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Volume CXXXII, Number 21 |
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Can we define "Indie Rock?"
SEAN TURLEY
COLUMNIST
So, I spent part of break with my former radio co-host DJ punkster Sarah Moran '03 in New York. After a couple days, when the novelty of a visitor started to fade, she invited her Brearly friends over for some chitchat. Needless to say, I was absolutely enthralled by the situation and started up a little conversation with her leather clad friend, Lucy.
Lucy: So, you're into music? [red with great excitement]
Me: Yep.
Lucy: Like what? Indie rock?
Me: Sure…
Lucy: Oh! Like Belle and Sebastian and Stereolab
Me: Ya, I guess.
For some reason that conversation irked me for quite a time, and I just couldn't figure out why. Finally after months (actually minutes) of dedicated thought, I realized why Lucy's comments were so bothersome. Rather than representing some actual type of music, "indie rock" is just this amorphous blob of everything and anything beyond the modern mainstream rock, and I really didn't like to think that the music I enjoyed could be summed up so easily.
Since the beginning of this recent rock renaissance, "Indie rock" has been the chosen buzz phrase for "cool" or "hip" bands that are currently right-outta-sight. Ninety percent of the time though, the bands are only hyped "refrigerator buzz," that are frankly bland, boring, and derivative. Now the bands Lucy mentioned are quite good-actually very good. But to think that a genre as broad as "indie rock" can be categorized by these two bands, or at all, demonstrates how the phrase is a totally worthless misnomer.
The use of this term to describe any one band, musical movement, or actual sound disregards the amazing array of music that falls under this heading.
The other problem associated with the term is that it will totally screw with your mind; liking one "indie rock" band tells you nothing and leads you nowhere. Since each band in the category stands alone, what's the use of the term "indie?"
Digression aside, there is one "indie rock" album that is so brilliant, so sappy-fun, so absolutely perfect that perhaps it could single-handedly save the phrase. If only the Shin's Oh, Inverted World could stand for indie rock, the borderless genre would be completely redeemed.
By far the best non-Strokes album of the past three years, Inverted plays like a Beach Boys' masterpiece if the seminal pop band had relocated to Albuquerque (the Shin's hometown) and sang to pueblos, shopping malls, and tumble weeds. It captures the essence of a carefree summer, where every experience morphs into a magical, happy-go-lucky adventure, in its shimmering guitar, playful keyboard, and charmingly psychedelic vocals.
James Mercer, the band's lead singer, speaks volumes in his surreal poetic prose and candy melodies. In the album's highlight, "New Slang," he sums up existential wanderlust and wistful dreaming in, oh, about 15 seconds: "Gold teeth and the curse for this town were all in my mouth/ Only, I don't know how they got there, dear/ Turn me back into the pet that I was when we met/ I was happier then with no mind-set."
Both lyrically and melodically, the album inspires a surreally beautiful dream about carefree youth, imbuing the common with nostalgic purpose and quiet significance. It's simply a pop gem that encompasses adolescence in a vinyl time-capsule, dousing it in so much splendor, magic, and cheer that you honestly can't help getting lost in the swirling melodies.
Simply put, the Shin's Oh, Inverted World by far transcends any possible praise I can heap upon it. Please, put the indie rock aside and pray that the eternal youth this album captures never ever grows old for any of us.
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