Indie-Glam: 1998 or 2008?
A few nights ago, out on the town, Courtney Love appeared to be following me around. At bar after bar, strains of her big Hole hits from 1998-9 came streaming out, reminding me of the bizarre time when alt-rock found itself, in the space of some four years, awash in cash, fame, and prestige. The short middle passage of the '90s took Hole from the low-fi creepshow of "Doll Parts" to the hi-gloss prom of "Celebrity Skin;" took Garbage from the grunge-hop Sneaker Pimps peerage of "Queer" to the transatlantic centerfold of "I Think I'm Paranoid;" took Smashing Pumpkins from the granola-punk aesthetic of "Disarm" to the center of the known universe. Marilyn Manson went from riding a boar, dipped naked in green paint, to eclipsing Rose McGowan on the red carpet. The list goes on and on. Alt-rock, as Scott Weiland discovered, had become alt-glam.
Then the war came. Not the War on Terror, the War on Taste -- boy bands, bubblegum pop, Fred Durst and that guy from Staind. Only Korn drummer Dave Silveria attempted to bridge the difference between alt-glam and the forces intent on destroying it, posing in 2000 for an evocative series of Calvin Klein Dirty Jeans ads that featured the likes of Liz Phair. Slipknot -- and not only Slipknot -- burned him in effigy. There would be no looking back.
And so both alt-rock and alt-glam were banished from the public eye. Britney beat Billy. And, quietly, carefully, introvertedly, a younger generation of sensitive types stayed away from the Warped Tour and the Summer Sanitarium in preference for their bedrooms, often in solitary diligence, softly preparing a revolution.
They weren't rich like their alt-rock ancestors; weren't already famous; had no record deals of the sort their aesthetic parents enjoyed in an era when labels like Interscope and even Maverick could make the earth tremble. What they did have was talent, time, and the means of production, and that's all an artist ever really needs. And so was indie-rock born into the world.
Fast forward a few years. These indie-rockers, needy but prickly individualists that they are, seem to prefer the ad hoc collective and the solo framework to dedicated band bonding. One can hardly blame them. It's not just a matter of living out psychological stereotypes. It's a matter of making new kinds of music. And I must confess that the large collectives do less for me than the new one-man and one-woman bands. It would seem, judging by John Wray's six-page New York Times feature on the Return of the One-Man Band, that I am not alone in this matter:
Advances in recording and performance technology now make it possible
for musicians not only to fire the drummer but also — if so inclined —
to do away with accompaniment altogether without losing the richness,
or seemingly the spontaneity, of a full-size band. And Pallett is by no
means alone in pursuing these advantages. The past few years in
progressive pop, which have given rise to a series of popular and
acclaimed collectives — uncommonly large bands with a disdain for
clearly defined hierarchies, like Montreal’s Arcade Fire, or even a fluid definition of membership, like Toronto’s Broken Social Scene or Brooklyn’s Animal Collective
— have also produced a wide variety of solo performers. Among the most
notable are Pallett, Noah Lennox and Annie Clark. Even more curiously,
the two trends are intimately connected: Pallett has toured with the
Arcade Fire as a violinist; Noah Lennox, who plays solo under the name
Panda Bear, is an active member of Animal Collective; and Annie Clark —
who records and performs under the nom de rock St. Vincent —
has played with a veritable Who’s Who of supersize outfits, from the
Polyphonic Spree to Sufjan Stevens’s band to the no-wave pioneer Glenn
Branca’s all-guitar orchestra. When I asked the 25-year-old Clark to
explain this apparent paradox, she considered the question for a while.
“I think a lot of bands decided to maximalize their sound — if that’s a
word — as a kind of reaction to the stark, sort of minimalist indie
rock in the 90’s,” she said finally. “One way to do that is to form
these massive collectives and put on big stage shows: a ‘more is more’
kind of thing.” She smiled to herself demurely. “Another way is to
maximalize yourself.”
Wray's article is great, complete with a shout-out to DC's own Rock and Roll Hotel. He covers a lot of cool one-person bands, but he can't know them all, or not yet, anyway. He missed, for example, one of my new favorites, The Handpicked Successors. (Don't let the plural fool you.) Now that indie rock has resuscitated the alt-rock bloodline, I expect to see the alt-glam aesthetic return under freshly liberated, privately produced auspices -- call it indie-glam. You heard it here first. The revolution may be bad for corporate music, but it's awesome for fans and artists, and with a win-win like that, it's all very rock and roll.
(Time-straddling Scott Weiland courtesy of Flickrer Mark C. Austin.)
Recent Comments