One of the minor and miserable themes of my 00s has been the generally vain search for a British indie hype that I could enjoy. I’ve never consciously acknowledged this itch but the fact I once paid money for a CD by The Coral suggests it’s been lurking around a while. The record shows that my Top 3 90s songs were by My Bloody Valentine, Disco Inferno and Pulp and it’s not controversial to suggest that those lofty standards weren’t exactly maintained.
This is what I raised myself on musically and the feeling that an inventive indie sector should be part of the country’s musical make-up runs deep. Part of the problem though is that I got lazy – indie music slipped down my priority list and the radio and press channels which OUGHT to have eased the good stuff’s path to me had become part of a post-Britpop wasteland. In fact it’s quite possible that I didn’t see the good in UK indie because it didn’t fit with the stories I wanted to be telling. Better that, at least, than the idea that Foals were really as good as it got.
Klaxons never really looked like an answer but I enjoyed their record and it did have “As Above, So Below” on it, which fusing the Klaxons’ endearing ideas with something approaching coherence. The knowing junk-mysticism of the lyrics; the tottering big riff at the start; the gung-ho noisebursts, and the mantric “galloping, galloping beams faster” section that leads the song to its climax. That stuff should have tipped you off – if you hadn’t guessed it already – that Klaxons were as much to do with “rave” (nu or old) as the Stone Roses were with acid house. This is psych-pop, as old and simple as that, and I hope they get the chance to make more of it.