Reflections on Indie Rock and Getting Older

[maxperenchio]

Oooh, really liked that Pitchfork article, thanks for sharing Shankly. As far as my opinion of the current state of indie, I think this decade has been a weird one. I see tons of indie shows here in Chicago, and theres just a lot of stuff going on, different camps- very hard to sort out. I live on the west side and everyone seems to love garage rock. A buddy of mine let me borrow his ipod on a car trip the other day, and its was just loaded with millions of 2000 era garage bands. It could have literally been one band for all i knew.

I hear "Dude you gotta see this band tonight" just about... every night. And its usually the same scene; a bunch of really out there dudes playing some noisy, easy music that people just eat the fuck up. And I cant help but get disappointed with what a lot of the "extreme hipster" crowd likes, because it is usually extremely derivative, as temporarily cool as it is. A lot of the indie scene seems to be a competition in the study and application of past indie music.

I adore the fathers of the camp of "pleasant indie" that was mentioned- Belle and Sebastian, Elliott Smith, etc. But I generally can't listen to the National without wanting to die of boredom. And I think the "experimental" camp is generally usually louder but just as boring ideologically- never really improving much on the models set by early noise bands.

For me its not about the camps as much as it is just about individual bands. I remember seeing Animal Collective, Arcade Fire, and Battles before their general acceptance and thinking wowwwww, this is gonna be huge and awesome. It was fresh, important, and even innovative. But there aren't many bands like that, to me at least.

And for the record, I hate Vampire Weekend. Not because "there shouldnt be a band like that"... but because I genuinely hate their music. Almost to a point where I at least can give them credit for evoking such a strong reaction in my soul. Not many bands can mix everything I hate about indie-pop music into one odious romp of bullshit. Its not charming.