The Weekly DiScussion: indie-rock ethnic cleansing, who's first against the wall?

you should believe in being brave, babababaaaa

Menswear?

It's happened before and it will happen again.

Even so, I look forward greatly to sitting back and watching with immense joy watching the cruel demise of the likes of Boy Kill Boy etc.

you left Dogs off that list..

i also apologise if that name makes anyone wretch..

that list was a cracker, a whole bunch of shite bands that are actually very popular.

I think the problem is that Gareth and folk like me likes music, the people who like those bands couldn't give a fuck about music ( although they would argue the opposite ) because all those bands do is distract the shallow minded from their woes - a quick fix - without leaving any sustenance ( or should that be substance ? )

I predict a punk revival

i have no problem with their being loads of good bands about.

does anyone remember rnb/hiphop? ok, not long ago but it ended up where you just needed black skin and some bird warbling over your single to get top 5. now all you need is white skin and a guitar.

what about the dumbing down of Electro? Electro Indie *shudder*
Or the complete disgrace to Drum N Bass that is Pendulum.
It goes out far and wide. It's a crime against art and modern alternative culture. A slap in the face for the music lover.

15 is an AMAZING chart position...

I dislike the twank btw... but you know how it goes...

the faster the rise... the harder the fall... so its just a matter of time...unless they really prove themselves and make us all eat our words... which, for their sake, i hope.

"look around..

everybody's 'avin it."

apparently.

they ruled.

The intro to that first Arctic Monkeys single was quite exciting until it became the music of choice for 'exciting' TV adverts.

it's the antidote to Ladyfest.

all new bands should have a logan's run style limit on their life automatically with the style pundits and interweb types asigning a number of months to each. Oh, they already do that? Fair enough. Lumping together Kasabian & The Twang is a tad lazy if not short sighted. Kasabian are Primal Scream circa 97 & The Twang Flowered Up circa 91 with the Edge form The U2 on guitar. Get it right you experts. Please, if there is a cull, start with Bloc Party who are Bloc Party circa 03 without the skills.

they're great but.... exceptional?? are you sure?! highly highly overrated and mentioned almost by default by too many publications.

Its fair to say that the current guitar music in the charts is in no way a reflection of current beauty that is 'indie' music, not when you look at the great underground acts hovering around the Radar at the moment:

Popular Workshop, William, Xerox Teens, The Official Secrets Act, Kalev, Akira, Twentysixfeet, Nebraska, Bolt Action Five, Shut Your Eyes And You'll Burst Into Flames, This Et Al, Buttonhead, Goodbooks, Untitled Musical Project, The Rank Deluxe, Neils Children, Strange Idols...........and thats just off the top of my head.

with you there. The recent rise of, even if they are shite, Enter Shikari, and the amount of press coverage that Gallows have been receving recently, suggests to me that a punk renaissance is imminnent and I, for one, can't wait.

the longcut were playin at that gig...

another criminally underlooked band compared to the shit that pollutes the nations airwaves and earholes...

airwaves and earholes... is that not the guy from stink182's new band ?

craigx aka cs009d4735

MoR boring rubbish, I have to say having seen them live in SXSW

the beggining of the end for "mainstream indie", which isn't necessarily a bad thing considering some of the rubbish around, apart from it meaning there'll be nothing even acceptable to listen to on the radio. Most good stuff sells hardly anything anyway. I reckon it will be emo (or nu-nu-metal) to take over as the new staple for mainstream music and that really is all rubbish.

All the really good shit is sadly ignored. We do live in a time of musical stunting.

Mind you, thanks to the internet, people have access to loads of good bands who would be unmentioned otherwise. I would prefer emo to take over form indie, its waaaaaaayyy more easy to take the piss outta it.

with the Pendulum comment. Fucking Zane Lowe and his drum'n'bass ignorance has made them everybody's club favourite.

Lyrics are clever without meaning anything.

have no place on that list at all!

Thats where you have to start looking. Brooklyn has some incredible bands right now - TV on the Radio, Ratatat, and Grizzly Bear to name only 3. There is also a lot of brilliant music from Scaninavia - Efterklang, Veto, 120 Days, Taxi Taxi, Trentmøller, The Knife. This is possibly because (this is certainly the case for Denmark but not so much for sweden) It is very segregated musically and its difficult for music from outside the country to get radio airplay - this results in music that is free from the influences that are over-rife in the UK and a completely different sound because it has its roots in different influences. The lack of NME style 'scene' proclamations also helps because there are then fewer passengers riding the gravy train just for the sake of it.

just like you, but my point was that their sudden rise to fame indicates that the British public may finally be after something heavier, and I know that Enter Shikar aren't the answer, but they could be a stepping stone for people to get into punk music. As for gallows relationship with anger, one of the main cornerstones, is channelled aggression, its not what punk is about completely, but its a ventilation for anger, and like Frank Carter says himself, anger seems to be the only thing people answer to these days. The Sex Pistols used anger to get their statement across, and so have many punk bands before.

It's not like this should be a surprise to anyone, it's the organic nature of popular music since way back in the 1950s. It generally goes:

A few actually alright first few bands > Lots of imitators get influenced and start to appear > Suddenly the market is saturated and people want something else > a few actually alright first bands in a different genre come along > and so on...

Not like this is anything new, really, but it's kind of predictable. Of that list at the end of the article a couple of those bands are actually alright, but then the rest are just cheap derivative knock-offs.

My money's one a dance revival. Since punk things seem to go either guitar-based to electronic to guitar again (roughly), so I'm betting on some electrical gubbins coming back into fashion.

(dammit)

the cycle needs to be broken

it did make me wretch but I forgive you, Dogs are truly awful

Finally - someone who doesn't think music was invented in the 90s. Bravo, proslo

spokes.

spazzy rock like this band myspace.com/safetywordmusic

all these bands who sound like pavement/prog, strokes/70s rock and/or coldplay/u2 is what's driven me to listening to loads of Daft Punk inspired stuff. Sure it's my taste changing (I never thought I'd drink neat Whisky or Guinness!) but so often one musical movement is the result of another being dull and boring.
Like Klaxons and Test-Icicles have made me not want to listen to the Faint anymore.

was last weeks release not download only with a physical release next week? isn't that how it's done these days.

and it finally did.

are the twang? have i missed something?

http://www.audioscribbler.co.uk/reviews/thetwangwideawake.htm

No. I don't like them.

years of the Twang? I doubt wait that long...

But stuff like this reminds me why I should.

I think much of the problem is that, yes, popular music has generally been very poor, but, except for Britpop, 'indie' or 'alternative' music has never been paticularly popular. Punk wasn't. Honest.

And its now that its 'our' music that is being bastardised by cretins like the Kooks and the Fratellis that it pains us so much.

It pains us to go to an 'indie' night and hear Fall Out At The Disco or whatever they're called. It pains us to say we like indie and hear some simpleton reply by gushing over the 'genius' of Milburn. And it pains me personally for people to decide I musn't like any music, because they assume I'm an 'indie kid', but then find it unfathomable that I despise Kasabian and Razorlight.

The bubble has to pop for the Indie Heat lads at NME. I can only hope that the straw-clutching flat-packed scene of 'Nu Rave' (cos it rhymes with New Wave, innit?) is its eventual downfall. I think them and the trendsetters at TopShop may have taken one it one focus group too far.

There won't be a punk revival. There won't be a revolution. There's no revolution anymore, see?

It'll just be that skinny jeans are replaced by combats again, and we can return to not being annoyed by the charts because it doesn't contain guitars.

And as for The Twang and The Enemy, I've become so disillusioned with 'indie' as such that I've never heard anything by them, based purely on their name and how they look. I wish I couldn't bring myself to do this, but the Kooks have left me no choice.

See, I never post for donkeys, then I cram a dozen or so into one big diatribe. And it was more than likely shite.

problem with trying to posit any type of indie continuum, or music continuum for that matter, is that the best bands of any period nearly always get overlooked during their lifetime. The progression of music is always charted after whatever waves or leaps forward have been made. Therefore, it wont be surprising for people to talk of this period in the years to come as being incredibly healthy musically despite the shit thats around at the moment. If we were to take what was on the radio in the 80s or the 90s as what was really going on in music at that period we'd always say it was shit, because the mainstream and great music have only ever coincided with each other at rare points in the last forty years. That whole slew of bands mentioned in the article are all the music industry's attempts to try and control and predict the way music "should" be going, and such contrived measures really add up to nothing in the long term. Of course there will be a few who will get to see some amazing bands produce some amazing music at the peak of their powers, but our appreciation only ever seems to gain elevation retrospectively.

go round in circles. I thought originally this 'indie' scene in Britain was an alternative to the David Gray singer songwriter generation, it just so happens, they're both crap. Still, i think Dis is too quick to lump all these bands in the same category. Arctic Monkeys are far superior to the twang, and I beleive will last beyond the lad rock phenomenom. Plus bands like the Libertines were never about 'avin it' but instead about literature, and underground gigs. It's shite like the twang, and kaiser chiefs that are runing it, and besmirching a good band like Arctic Monkeys name

The Twang, The Automatic, The Kooks, The View, Dirty Pretty Things, Babyshambles, Reverend & The Makers, Thee Unstrung, Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabian, The Feeling, Pigeon Detectives, Little Man Tate, Fratellis, Razorlight, Holloways, The Zutons, The Paddingtons, Milburn, The Harrisons, Switches, Humanzi, Kharma 45, Larrikin Love…?"

Yes. All of them. ALL OF THEM. MUST DIE.

the NME and Melody Maker were each about 100+ pages every week (I was a melody maker man) it took you sometimes 10 days to read one mag

They would reveiw everything shit or not shit. And let you make the decision to like them or not, not force them down your fucking throut. And if they did try there would be another article two pages ahead that would be slagging them off (NO corporate message).

NME is now Smash Hits so scared that they will piss off the record company and full of their money. Accordinly to the NME there are no bad gigs any more.

Another thing is that marketing companies have got hold of this indie so called revolution! And are forcing the fashion and our consumer hungrey young (go look/listen in topshop).

For fucksakes when Wella are sponsering the NME awards and you have that welsh knob from T4 telling you that The Archie Bronson Outfit are his new favourite band there is bound to be a backlash from the people that actually love music and not fashion.

what's all this Bluetones bashing.

let's not forget that "Blood Bubble" is used in THAT Spaced episode, and the little song that is called "Marblehead Johnson", the first single I ever bought. Special place in my heart. Never got Shed Seven though......

said.

....the Beatles

last paragraph especially hits the button

small alternatives to the NME though - Artrocker, DiS, Playlouder and Popmatters to name a few! We just need some kind of revolution. Beheadings even! Que Pirate noises! Arrrr.

but on The Twang, it reminds me of a post on the board about bands deserving recognition cos of how much they've been touring and playing.

all of the twang cept the young one have been playin under different monikers for nearly ten years apparently, so unlike the rest of those bands they are hardly flash-in-the-pan.

still shit tho

band called The latter Day Saints...loud, melodic, angry, vulnerable and he can sing...the singer that is..

I just murdered 6 million people on my way to the shops. Damn you, Drownedinsound.com, for making light of genocide!

no-one pick me up for the you're // your confusion

four years... and... three
months.

there is certainly a lot of toss out there. what's always interested me is that I'm relatively young but sentimental about music from the past like the greats... bowie, prince etc... but I'd always like to know if music was the same then, that there was loads and loads of toss bands and the greats kind of shined through and then improved with retrospect.

surely the nice thing about having so much poor generic music about is that when you find something a bit special it's a lot more enjoyable for the discerning listener? not talking about indie snobbery...just that it's nice to feel a bit of ownership about music you know the masses will never really "get".

Insomniac was cancelled because of the lack of funds and because of supposed clashing w/ Easter bank hols

Still, the Twank are shit

saw em on TV the other day... what a joke... sounds like two drunken gobby rappers sluring over a U2 backing band. its self evidently dog-shit.

The difference between me and the people in those shoddy bands is that i know i have no musical talent.

If i jopined in, i'd just make things worse.

After all they are signing this drivel. Also does a new act have any real chance of any real exposure thats not stage managed by PR in a labour party stylee.

I play in a small alternative band and theres no way any of the majors would touch us in a million years. Because we'd be a significant risk. But I feel the rejection by them is almost a sign of the quality of what we do.

I laughed out lous when I saw the twang, they were such a Oasis/U2/Simple Minds style ladrock car crash they had to be invented by someone or heavily told how to sound by someone in the marketing dept of a major label.

I can tell you right now there is absolutely nothing wrong with Kasabians music, it is quality.

And big things to come? Didn't hear anything of the Sunshine Underground or The Music, two fantastic brit bands. They just need some airplay here in NZ and they would be huge.

it wont let me delete that post haha