Jon Savage in the guardian on der kosmische musik.
what caught my attention, which i’m sure savage had nothing to do with, was the subhead: “It might be more than 30 years old, but krautrock, Germany’s experimental music from the 1970s, still has a freshness that sixth-generation British indie bands can’t match.”
thanks then grauniad for pointing out the bleeding obvious. you mean the kaiser chiefs still can’t match can, neu! or faust? shocker!
to be honest, i don’t think “indie” even really means anything any more. it’s become such a catch-all, amorphous term (aside from the fact that it often involves guys with beards and glasses) that it’s basically a brand. and a lot of utterly interchangeable music.
indie used to mean something – or at least it used to mean something to me. i’m thinking of the ’80s and early ’90s, when bands like husker du, dinosaur jr, the pixies, mbv, sonic youth, big black, black flag and many others staked claims and sounds that rang and roared, that weren’t simply a lifestyle choice and a 99 cent iTunes download.
then again, mebbe i’m just showing my age.
yet this still made me smile today. and yes, they were indie once too.
I think you nailed it with the “beards and glasses” thing. Indie is now a lifestyle aesthetic. Sasha Frere Jones once said the only thing which makes Of Montreal an indie band is the demographic they attract.
Two alternative theories:
1. Indie rock is any type of music as long as it has whiney, out-of-tune vocals stuck on top of it
2. The indie aesthetic has become so ubiquitous that some people in the middlebrow mainstream now use it as shorthand for “rock” or even “music”