Does anyone on Metacritic actually detest Indie?

Please feel free to use this space and say everything and anything that's WRONG with the genre. Whether it's the wearing of spectacles to denote intelligence, the use of horrid jumpers or the purposefully awful recording techniques.

Please list your pet peeves below.

Thank you for your time.

Another classic Duncan Black contribution.

Indie is a genre? I thought indie became a meaningless term a long time ago. No, I don't particularly detest anything you mentioned, or, uh, "indie", whatever the hell it is. I don't want to presume to speak for people, but I get the impression no one really cares about anything to do with "indie" any more. People are just here to discuss music, and most of the music discussed happens to fall under the indie umbrella, as decided by, I dunno, the powers that be.

ah indie. there are 2 things that bother me about indie. one is the use of that word to describe some of the most popular bands. i was talking to a girl in my spanish class a few months ago about music, and she said "o, i like indie bands, like coldplay and the weepies". now, i happen to dislike both these bands, not the kind of music i like, but that is bewside the point. so, it bothers me how the mainstream uses the term indie to describe something that is far from the original term. the other thing that bothers me to a lesser extent is the race of "ultra hipsters" to find the most bands that 1 person knows about. my point is, people just need to listen to whats good. unfortanatly, whats good for the most part, is not the most popular, but thats a whole different debate. but my question is, in a pseudo world, where the music sounds the same as the music in our world, if indie was mainstream and mainstream was indie, i believe many fans of both genres would be changing their musical tastes...

quote:

ah indie. there are 2 things that bother me about indie. one is the use of that word to describe some of the most popular bands. i was talking to a girl in my spanish class a few months ago about music, and she said "o, i like indie bands, like coldplay and the weepies". now, i happen to dislike both these bands, not the kind of music i like, but that is bewside the point. so, it bothers me how the mainstream uses the term indie to describe something that is far from the original term. the other thing that bothers me to a lesser extent is the race of "ultra hipsters" to find the most bands that 1 person knows about. my point is, people just need to listen to whats good. unfortanatly, whats good for the most part, is not the most popular, but thats a whole different debate. but my question is, in a pseudo world, where the music sounds the same as the music in our world, if indie was mainstream and mainstream was indie, i believe many fans of both genres would be changing their musical tastes...

fffffffffffffffffffffffffuck another what is indie discussion I fucking HATE these

I think that a lot of "indie" music today isn't immediately likable. It's almost like you have to listen to it repeatedly to find reasons to keep listening. I'm also not a big fan of whispery singing and lyrics that I have to use a dictionary to decipher. But that is not just confined to Indie rock.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mymindsblank,

quote:

Originally posted by mymindsblank:
I think that a lot of "indie" music today isn't immediately likable. It's almost like you have to listen to it repeatedly to find reasons to keep listening. I'm also not a big fan of whispery singing and lyrics that I have to use a dictionary to decipher. But that is not just confined to Indie rock.

I know what you mean.

I started this thread as a bit of a joke really, (see also 'Are The Beatles dying in the wrong order?'), but there you go. Maybe I'm experiencing a little self realisation that my satire has a basis in my opinions.

I remember hearing Indie bands on first listen from way back when and they sounded really fresh. Fugazi were quite brilliant - great musicianship and a unique sense of creativity. The Pixies were immediately likeable too, because they pulled off that impossible combination of being clever and 'stoopid' at the same time. Pulp had a lo fi electronic feel mixed with genius social commentary and tastefully understated rock music. The common factor in all these bands was they sounded completely different to most of what was going on at the time. There are many more but it's too much to list.

Recently, I realised I'd lost touch with a lot of new bands so I started checking out a lot of the music that generates serious discussion here and I'm finding a lack of immediacy in the majority of artists. I realise I'm a grumpy old git and no doubt there will be those who quite rightly say I am too quick to be cynical.

However, there seems to be an established indie sound right now and a commonality in the conveyed image. As you have quite rightly pointed out, it's not limited to indie and features in all genres, but as indie used to be an area that was mainly based around new and innovative music, it's often dissapointing when the stereotypes creep in.

I feel that as a genre (for it surely has become one) indie is no longer the hotbed of exciting music it used to be and there is a gap for something truly new. I have no idea what that will be, but I'm sure someone here will be quick to point it out when it happens.

It's easy to say there's nothing new...

However, let me make an analogy to science - being a scientist myself, it's easy for me to do. Hundreds of years ago, scientists discovered really, really big things about the world. You know, like, the earth revolves around the sun, this thing called gravity, etc. Big stuff. Stuff that could get you killed, if you told the wrong people. You learn about these scientists (Newton, Galileo) by the time you graduate 5th grade.

100-150 years ago, there still remained really big scientific problems to be tackled, like, what constitutes matter? What are bacteria? How does electricity work? How is heat transferred from something hot to something cold? Oh, and evolution. Big problems, famous scientists. If you went to high school you probably heard of Darwin, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg. Well, at least, the first two, anyway.

50 years ago roughly, DNA was discovered. Major discovery, but it wasn't completely unexpected given prior knowledge about Mendelian genetics. Over the next several decades science became much more esoteric. You couldn't do this stuff in your basement lab anymore. The work became much more expensive, and the results became increasingly less meaningful or at least understandable to the average person. Oh, and if you know who Watson and Crick are, then you're probably at least college educated.

Flash forward to today, and what has become of science? Well, in a nutshell, there are still grand discoveries being made every day. It's just that you pretty much need a PhD to understand why most of them are grand. It doesn't mean the scientists are any dumber (or smarter) than they were 50, 100, or 500 years ago. Maybe we don't have any Galileos, Newtons, or Einsteins, but then again, they solved many of the basic questions that most people can understand (ok, that's a stretch with Einstein - but he was still freakin' important). Chances are you don't know any "famous" contemporary scientists unless you're a total geek (or one of them - like me).

So, what is my point? Indie - as a genre or whatever it is - has a lot to live up to. Most of this stuff has been done already. You can only invent rock 'n roll once, right? I think the appreciation of music, just like in science, requires a bit more effort than it used to. The results may be just as rewarding, the artists just as brilliant, but the average joe on the street doesn't really "get" it. That's just the world we live in. Can something new be invented or discovered in music? Sure, but we may have to use a really high-powered telescope like the Hubbell just to see it.

Good point.