Do You Want New Wave (Or Do You Want the Truth)?

November 25, 2007... As I've written before, I wander through life most days with a song on my mind. I don't plan for it and have no control over what song it is. It just appears on the turntable in my mind and spins and spins and spins until something else comes along and knocks the needle out of the groove.

Every now and then, I'll go through a phase where I try to write down all the songs that have occupied my thoughts over a period of a few days or weeks. To what end, I'm not sure. I guess I just like making lists, even if Olivia Newton-John and Air Supply end up on them.

During a recent list-making phase a song entered my consciousness that I just couldn't place. I could "hear" it clear as a bell between my ears, but I didn't know the name of the song and couldn't make out the performer. I began sifting through my CD collection, sure that I'd recognize it when I heard it again, and would be able to add it to a list.

My first guess was that it was a Modest Mouse song, so I skipped through a bunch of Modest Mouse tracks listening for something familiar, but ... nothing.

My second guess was that it was an Arcade Fire song, so I skipped through a bunch of Arcade Fire tracks... Again, nothing.

My third guess was Destroyer, and I'd started skipping through Destroyer tracks when it struck me like a ten-tonne shithammer...

Gee, this indie rock stuff sure is wimpy.

Mostly Enjoyable Band - Aural Emetic

Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in the New Yorker recently about how mostly-white indie rock has little rhythm and no soul, to which Carl Wilson responded, in Slate, that indie rock has become the exclusive preserve of the university-educated children of university-educated parents; i.e. it's elitist. I'll carry the analysis a little futher by suggesting that indie rock today plays a role similar to that of new wave in the 1980s: it looks kinda wierd, I guess, but underneath the beards and aviator glasses, there ain't much going on.

I will leave you with the image that much of today's indie rock conjures up for me: it is of a sixty-something parent, slippered feet on the kitchen table in a $500,000 home, alternative newsweekly in one hand, coffee mug in the other, and their kid's band gently reverberating through the pods in their ears.

Has the generation gap between parents and kids that used to define rock 'n' roll really disappeared? If yes, is it because parents are cooler today, or because the kids we hear from are less cool?

Minutemen - Do You Want New Wave (Or Do You Want the Truth)?

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