that most of these chart topping bands like Scouting For Girls are not indie. This article was rubbish.

pointless article. seems like an excuse to just name and shame "landfill" indie bands. some of which, incidently, the Independent have given quite a few column inches to in the past, so, you know, they should get out of their glass house.

is the over-praise of the Arctic Monkeys. They're really not that good.

The whole article seems to be based on a conversation the writer had with Andrew Collins. Hardly a man with his finger on the pulse, as he is best known these days for appearing as a talking head making sarcastic unfunny comments on "I love the eighties" (and that was a few years ago).

So all newspapers constantly just suck up to people in their thirties who think that "stuff was better when they were kids."?

This is why I don't read newspapers.

other than it doesn't look beyond the mainstream. It conflates the entire indie scene with chart indie acts, but as far as it goes it sounds about right to me.

It's just a mindless rant about how "great the 80's were." No-one is ever going to be able to break through if all people ever talk about is how great bands used to be, and then complain that bands aren't making "original" music.

WELL YOU EVIDENTLY DON'T WANT ORIGINAL MUSIC, YOU WANT EXACTLY THE SAME MUSIC AS TWENTY YEARS AGO BECAUSE THAT'S ALL YOU EVER TALK ABOUT.

*is known by Alexis Petridis as "landfill indie".

that was probably the whingiest piece of turd I've ever read.

Everyone knows Britian is overblown and bastardised in every aspect, how is this news?

Anyway, surely if he had a clue he could make reference points like how both British Sea Power (a UK INDIE BAND! SHOCK!) and Fleet Foxes (and possibly a few others) both managed to get to the number #11 spot in the UK album charts witch pretty much no mainstream attention or hype.

British music sucks, everyone knows this already, shut up.

and a lot of what is said is similar to views often expressed on this forum.

END.

I mostly agree with it. I can't get very excited about some of the bands he enthuses about but thats by the by.

but always remember 99.9% of any art form is shite, you got to through all that to get to the good stuff.

Also Indie is a catch all term for guitar orientated music (this is not an invitation to list indie bands without guitars, you knwo what I mean)

I mean all this new indie=bad, old indie=good is bollocks and he pretty much contradicts himself by listing some of the semi-forgotten rubbish of yesteryear (sleeper et al). Was indie really that much better 10 years ago? Blur, Pulp and Oasis excepted probably not.

The bit about 'firework bands' is spot on though. This happened during Britpop, Grunge and probably countless other scenes too so I guess it's nothing new, indie is just a little bit more mainstream now. The problem is that the scene has relied, since probably the Strokes, on having a new massive band each year to keep the interest going - Libertines, Franz, Kaiser Chiefs, Killers, Arctic Monkeys etc. I might not like all those bands but they are all pretty good pop groups and all big enough to shift their not-quite-as-good second albums. Funny how many of those have been on indie labels. This last couple of years there hasn't been anyone emerge on that scale so the scene is running out of oxygen. The Glasto and T coverage this year has looked really tired and journalists are starting to notice it.

"Scouting for Girls are like the sound of Satan's scrotum emptying. They're abysmal."

except what he didn't do was bring attention to GOOD current indie bands. Instead, it was all about 'how good it was back in the day'. And indie may have been great in the 80's, but indie is great NOW. Actual indie, and he's failing to recognise that there's always been a whole load of shite bands hogging the charts, people like music that's easy to listen to and it's always going to be that way.
The current "indie" scene is burning out fast, but this has happened with a million other scenes before, and it's going to happen again. It's just that indie happens to have been the genre that became fashionable this time!
Soon everybody will be listening to something else, and the scene will produce some good and a lot of shite bands, and we'll all continue to get on with things.

I read this before, and although it doesn't say anything I haven't thought in the last five to ten years, and neglects to mention any of the decent stuff still lurking under the surface. It still has a point about the sheer ammount of useless landfill/firework indie bands clogging up the world at the moment.Although you could argue that most of them aren't indie as we knew it. We still need a holoucaust of such acts....

- Claiming that in order to be an important band, you need to have some political affiliation - then citing the ever-politcal Arctic Monkeys as the best of a bad bunch

More importantly:

As someone who used to love indie and still has a lot of adoration for some of it, for me it was all about dancing. Indie was essentially music for me to get my groove on to.

2004: Snow Patrol's Final Straw and Keane's Hopes and Fears top the album charts. Indie reaches a low point

2004-bestyearforindiethisdecade

they might've well have just cut out all the text of that article and put that one line there, it seems to be the entire gist of it.

"As in every musical era, one style dominates the hearts and minds of our nation's youth; it dictates their fashion sense, their relationship with their parents and, quite possibly, their personal-hygiene regimen. These days, it's indie"
Surely that's emo???

"The Kooks, The Courteeners, The Holloways, The Rascals, The View, The Wombats, The Automatic, The Pigeon Detectives, The Hoosiers. Their turgid, tuneless banalities use all the oxygen between ad breaks on XFM;"
YEP. But as we all know XFM is a GCap station. so what do you expect? cutting edge? nahnahnah.

"These days the term 'indie' is little more than a generic sonic description for any band that plays guitars and probably wears skinny ties, skinny jeans, and skinny cardigans. Collins, a former NME writer and ex-editor of Q, says now: "'Indie' has become a meaningless term. It just covers guitar bands."
Can't argue really.

"There are still indie die-hards out there... Seattle's Sub Pop label just celebrated its 20th birthday by bringing the wonderful Fleet Foxes to these shores"
Hmmmmm. Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't Sub Pop part-owned by Warners???

"MySpace... has been co-opted by the rest of the industry... it's now just another major label marketing ploy"
And it's also free for every man and his dog to upload their own music to.

"""I recently saw an interview with Conor McNicholas where he was talking about 'growing the brand'," Niven recalls. "The editor of the NME using the expression 'growing the brand'! It's hardly Nick Kent sneaking out of the office to run down Carnaby Street and score smack, is it?" "
Every mag has an editorial profile and readership. that is the brand. and what the fuck is cool about kent's heroin addiction? that said, McNicholas is not a great editor at all.

"If it's a time when you're feeding off Sleeper, Gene and Shed Seven for inspiration, it's not going to yield nourishing results"
WTF's wrong with Sleeper?????

"If we end up with 20 years of Tory government, it'll be The Pigeon Detectives' fault."
Sarcasm that's a mile wide of the mark.

"2004: Snow Patrol's Final Straw and Keane's Hopes and Fears top the album charts. Indie reaches a low point."
In that both records were on majors????

"2006: Arctic Monkeys' Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not becomes the fastest-selling debut album in chart history. The major labels snap up every 17-year-old guikookstar player in the land"
WHAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat??????