not to mention the whole album's only about 35 minutes long. Give me that over johnny razorshite's pretend deep and meaningful 3rd form whining any day.

The only thing's I've bought recently are the aforementioned simple minds album, now if only they'd stuck to that kind of warbling, and EL Ray which seems to have picked up where they left off before they had the latest come back thing.

What was punk for? Nothing. Though for the current joyless crop I blame oasis and simon cowell in equal measures.

Chez.

[fat cherry]

though to address the headline of your post, that was always bound to happen. Since oasis and blurrrr and all those made it fashionable top have boys (and girls) with guitars again, and then there was bustedwho made it fashionable for pre-teenies to like boys (and girls) with guitars the business side of the misic bisiness made it inevitable that it would be dumbed down. so Indie is just a label for that type of music and fairly meaningless in any real sense. cowell of course is, in my humble opinion, a cunt (can I say that) whose aim seems to be to trample over any originality or real talent.

[Mr. Brian]

It all comes in cycles, what was indie sometimes becomes mainstream then all the copycats come and the original ones get lazy or run out of ideas and then it starts over again with a new crop. Meanwhile we all get older.

Yes you can say cunt.

[fat cherry]

thankyou mr brian. you are of course correct in your cycles reference. I htink mr smith is just waiting for the talented AND interesting cycle to return. ANd thankyou too on the sweary word confirmation. I htink I was perhaps worried that mr x factor himself, having been banned from the official site (for tellling the singer he cant sing or something suchlike) now loiters around here between making millions and seeing my post takes umbridge and comes round and kicks my door in.

[withahip]

None of the bands you mentioned are on independent labels. Indie music has had excellent releases this year. The Ting Tings are on Columbia, for example.

Maybe Indie has a different definition in the UK. Here it means independent from a major record label.

[guitarplayer on here too]

I was in my twenties when the last so-called cycle of "Britpop" emerged. It started off brightly with loads of inventive bands appearing, but disintegrated into the monotenous samey-samey music. Most of the bands that had shown promise at the start got extremely lazy. Even Oasis and Blur, Suede and the like had sounded promising at the start. I still can't forget being mindblown seeing Pulp (okay they had been around since the 1980s) play most of His 'n' Hers to a crowd of about 40 people in about 1994 and then seeing them again a number of years later by which time their Ron Mael lookalike violinist had left taking out a key part of their sound and general weirdness on stage. Jarvis Cocker still continued to sing about girls, knickers, bras, mini skirts, people shagging on council estates and anything sex-related, thinking it was what the public wanted to hear, while their keyboardist still sounded like she was playing a Fisher Price learning piano with one finger. Quite frankly, when they did call it a day, I for one was relieved.

I guess a lot of the bands today have gone straight to the monotenous samey-samey part of the cycle, cutting out the inventive part. While some will continue to annoyingly linger on (Oasis, Radiohead, etc), no doubt, most will still end up still going through that self-destruct ending until the next lot of egits come along.

[withahip]

Nope - indie has the same meaning - UK even has a separate chart for indie - so sounds like mainstream is as bas as it ever was -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nu ... f_2008_(UK)

Wow- Dizzee Rascal is pretty bad. Terribly bad.

[Mr. Brian]

Nope - indie has the same meaning - UK even has a separate chart for indie - so sounds like mainstream is as bas as it ever was -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nu ... f_2008_(UK)

Wow- Dizzee Rascal is pretty bad. Terribly bad.

copy/paste that url, phpbb doesn't like those parentheses in the Wiki

Oh and yeah I heard all about this Dizzee Rascal and checked it out a while back and I thought someone was playing a joke on me.

[Scouser]

Interesting post Smiff

The Guardian call the current crop of bands in the UK "landfill indie" which I quite like. Though you should really call it alternative rock as oppose to indie as most of the acts are on majors.

Britpop started it, suddenly the record labels saw that indie rock could go mainstream and sell in decent quantities. Then came Oasis at Knebworth - the official death of indie in the UK. Pound signs were ringing in the eyes of A&R people everywhere as everyone was on the look out for the next Oasis/Blur and a fast buck. The downside for the bands was that if your first album didnt do a Definately Maybe you were dropped like a hot potato.

Then, just when it looked like things couldnt get any worse, Coldplay arrived on the scene and Parachutes was massive. Suddenly everyone was looking for middle class, sensitive types to clog up the charts and the crimes against music just kept mounting up - Keane, Snow Patrol et al. No wonder Radiohead opted out.

Now the whole thing is just about ready to collapse in on itself. Even the current bands are desperately trying to escape the Tesco Rock ghetto. Coldplay drafted in Eno and Keane have gone electronic with the next album (so the press hype says, though Im yet to be convinced).

The alternative scene is moribund (I'm talking UK here, I cant comment on the US) and of all the albums I have bought this year I'd say only Limbo Panto by Wild Beasts has any sort of originality. I like the Foals album but its hardly grounbreaking which is a similar feeling I have about the Futureheads and Guillemots albums.

The Ting Tings are unbelievably bad.

I dont know what will happen next. The record companies dont give bands time to grow and develop (in the modern era the Bunnymen would have been dropped after Crocodiles in all probability) and everything seems very "safe". I'd like to see some sort of backlash, in the electronic era there is no real need for record labels at all. If you sell downloads you can recoup the studio costs quite quickly without having to worry about artwork, distribution etc. That being the case - take a few risks, not only with the sound but also the subject matter as well. Music is so apolitical. We stand on a precipice of financial meltdown in the West but you'd never know it listening to Snow Patrol.

I'd like to hear bands singing about the world young people live in, lyrics are so oblique. I'm not saying be like the Redskins or Billy Bragg...but if I was 17-18 most bands I hear wouldnt actually address anything I felt or thought. There are too many 40somethings hogging music (I.e in positions of authority in the music business) - hand over the reigns to someone younger. That would get some of the vitality back.

I dont know what the answer is, I just know that its an empty experience on the whole. I also know that I should step away and let "the kids" have their time. Maybe its all these old geezers that remember the 70's/80's that cause the problems. Maybe we should be content with nostalgia tours, deluxe reissues and box sets and let the kids have their own music.

I dont know.

[guitarplayer on here too]

I'd like to hear bands singing about the world young people live in, lyrics are so oblique.

Hmm. I dread that day coming. More middle class university graduate bands on the scene releasing more mind-numbing guitar songs like "I Came out of Uni with £25,000 worth of debt", "Girlfriend has an i-phone" or the all time classics, "I Was Born With a Silver Spoon in My Mouth" and "A Little Help From My Friends (On Facebook and Bebo)".

[Dr Cheese]

I've just been indulging in a massive Britpop nostalgia fest for the very reason that the majority of today's bands are so shite:

Elastica
60ft Dolls
Northern Uproar
Sleeper
Placebo (don't laugh)
Mansun

and a few others have all been playing in the car over the last week and as shit as some of it undoubtly is I'd take any of it over the crap that's clogging up the airwaves at the moment.

[fat cherry]

Nope - indie has the same meaning - UK even has a separate chart for indie - so sounds like mainstream is as bas as it ever was -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nu ... f_2008_(UK)

has the same derivation and i expect the rules for the indie charts specify independence from the main stream label/distribution network but the term is used both by the press and radio for a specific genre which is along the lines of boys with guitars and funny haircuts and an occasional willingness to stray from straight fours on the toms (this ruling out mcfly). But look at the bbc indie charts and you have oasis shoulder to shoulder with eva cassidy, its a fairly meaningless distinction apart from on a business level, and of course as musos we dont like that do we. More to the point look at their distinction between genres - Dance, Hip Hop/RnB, Experimental and Rock/Indie.

Scouse, hasn't it always been the case in the music biz that its the old blokes running the show, though perhaps it just gets interesting when some scallywag pokes his head out and scores a few hits - then its a matter of time before the big boys think, oo we'll jhave some of that. Plus I reckon (though I have no evidence - I dont count wikipedia as evidence hipster, just a gut feeling ) theres plenty of kids doing the type of stuff you mention, just not in the guitar drums spikey haircut brigade.

GPOHT, if jarvis thought this is hardcore was what the kids wanted to hear then he must have been having bigger troubles than were reported at the time. I still think he's the best songwriter of that period.

Chez.

[Scouser]

I've just been indulging in a massive Britpop nostalgia fest for the very reason that the majority of today's bands are so shite:

Elastica
60ft Dolls
Northern Uproar
Sleeper
Placebo (don't laugh)
Mansun

and a few others have all been playing in the car over the last week and as shit as some of it undoubtly is I'd take any of it over the crap that's clogging up the airwaves at the moment.

I think Mansun are fantastic - Six is in my top 10 albums of all time...

I quite like Placebo as well (apart from Black Market Music and Meds - both shit)

[withahip]

In the U.S., you have to dig a bit of digging, looking at labels a band you like is on to find those that are similar, looking at things like "You might like . ." recs on amazon, listening to college radio stations online, going to the bands myspace and checking out what bands the band or fans of the band you like are in their "Top Friends."

It is a pain, takes a bit of time - but the pay off is good. There is absolutely no way U.S. commercial radio is going to bring any of the excellent music out there to your ears.

http://radiok.cce.umn.edu/

http://wber.monroe.edu/site/html/index.php

http://www.subpop.com/artists/

http://www.kranky.net/artists.html

Those are just four links . . .usually takes more work than that. Sadly, it seems there are actually a LOT of people wishing for more from their radio.