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Okay, sure, you like independent music. Fine. But what exactly does that mean? When you hear talk of independent music, what bands come to mind? Seriously, think about it. I’ve debated the term “indie” with friends, over-analyzed it with strangers, and completely dismantled it in heated arguments with just about anybody. Everyone I talk to has a different perception of what exactly indie music truly is. I remember having this conversation with a friend in the late 90’s and thinking that we’d nailed it down. Unfortunately, 10-ish years later, here I find myself reading Facebook walls and wondering what people really mean when they say they like “independent music.” Typically, the conversation rolls around to a few different locations but, generally, arguments about “what is indie” can be reduced to two basic tenets: 1) The label the band is on. 2) The style of music, or sound, that the band makes. I argue that neither of these make sense anymore, and that the term “indie,” as commonly used now, should be retired. Should be considered dead. Why? Well, this is why…
Label Argument
I guess the easy answer to what is indie is also the most obvious: indie music is music created from an artist who is signed to a an independent label, or a label unassociated with a major production house. That seems pretty straight forward, right? Well it only sorta makes sense. In the next argument I talk about where indie came from, but before we get there, know this: two of the bands that fathered modern indie rock are Modest Mouse (MM) and Built to Spill (BtS). Unarguably, these two bands are inseparable from the foundation of modern indie rock. “So,” you say, “what about it?” Well, when Modest Mouse started up, they banged around on a few little labels like K Records and Up Records. While on Up, MM released the influential album Lonesome Crowded West. For those of you that don’t know, Lonesome Crowded West is to indie rock what Nevermind is to grunge. It was an album that completely changed the music landscape of its day and is still influencing bands today. MM is a band that paid their dues, that recorded on small labels, and that created the definitive album of it’s music genre. They were legitimately, relative to the recording industry at large, independent. So, why am I telling you this? Although once on Up, Modest Mouse currently resides at Epic Records (owned and operated by Sony BMG). Going on the assumption that independent label = independent band, Modest Mouse is not an indie band. That’s it. That’s the bottom line, and it makes absolutely no sense. You can’t say all indie rock is on small labels any more than you can say all rap is on major labels. Genre and label should not be mutually exclusive of each other. After helping invent a genre and style of music like MM did, can you really lose that style just because you change labels?
Built to Spill has a similar story to Modest Mouse. They kicked around on small labels for a few EPs & albums (including a stint with Up Records), but since Perfect from Now On (really since a little before that, circa 1995) they’ve been on Warner Bros. Records. This is a band that has never enjoyed an exorbitant amount of airplay on radios. They are a band that tours for fans religiously, and that play 20-minute jam sessions as encores. Doug Martsch is one of the most legit play-cuz-he-loves-it musicians in the business, and his hometown (Boise) loves him for it. So, because they’re on Warner does that mean the music somehow changed? Is it no longer indie rock? After leaving Up they continued to put out absolutely mind blowing music (most BtS fans would argue that Perfect from Now On is one of the greatest albums in BtS’s catalogue) yet because they play on Warner they are a new genre? Jay-Z started his own label (you can’t get more independent than that) and became one of the highest selling artists of all time. Despite his independent label, no one considers Jay-Z an indie artist. Still, they continue to bill Built to Spill and Modest Mouse as such (rightfully so). Does defining either as independent based on label actually make any sense? Not in my mind. The label argument is out. Independent music cannot be classified by label size.
Indie as a Sound Argument
If indie isn’t dictated by the label size you’re on then maybe it’s the type of music you play, or the sound your band creates. Indie has classically been paired with rock. When you hear people say they like indie they usually say indie rock. But that no longer begins to describe what people really mean when they say “indie.” The funny thing is that indie rock was a sound… once. In the early 90’s the American music industry had a fairly formulaic approach to creating music. (Sweeping generalization alert!) It was sterile and much of the pop/rock music had become pretty uniform and utilitarian. The American music industry had become the machine and it was cranking out music that it knew it could sell. Well if the music scene was the machine, then grunge was the rage against it. Grunge was so far off the beaten music path that when it took hold it quickly began to foster new sounds. One of those sounds that has less angst, more retrospection, and a little stronger musicianship is what now is referred to as the Northwest sound. The Northwest sound included bands and artists like Heatmiser, Built to Spill, Sam Coomes (and his many projects), Sleater Kinney, and Modest Mouse (acts that most educated music lovers now refer to as indie rock). These bands had a common thread running through them, and you can still go back and listen to those old albums & hear the similarities in sound. There was a unity of musicianship that existed with the artists at the time, and it was the Northwest sound. Because it was new and relatively different than other forms of music out there at the time, the other common thread that these bands shared was the lack of large label backing. These were artists that played a new type of music on independent labels. “Indie” became the buzzword that encapsulated the Northwest sound. Because of the association between independent labels and the Northwest sound, when you said “I like indie rock,” people knew specifically who you were talking about. Indie rock had become a genre. Soon, however, that all changed.
Through the mid to late 90’s, grunge hammered on, but so did the indie rock scene. Although not immensely popular in the mainstream, American indie rock and the Northwest sound began to gain popularity amongst college students. Small bands on small labels began playing music that had elements of the northwest sound at small venues in college towns across America, and it spread. Heatmiser broke up and Elliott Smith began playing his own music. Sam Coomes kept jamming on his keyboards for Quasi, but he also started playing with Bright Eyes and varying other bands. New acts emerged as semi-members of the genre, but quickly progressed beyond the scope of original Northwest sound. Tortoise, Belle & Sebastian, Bikini Kill, Blonde Redhead, The Sea and Cake, The Shins, Pinback, and others began playing forms of indie rock, but it was new forms that had developed past pure Northwest indie. Indie rock had splintered into sub-divided groupings. Folk rock, new rave, lo fi, indie pop, post-rock, math rock, slowcore, post-punk and others emerged as viable forms of music. It began to seem that although all of these forms of music crammed themselves under the indie umbrella, “indie” no longer fit under their individual categorizations. The Northwest sound that had defined indie rock was now sub-genre’d to the point that it was impossible to call a band like Wilco anything but alt-country, or June of 44 anything but math rock. Over time, indie rock was diluted to the point that people no longer cared about the Northwest sound as a specific style. Indie rock instead lost much of its original American heritage and became a way for hipster kids to describe the type of music that mainstream America wasn’t listening to. It has almost become shorthand for, “I don’t listen to what’s on the radio.”
Conclusion
So, what is “indie?” Well, in its everyday Facebook usage it has become cotton candy. It’s a freakin’ twinkie. Its a useless word that has been hijacked and butchered by people on their way to being totally awesome. We all somehow grabbed on to the term for a while, and overused it mercilessly while it lost virtually all meaning (like when a salesman says your name, over and over and over). In current American usage, you say “I like indie rock,” and I hear “I listen to stuff you’ve probably never heard of.” I don’t care how small the label is or how non-mainstream the band is, unless they sound like the bands from the pacific northwest circa 1995, I propose that we stop calling it indie. It’s become a dumb and incorrect (and, admittedly, innocent) way to characterize music, and it seems particularly sad that we now use “indie” as a nothing word when we should be using it to immortalize an amazing movement like the Northwest sound. I say we all stop calling “anything I want other people to think is cool” indie and start referring to the sub-genre of whatever a particular band is actually a part of. And if you don’t know the genre, then get educated. Call indie rock indie rock, but the continued use of “independent” as a catchall phrase will end up doing the same thing to indie that certain hipsters did to emo … but that’s another topic for another time.
Tags: Indie, Modest Mouse, The Thinking Man
Yes, but even acknowledging their existence makes the angels cry.
This is an outstanding article.
I really couldn’t say it better myself. I began to listen to indie music a few years ago. For the most part I feel snobby whenever I have to explain why I like a certain band from England. Of course with anything it has been bastardized completely.
People try to listen to the music and dress up like hipster fucks and try to “ironic”. At the same time they are doing the opposite, just trying to fit in. I just like listening to the music and not trying to make a statement.
With that said it is depressing to find that numerous of the so called indie labels are owned by RIAA scumbags.
Discussing the semantics of the origin of the usage of the word “Indie” in relation to its modern day uses is pointless and wrong. “Punk” music got its name from a magazine, but arguing “after a certain point, *descriptive term* is not a viable term” is misleading. The word “punk”, and really, just about any musical genre term, evolved with the bands, and looking at where the usage originated doesn’t indicate what it means today.
Yes, Indie is used as a catch-all for a certain sound of music, and a pretty encompassing umbrella, but why does that mean that the term is no longer credible? If you hear an alternative music song you hadn’t heard, and an “indie” song you hadn’t heard, 9 out of 10 times you’d know which is which. And isn’t that why we label music with genres? To give us a sense of what to expect? Well, you hear the term “Indie” and you generally expect something in the realm of what you’re going to hear.
So, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Thats exactly what I was thinking.
Well Jeff, I’m of two minds on this genre thing. Genres are useful for what you just said, it helps let the reader know what to expect when she turns on the track to listen. But that’s a double edged sword as well, because as DC and I have (pedantically, yes I stand rightfully accused) outlined above, genres have histories. I actually hate the indie term because of its history, a history I lived through as an adult.
History matters, you’ll never convince me otherwise. We like or dislike music of specific genres, in part, because of where we are in our lives at the time we were exposed to them. And sometimes later in life we go back and find lost genres which is cool, but that doesn’t happen often. For that reason, I typically don’t listen to songs that are labeled indie, expecting them to be all hippy/happy with jangly guitars and goofy vocal harmonies, which when I was 21, when they first came out, seemed ridiculous in light of the experiences I was living through politically and socially. Yes, that’s a huge and awful stereotype of the music and it’s often quite wrong and you’re right to claim that it’s changed from what it started out as. But those things don’t change my aversion to the term. Play me an indie song and tell me it’s folk/pop and I’ll like it, I’m only human
…. curiously, the longer I blog, the more I’m finding indie music on my radar.
But who uses genres? Only those of us who write about music as DC has said. The rest of the listening public will typically say “I listen to Radiohead and MGMT and old New York Dolls” instead of trying to lump those bands and their musical taste into any sort of cohesive kind of description. They’re much smarter than us!
Yeah, “indie” is broken, I still say let’s toss it out and keep chopping up labels to describe music so that people know what to expect. No one aligns themselves with one particular genre of music anyway. Only music bloggers try to limit themselves that way for the purposes of self-promotion. That’s what’s so cool about PMA, it’s one of the rare blogs that refuses to be boxed in. Thanks! xoxox
That’s what’s so cool about PMA, it’s one of the rare blogs that refuses to be boxed in. Thanks! xoxox
Thanks Tart! I am sort of claustrophobic…
Can I just say… this was an amazing read. Amazing! Not just the article, but the comments as well. Especially Tart and DC – wow guys, you really know your stuff.
Very interesting read, thanks for making it.
I work in the film industry and the same thing happened earlier this decade. There was a clear division between indie and mainstream films…then Sundance and even Slamdance now, are full of studio influence and excessive marketing.
The way I like to think of indie music is in two catagories…mainstream indie and indie. In film, mainstream Indie would be Little Miss Sunshine/Juno…films that started relatively small but then had studio backing. In music, the unknown, hip music is indie until it gathers a large following…Mainstream Indie music would be MGMT and others that hit it big but started as a buzz band around smaller circles.
I think saying Indie doesn’t exist anymore is a wrong decision…rather the music (sound) has found such a following that it is necessary to split them into two categories.
It hurts my brain to try and figure in Indie’s history. I’d rather be ignorant and call MGMT indie.
I’m in 100% agreement with Tart here – history and disposition are such a critical ingredient in our musical makeup. As a kid, I never liked or cared for the more aggressive side of punk, whether it be hardcore, screamo, etc. I just couldn’t abide it. I think that’s because I’ve never been a terribly angry guy, so I didn’t need music as a release for aggression. But I have friends who absolutely loved the stuff, and they found it very cathartic to listen to it or pogo around and mosh at live shows. It was just pointless screaming and noise for me, but for them it was a much more meaningful experience that let them sort of cleanse their souls in the process. I was a much more inwardly emotional kid, so ‘Indie’ (or whatever we want to call it) accomplished something similar for me (my sister was also crucial to my early music tastes – The Cure, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, etc.). I usually internalized my moods as best I could, so that kind of music spoke to the ‘inner’ me. But many years later, I revisited a lot of that music and found value to it. I’m a massive punk fan all these years later, and I can even appreciate cheesey 80s metal now! I’m still not crazy about screaming, but I’m more open to it.
When someone asks me what kind of music I like I keep it simple by replying, “Anything that doesn’t suck!” Think about it.
@Ming, that’s an annoying, shitty answer! lol.
This is why I usually refer to the style of music that others call “indie-rock” as “mouse rock”, because “indie” is an outdated term that people slap on any bland band that copies Modest Mouse or Death Cab. Much in the same way that “alternative” used to refer to non-grunge rock bands like Smashing Pumpkins until any non-grunge act (from Tori Amos and Bjork to Stone Temple Pilots) got shoved under the same label. It’s also a big reason why I’m more interested in reviews that describe in detail how an artist/album/song sounds as opposed to discussing just their history and lyrics with a generic genre label and mp3.
Hmm…