ARCADE FIRE No.1 on Billboard Charts
I don’t know if you can call it “indie rock” anymore, folks. “Indie” was term born of the 90s to give classification to bands that weren’t on massive labels or getting airplay on the radio. It even carried connotation of aesthetic as well: indie bands made different music than the rest of the 90s alt-rock world. Bands like Pavement first come to mind. Bands that definitely had an audience but never quite broke out of their indie/cult status to the national scene like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Blur, and Oasis. The reserved themselves to smaller audiences and a much tighter focus in sound. Less polished but authentic and totally heartfelt. In fact, what placed so many groups over the years into the “indie” category was their penchant to write slightly skewed, brutally honest songs that were never intended to be on the radio, or even heard outside of the garage for that matter. Slowly but surely more and more bands began to create these cells of song—these blips in time, spurts of creativity devoted to a single moment or feeling. They were creating microcosms. The long held ideal that “pop music can save/change the world” was quickly fading away as bands and labels were starting to homogenize into some radio-friendly monster. The thought process became more “this is what I hear in my head,” and as bands continued to follow their intuitions and chase their “sound”, the “indie” label became more and more arbitrary. Bands that were huge went to smaller labels for more artistic freedom or simply self-released. Big labels began to work with smaller acts that might no fill out Madison Square Garden. And music itself just became too diversified. Now we have labels like “twee”, “glo-fi”, and “glich-hop” to encompass the huge breadth of music being created these days. As the last decade came to a close, the “indie” genre/label/sound was pretty much washed out in the wave of countless bands creating relevant music that sounded both like tropes of previous artist and styles while at the same time completely new—not to mention the successes of infamous “indie” bands on national charts in competition with major label pop stars. Vampire Weekend hit No. 1 while LCD Soundsystem remained on the charts for a while.
We have another landmark. It was announced yesterday that Arcade Fire’s third LP “The Suburbs” reached the No.1 spot on the Billboard charts. This is somewhat understandable concerning Arcade Fire’s relative lean towards anthem-y, perfect for stadium rock song-craft (they just played a slew of sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden)—but “The Suburbs” echoes a very pared-down, indie dynamic, which makes it sort of an anomaly. Although there are still moments of grandeur, their songs work on a much more focused and subliminal platitude. If we saw anything from their single, “Month of May”, the Arcade Fire had never sounded so relaxed and rambunctious. “The Suburbs” show a band with their guard down, chasing the sounds that they hear in their head. They’re still singing about cars and kids and loss of innocence, but instead of trying to play music to reflect the speed at which life seems to pass—the urgency—they seem content in watching it go by.
Arcade Fire: Month Of May
Arcade Fire: Modern Man
Arcade Fire: Wasted Hours
Leave a Reply
