Indie rock

Coordinates	37°46′45.48″N122°25′9.12″N
Name	Indie rock
Bgcolor	crimson
Color	White
Stylistic origins	Alternative rock, post-punk, punk rock, hardcore punk, New Wave
Cultural origins	Early 1980s, United Kingdom, United States and Canada
Instruments	Guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, vocals
Popularity	Moderate to High in North America and the United Kingdom since the late 2000s
Subgenres	Garage punk, riot grrrl, twee pop, emo, garage rock/post-punk revival, noise pop, dance-punk, New Weird America, Baroque pop, lo-fi, sadcore, C86, math rock
Fusiongenres	Grindie - indie pop - indie folk - indie dance - indie electronic - new rave
Regional scenes	Largely global, England – Ireland – Scotland – Wales – USA – Canada – Sweden – Japan – Australia – Indonesia – Turkey
Other topics	Timeline of alternative rock, DIY ethic

Indie rock is a sub-genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrl and emo. Originally used to describe record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was initially used interchangeably with alternative rock. As grunge and punk revival bands in the US, and then Britpop bands in the UK, broke into the mainstream in the 1990s it became to be used to identify those acts that retained an outsider and underground perspective. In the 2000s, as a result of changes in the music industry and the growing importance of the internet, a number of indie rock acts began to enjoy commercial success, leading to questions about its meaningfulness as a term.

Characteristics

Indie rock, derived from "independent", describes the small and relatively low budget labels on which it is released and the do-it-yourself attitude of the bands and artists involved. Although distribution deals are often struck with major corporate companies these labels and the bands they host have attempted to retain their autonomy, leaving them free to explore sounds, emotions and subjects of limited appeal to large, mainstream audiences. The influences and styles of the artists has been extremely diverse, including punk, psychedelia, rock and country. Many countries have developed an extensive local indie scene, flourishing with bands with enough popularity to survive inside the respective country, but virtually unknown outside them.

Indie rock has been identified as a reaction against the "macho" culture that developed in alternative rock in the aftermath of Nirvana's success.

History

1980s

performing in California in 2007]] In the 1980s the term "indie" began to be used to describe the music produced on post-punk labels rather than the labels themselves, and was used interchangeably with alternative rock. that dominated college radio playlists which included key bands like R.E.M. from the US and The Smiths from the UK. These bands helped inspire guitar based jangly guitar-pop, which included the dB's and Let's Active from the US and The Housemartins and The La's from the UK. In the United States, the term was particularly associated with the abrasive, distortion-heavy sounds of Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr., Pixies and The Replacements. A number of prominent indie rock record labels were founded during the 1980s. These include Washington, DC's Dischord Records in 1980, Seattle's Sub Pop Records in 1986 and New York City's Matador Records and Durham, North Carolina's Merge Records in 1989. Chicago's Touch and Go Records was founded as a fanzine in 1979 and began to release records during the 1980s.

In the United Kingdom the C86 cassette, a 1986 NME premium featuring such bands as The Wedding Present, Primal Scream, The Pastels, and the Soup Dragons, was a major influence on the development of indie pop and the British indie scene as a whole. Major indie pop artists included Aztec Camera, Josef K and Orange Juice and major labels included Sarah, Bus Stop and Summershine. The Jesus and Mary Chain's sound combined the Velvet Underground's "melancholy noise" with Beach Boys pop melodies and Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" production, while New Order emerged from the demise of post-punk band Joy Division and experimented with techno and house music. The Mary Chain, along with Dinosaur Jr, C86 and the dream pop of Cocteau Twins, were the formative influences for the shoegazing movement of the late 1980s. Named for the band members' tendency to stare at their feet and guitar effects pedals onstage rather than interact with the audience, Acts like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride, and Lush created a loud "wash of sound" that obscured vocals and melodies with long, droning riffs, distortion, and feedback. These bands dominated the British music press at the end of the decade along with the drug-fuelled Madchester scene. Based around The Haçienda, a nightclub in Manchester owned by New Order and Factory Records, Madchester bands such as Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses mixed acid house dance rhythms with melodic guitar pop.

1990s

The 1990s brought major changes to the alternative rock scene. Grunge bands such as Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream, achieving commercial chart success and widespread exposure. As a result of these changes the term "alternative" lost its original counter-cultural meaning and began to refer to the new form of music that was now achieving mainstream success. The term "indie rock" became associated with the bands and genres that remained dedicated to their independent status.

By the end of the 1990s indie rock developed a number of sub-genres and related styles, in addition to indie pop and dream pop these included lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, noise pop, space rock, sadcore, and emo. The work of Talk Talk and Slint helped inspire both post rock, an experimental style influenced by jazz and electronic music, pioneered by Bark Psychosis and taken up by acts such as Tortoise, Stereolab, and Laika, as well as leading to more dense and complex, guitar-based math rock, developed by acts like Polvo and Chavez. Space rock looked back to progressive roots, with drone heavy and minimalist acts like Spaceman 3, the two bands created out of its split, Spectrum and Spiritualized, and later groups including Flying Saucer Attack, Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Quickspace. In contrast, Sadcore emphasised pain and suffering through melodic use of acoustic and electronic instrumentation in the music of bands like American Music Club and Red House Painters, while the revival of Baroque pop reacted against lo-fi and experimental music by placing an emphasis on melody and classical instrumentation, with artists like Arcade Fire, Belle and Sebastian and Rufus Wainright. The emo movement, which had grown out of the hardcore punk scene in the 1980s with bands like Fugazi and Rites of Spring, gained popularity as the 1990s progressed. Elliott, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Promise Ring, The Get Up Kids and others brought a more melodic sound to the genre. Weezer's Pinkerton (1996) introduced the genre to a wider and more mainstream audience.

2000s

In the 2000s, the changing music industry, the decline in record sales, the growth of new digital technology and increased use of the internet as a tool for music promotion, allowed a new wave of indie rock bands to achieve mainstream success. This new commercial breakthrough and the widespread use of the term indie to other forms of popular culture, led a number of commentators to suggest that indie rock has ceased to be a meaningful term.

on stage in 2005]] In the early 2000s, a new group of bands that played a stripped down and back-to-basics version of guitar rock, emerged into the mainstream. They were variously characterised as part of a garage rock, New Wave or post-punk revival. Because the bands came from across the globe, cited diverse influences (from traditional blues, through New Wave to grunge), and adopted differing styles of dress, their unity as a genre has been disputed. There had been attempts to revive garage rock and elements of punk in the 1980s and 1990s and by 2000 scenes had grown up in several countries. The Detroit rock scene included The Von Bondies, Electric Six, The Dirtbombs and The Detroit Cobras and that of New York Radio 4, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Rapture. Elsewhere, the Oblivians from Memphis Billy Childish and The Buff Medways from Britain, The (International) Noise Conspiracy from Sweden, and The 5.6.7.8's from Japan, enjoyed underground, regional or national success.

The commercial breakthrough from these scenes was led by four bands: The Strokes, who emerged from the New York club scene with their début album Is This It (2001); The White Stripes, from Detroit, with their third album White Blood Cells (2001); The Hives from Sweden after their compilation album Your New Favourite Band (2001); and The Vines from Australia with Highly Evolved (2002). They were christened by the media as the "The" bands, and dubbed "The saviours of rock 'n' roll", leading to accusations of hype. A second wave of bands that managed to gain international recognition as a result of the movement included The Black Keys, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Killers, Interpol and Kings of Leon from the US. From the UK were Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Editors and The Libertines, The Fratellis, Placebo, Razorlight, Kaiser Chiefs and The Kooks. The Arctic Monkeys were the most prominent act to owe their initial commercial success to the use of Internet social networking. Also successful were Jet from Australia and The Datsuns and The D4 from New Zealand.

at Rock en Seine in 2007]] Emo also broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s with the platinum-selling success of Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American (2001) and Dashboard Confessional's The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most (2003). The new emo had a much more mainstream sound then in the 90s and a far greater appeal amongst adolescents than its earlier incarnations. The term emo has been applied by critics and journalists to a variety of artists, including multi-platinum acts such as Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance and disparate groups such as Paramore even when they protest the label.

Existing indie bands that were now able to enter the mainstream included Modest Mouse, whose 2004 album Good News for People Who Love Bad News reached the US top 40 and was nominated for a Grammy Award, Bright Eyes who in 2004 had two singles at the top of the Billboard magazine Hot 100 Single Sales and Death Cab for Cutie whose 2005 album Plans debuted at number four in the US, remaining on the Billboard charts for nearly one year and achieving platinum status and a Grammy nomination. By the end of the decade the proliferation of indie bands was being referred to as "indie landfill", a description coined by Andrew Harrison of The Word magazine, and the dominance of pop and other forms of music over guitar-based indie was leading to predictions of the end of indie rock. However, there continued to be commercial successes like Kasabian's West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum (2009), which reached number one in the UK. In 2010, Canadian band Arcade Fire's album The Suburbs reached number one on the Billboard charts in the United States and the official chart in the United Kingdom, winning a Grammy for Album of The Year.

Indie electronic, which had begun in the early '90s with bands like Stereolab and Disco Inferno, took off in the new millennium as the new digital technology developed, with acts including Broadcast from the UK, Justice from France, Lali Puna from Germany and The Postal Service, and Ratatat and BOBBY from the US, mixing a variety of indie sounds with electronic music, largely produced on small independent labels. In Britain the combination of indie with dance-punk was dubbed new rave in publicity for The Klaxons and the term was picked up and applied by the NME to bands including Trash Fashion, New Young Pony Club, Hadouken!, Late of the Pier, Test Icicles and Shitdisco,

See also

Independent music

Indie music scene

Indie cred

List of indie rock musicians

Underground music

Notes

External links

Indie Rock Cafe

Indie rock database in english and spanish.

Category:Indie rock Category:Sociological genres of music Category:2000s in music