NYLPM is not an indie rock weblog, but it does on occasion get mistaken for one, and I read most if not all of the indie rock weblogs out there. Some of them are very good indeed, and I have previously felt a swell of pride to count myself a member, however honorary, of this noble brotherhood. Indeed, I came to the conclusion that it was my duty to go and listen to some ‘indie rock’ so I could better understand my new-found comrades on the March Of Rock. Where to begin? Obviously I had a fair knowledge of the indie rock ‘classics’, but I had never knowingly heard the music the young folk term emo. So I went to a certain weblog and downloaded two tracks, one by Samiam and one by the Get-Up Kids, both of which came highly recommended.
I think all right-thinking Freaky Trigger readers would join me in politely asking: what the fuck??. I have rarely taken such an instant and extreme dislike to music as I have to these noisome pieces of over-egged whingery. It sounds like both bands have taken the worst imaginable Wedding Present B-Side and fed it through the musical equivalent of an image scrambler: the result is as turgid as builder’s mix and as purposelessly, prissily complicated as needlepoint. And the vocals! Jumping Jesus! Even the most airless R&B smoothie isn’t as indulgent and manipulative as these toad-throated fuckers! “Gee, if I howl on a record, doesn’t that mean I’m having an emotion?” If this is ’emo’, I find it hard to think of a genre less honestly named.
But of course this isn’t emo, these tracks aren’t representative of indie rock as she is now done. Please tell me they’re not. Bad enough that British youth has been fucked over by the likes of Toploader, but we could at least still think of how fine it must be to live and study in the Land of the Free, where the rocking is good. It seems we were wrong. The thought of an entire generation of American college students growing up listening to this stunted excuse for pop is soul-cripplingly horrible. I can’t bear it. I must be wrong. I must be!