99% of indie pop is good- you just havent heard most of it yet

Is that about a certain ringtone on a phone?

I think The Pipettes should do a song called Wing'd Defenestration (Song For Sweety The Chick).

(Do you know, I've never heard the Pipettes, I would have done but I went to see Vichy instead along with a TRAMP and a drunk - oh that drunk was me looking in the mirror, oh well).

xpost

The complementary ILM thread: "99% of indiepop is crap" is where most of the deep thinking that maybe was where Nitsuh's essay developed from, but its tone is a little cantankerous, so I thought I'd bring this one back first.

Anyway, thank god for filesharing networks or else the recommendation to check out Blueboys 'If Wishes Were Horses" would have driven the ebay prices way out of my budget.

(that said, im fairly certain im the guy he's singing about. or at least i was two years ago, im better now. hopefully.)

btw you should have put a My Favorite song on the mix tape!

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GM65ZGED

emma's house

And yet I object to using the term "indie pop" to describe what is essentially a quite narrow category of music that might more aptly be called "twee pop." As much as the terms "indie pop" and "indie rock" often overlap, I still have a sense of what "indie pop" means when it's used: in a contemporary context, it's bands like Belle & Sebastian, Stars, Of Montreal, etc. It's not Interpol, Xiu Xiu, or the Hold Steady.

What we actually mean when we use these terms ... that's something I could have written several other pages on. Hopefully some of my thinking about that made it through onto the page: the way that the indiepop model was just what "indie" meant for much of the 80s; the way bands like the Swirlies or Versus or Unrest could kind of float between those notions in the 90s; the way ideas from indie's pop side, punk-rock side, and ambitious-professional side have split off from one another at various points and then basically rejoined to create the mainstream-indie we still have today.

I don't know whether it's a good or a bad thing for people to make big distinctions about this stuff. I like the fact that loads of people can enjoy something like the All-Girl Summer Fun Band without thinking of it as a genre exercise or part of a specific history. But it also seems like the pop part of indie is getting blurred out of people's official histories and grand narratives, and in the process I think a lot of context is getting lost, context that's useful for getting at a lot of bands and a lot of ideas. More importantly, I really do think there are certain listening mindsets, certain tricks and ways of understanding things, that make indiepop so lovable to its fans, and that a lot of the scene can be accessed as a genre -- i.e., turning on to a way of thinking/hearing that makes big chunks of the stuff make sense.

Pete: sweet, Wolfie and Rocketship albums are two of my favorite recommendations on there. And Wolfie relates strongly to that last sentence: I, and some other people I know, hear total wonderfulness in this band; people who don't go for it seem to just hear a regular, lousy band. This is unusual: they don't think it's super-godawful, or fakey, or too-weird (as people often will with bands you think sound "special"), but rather just cruddy, plain, and irritating, unremarkable. There's some kind of "trick" there, surely, some way-of-hearing thing? (And with that first Wolfie the best I can figure is that people think they're trying to be cute, whereas actually they're kinda trying to be AC/DC -- they're all adorable on their own!)

The Feelings were pretty alright: I was just listening to Dearling Darling the other day!

1. Politics: the UK in the 80s was a political place and indie was particularly so. It was an uncomfortable politics and not an especially active one, but everyone I knew felt they were politically engaged, and if there were right-wingers they certainly kept quiet about it. Certainly some thought of Rock and Thatcher as linked, things to be opposed. 86-87 was also a time of a sense of hopelessness for the left, the miners long defeated and Thatcher's apparently unstoppable charge to the 87 election landslide. The loser pose makes a certain amount of sense in that context. (I think Reynolds has something interesting to say about this stuff in "Against Health And Efficiency" but it's been a long time).

For some of us who took some time away from indie in the 90s, coming back to find that sound (and to some extent, the look) had become the noise of choice for a constituency of intelligent, wealthy American right wing College types was a real shock.

2. Punk Rock. The UK indie scene in the mid-1980s was obsessed with punk. Many people saw themselves as the true standard-bearers of the spirit of Punk, claiming a lineage which went Vic-Dan-Edwyn-and-so-on. You heard tales of Primal Scream in '85 going round after their jangliest shows asking People Who Knew "was that Punk Rock"? It was crucially important and we all made sure we hated hippies, even though we barely saw hippies ever. We'd have to make up hippies to hate (in one of the "Communication Blur"s, The Legend! and Alan McGee famously laid into the El records lot as 'short haired hippies').

Hm I could say more about this but I should leave it for now.

The "right wing" is a little out of place there; indie is the American noise of choice for a group that trends left, in a kind of rote post-collegiate way. That's true of the Friendster set, anyway; as you move younger into new-convert fans of big mainstreamed indie bands (Strokes, Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, Death Cab) I think you might find something more politically neutral.

The true patron saints were the punk lineage that Tim mentioned, which also stretched way back before Vic, Dan and Edwyn to Jonathan, Lou, Iggy and Rory. The fact that he's moaning about not getting on TOTP is telling, since the very pervasive punk ethic of time meant that most indie bands couldn't have cared less about TOTP or daytime radio.

Of course we could have all been escapists escaping from different things... living in Texas, punk politics was an escape for me at the time.

Indie rock is maybe assumed to be left-wing probably because it's strongly associated with being in college? But I knew plenty of folks growing up who loved punk and indie rock because of how it sounded and just totally disregarded (or made fun of) its politics.

[reads last post and sobs]

lol

Rereading the Twee As Fuck piece from 2005 because I've been geeking on this stuff again (+ the American take on this that sometimes has a little Sonic Youth or Dino Jr mixed in the recipe. Like Versus). Wondering if anyone else that's still here loves it too?

I still love Versus - and their many side projects are all great, too.

The "Scared To Get Happy" and C86-C89 comps are full of gems and are a ton of fun in general.

Yes! Love that Saturnine tape in particular!

I think my favorite early/legendary comp for this kind of music is the Corrupt Postman tape if you're familiar.

Never heard of that tape, downloading it now, thanks for the tip!

You're welcome! Enjoy!

yeah, the Stars are Insane remains a great album

It is! But imo I can't say they have a stand out album... all of their 90s material is top notch.

Hey Evan, have you checked this out?

https://acolourfulstorm.com/track/i-wont-have-to-think-about-you

Great indiepop from Australia!

i posted about that comp on another thread just the other day! v into it

Oh wow I totally missed this!

Yes I LOVE that comp because Bart Cummings is a legend and I've recently been absolutely obsessed with all of his bands. I also love the Cannanes! They played in NYC a few years ago and it was a huge treat.

What a label too! They actually reissued Unisex by Blueboy, how exciting!

Oh hey I hope you liked the Corrupt Postman tape, too.

first two Blueboy albums + attendant singles are all timeless

Yeah I recently realized how much I love the songs Dirty Mags, Air France, and Sea Horses (latter which I fell back in love with because of the exciting live version on the Bikini 7" if you've heard that).

And man as a early 90s shoegaze fan, Dirty Mags is just such an incredible song from a band that doesn't typically go there.

yeah I remember how surprising that track was when it was released... good though. and I do have that Bikini 7"! printed in acid green ink on white cardstock

Then you know! Something about the energy in that version. Wish I could have seem them live so I could jump up and down during the chorus.

Update: geek levels are off the charts

Where are the other classic-indie-pop geeks of ILM?

Classic indie-pop as in stuff compiled on the "Scared To Get Happy" box? Count me in!

Yes, and American style stuff as well!

Since you mentioned that specifically, you'll really love this:

https://wilfullyobscure.blogspot.com/2013/06/va-scared-to-get-happy-addendum-aka.html

Oh yes, there were other addendum lists that came out at the time, I compiled them all.

Whats your top 10 indie pop LPs?