In the summer of 2004, I was working at a garden center in St. Paul, Minnesota that catered to Hmong farmers. Besides haggling with refugees over fertilizer, I spent most of my summer there sweeping in the back warehouse listening to the radio. I heard Marc Cohn’s “Walking in Memphis” about 44 times, and almost every time I stopped what I was doing to just listen. Three other songs stick out in my head when I think about that summer: Modest Mouse’s “Float On”, Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out” and The Killers’ “Somebody Told Me.” They all became huge hits on alternative rock radio that summer, and their popularity signaled a sweeping change in mass market rock music. While these songs were perhaps not truly indie, the fact remains that the rest of the top alternative rock songs for that summer included records by Incubus, Seether, Three Days Grace, and Hoobastank (I heard “The Reason” more than any other song that summer). “Float On,” “Take Me Out,” and “Somebody Told Me” were very different from the post-gunge sludge that ruled the airwaves since the mid-90’s. These songs clearly ran counter to the popular trends on corporate radio, which has always been the goal of indie music since the 1980s. These three songs were palatable enough to get them on the air, but different enough to suggest something had changed in our culture. Their acceptance paved the way for the commodification of a vast untapped market of indie: Death Cab, Spoon, Arcade Fire, The Decemberists, The National, MGMT, Vampire Weekend.
The summer of 2004 marked the moment when indie went mass market. It had been building with the tv show The OC’s championing of indie rock during its premiere season from August 2003 to May 2004. In that one year alone, The OC presented the following bands to a national audience: Azure Ray, Ash, Belle & Sebastian, Beulah, Bright Eyes, Camera Obscura, Clinic, Death Cab for Cutie, Eels, Fountains of Wayne, Franz Ferdinand, Iron & Wine, Joseph Arthur, Modest Mouse’s “Float On,” Preston School of Industry, Spoon, Stars, Super Furry Animals. This list is very impressive, and it is only about half the bands featured on the OC during its first season. Most of these bands had never been exposed to a large national audience before the OC. By the time the summer of 2004 rolled around, indie rock was no longer stuck on the weak signals of college radio. You could now hear it on Clear Channel stations in every state, over and over.
Since then, indie rock has become a commercial product used to advertise soda, SUVs, and romantic comedies. The rise of indie rock’s popularity coincided with the proliferation of online music piracy and the complete collapse of the music industry. In the 1980s and 90s, indie music was a stance against commercial mainstream music. In the 2000s, indie became a consumer lifestyle choice and a personal brand. Indie music became the spearhead of capitalist cool. Young investment bankers listened to Santogold, event planners jogged to Feist, corporate consultants went to Phoenix concerts.
When a counter-cultural movement gains recognition and becomes assimilated into the mainstream, the most integral elements of the movement are mutated and perverted in the process. I think this is especially true in the hyper-capitalist environment in which we currently reside. Indie rock music in the 80’s and 90’s was a reaction against the limited range of expression allowed in commercial radio music. Indie was about saying whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, however you wanted. It was punk without the slogans, rock without the absurd machismo, and pop without the shallowness of profit-motive. For the most part, it was also accessible for anyone who had even just a little patience to hear something different. Since 2004, indie rock mutated into exactly what it sought to transcend: mass-appeal mediocrity.
The mediocrity of American indie rock an be felt both in the new bands developing as well as in the new music being made by more established bands. It is an across-the-board systematic artistic depression. The music being produced today by Broken Bells, Spoon, Local Natives, Arcade Fire, White Rabbits, among others, is not bad music. It is well-produced indie rock by-the-numbers. It does not take chances, but it is highly listenable and mostly enjoyable music. Overall, it sounds completely resigned. What indie rock doesn’t do today is knock you on your ass and make you feel something new and different. Contemporary indie rock has become bored and complacent. Where is the emotion, the vitality, the joy in just singing and playing music?
It turns out, indie rock has gone back underground, where it was born. The same old sound with a new sense of wonder, possibility, and vital necessity… It’s about damn time.