Indie: Rock Breaks Its Chains

Years: 2001-???

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Indie is perhaps the most widespread genre in existence. Another lost child of Alternative, I don't know if it can even be called a genre, since there is an immense diversity of sounds that have little or nothing to do with each other. The problem is that there isn't even an agreement on what the term "Indie" means and encompasses. For many, it's the way bands distribute their records. Faced with the decline and crisis of record labels, which with the new century decided to bet only on the safest, i.e., pop, hip hop, and other bubblegum products, rock bands had no choice but to turn to small record labels with minimal budgets and very limited distribution, or simply release their albums themselves in non-physical formats.

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The other definition is the particular sound that boomed in the mid-00s, like a huge flare and perhaps the last unified rock movement until mid-2011. That sound was a revival, a return to the garage sounds of the 70s and 80s of the bands that championed the movement: The Strokes, who were the first of this wave with their 2001 album, Is This It? , full of a rough, basic, carefree, and joyful sound reminiscent of bands from the late 70s; Franz Ferdidnand from the British Isles, with their brilliant self-titled debut in 2004, with a slightly more sophisticated, but equally rocking and ungainly rock style; The Killers, counterbalancing the New York scene, with a more 80s sound and more New Wave traits, with a predominance of synthesizers and more accessible melodies, although undoubtedly leaning more toward rock than pop; Arctic Monkeys, with their incredibly fast-paced, garage-inspired music, closer to punk than the rest, fun, wild, and completely different from anything else; and of course, the Kings of Leon, who surprised the world with their creativity, successfully transporting country rock into the new millennium. These bands would form the core of the movement, and by that I don't mean they're the best or the only bands, but rather the most representative and visible at the time: the tip of the iceberg. Other parallel bands with a similar sound include The Vines from Australia, The Hives from Sweden, The Kooks, and The Libertines from the UK, who could also be included in this group, although their success was undoubtedly more local.

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So far, we have at least some common traits in terms of sound and retro influences... the problem comes with other bands that could also be considered part of this boom and that have a different sound, perhaps more sophisticated and universal, without so much guitar work, but with more detail in the instrumentation and atmospheres, or more inclined towards blues or electronica. In this case, we have Interpol, also with an eighties sound, but closer to the abstraction of Joy Division or New Order... their album Turn On The Brightlights was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant of 2002 and of the entire decade. There's also Arcade Fire, who with Funeral surprised everyone with that more cosmopolitan Art Rock approach, full of carefully crafted atmospheres, extravagant instrumentation, and a conceptual album centered around death that must be considered among the best ever recorded. And that's when bands that have little or nothing to do with each other come along, like the White Stripes and the noisy minimalism of Jack White, or Kasabian and that more refined, airy, electronic-tinged rock, or the Yeah Yeah Yeah's and Karen O's charisma, or the blues revival of the Black Keys, or the irreverent sounds of Kaiser Chiefs... What then is indie if all these groups of such diverse sounds can be considered, to some extent, part of the movement? Are the White Stripes really indie? And Kashmir? Modest Mouse? Gorillaz? Placebo?

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The problem stems from the roots of indie. To begin with, it's a branch of Alternative, which initially had exactly the same meaning: bands whose sound wasn't aimed at a mass audience, but rather a more specific one, and who recorded with small independent record labels that gave them the opportunity to record albums despite the indifference of the more powerful record labels, which were more focused on supporting the big fish or the most commercial genres—in other words, playing it safe. Looking at it closely, Indie is nothing more than exactly the same situation as Alternative in 1980. Indie bands are a continuation of Alternative brought into the 21st century. After the commercial boom of Rock in the 70s and 90s, towards the end of both decades, countermovements emerged that led to the decline of the dominant genres. In one, progressive and hard rock gave way to punk and the disco movement. In another, Grunge, Brit Rock, and Alternative Rock itself, now mainstream, gave way to girl/boy bands, pop, electronic music, hip hop, soul, and other genres with guaranteed sales. The musical paradise that bands enjoyed until the middle of each decade, when record labels signed the first band that came along, vanished overnight. Many bands didn't survive these changes and either disbanded or continued releasing albums, perhaps with higher quality, but without support from their distributors, resulting in commercial failure. Others had to modify their sounds to adapt to the changing times, which is why many established bands released such disastrous albums in the 1980s. Or groups established in the 1990s released generic and unmemorable albums after Y2K.

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In the 1980s, this crisis was addressed by the first alternative bands, who operated in semi-anonymity for many years, a theme we saw in the Age of Rock, corresponding to the Alternative Underground. Indie is a continuation, and more or less under the same circumstances, of the evaporation of record label support for rock, which caused bands to seek their own means of distribution and survival. The difference between these crises was technology.

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While in the '80s, alternative bands had to settle for releasing a few hundred or a couple thousand records, and getting their music out there basically through gigs and tours, surviving and doing it for the love of it until the genre finally prevailed and brought them to light in the '90s, things were very different in the '00s. Record labels didn't count on the tremendous blow that new technology, the Internet, P2P, and MP3 would mean for them. They gave rock a painful kick with arrogance and indifference. Rock got up, put on its nerdy glasses, and went to its computer. "Won't you burn my album for me? Fine, I don't need a CD. I'll turn it into an MP3, upload it to Napster, and distribute it for free. I'm not going to make a dime, but whoever likes it will come to my shows." Take it, record labels! Not only did it work for new bands, but MP3 also shook up the entire back catalog they had, which they milked from their sacred cows. The technology they themselves invented to transfer CD content to PCs turned against them, and suddenly, you didn't need to buy a $20 CD for just a couple of good songs. Why pay for the straw if just a couple of songs are worth it? I'd rather download them. And for FREE!

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The record industry has always been a mafia-like movement, ever since the sale of Chess Records in 1969. The problem isn't so much the obvious predatory activity of record labels with greater financial power, which end up buying much smaller labels with good artists. The problem is that this law of the jungle includes buying the catalog of all the artists and albums that the acquired company had released. This is how multinationals make and break the careers of musicians they have no interest in, who they haven't developed or seen grow. Artists become a mere commercial asset, and if they don't make money, no matter how awesome the music is, they're discarded like garbage. Until the 1990s, record labels had been in control. Thus, some legendary labels, such as the aforementioned Chess, Parlophone (finally absorbed by EMI), Decca (transformed into Polydor), Elektra (acquired by Atlantic), or Atlantic itself (swallowed by Warner Bros.), among many others, fell by the wayside or were swallowed up. Only a few heroic labels survive, such as Sub-Pop, which was once the main driving force of Grunge.

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The point is that this scheming and manipulation meant that by 1998, only six major labels remained that maintained absolute control of the market: Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony Music, BMG Music, Universal Music Group, and Polygram. Confident as they felt, they turned their backs on interesting projects, and rock plunged into a new crisis at the end of the decade. By 1999, the MP3 boom hit. The Internet and downloads via Napster and P2P were a tremendous blow, as not only were their new artists' records not selling, but established bands and records that had historically remained sellers over time suddenly went under. They panicked. Metallica was one of the bands that joined in, fearing poverty and suing Napster. Other bands showed their support, claiming they were more interested in spreading their music than making money, even though record labels and intermediaries were taking more than 70% of their cuts anyway. And the vicious circle follows: if my record label is in crisis because I'm not selling records, then I'm going to support the dream artists or artists who can get me out of trouble and bring me the most money in the shortest amount of time possible. Come on, Nsync, Spice Girls, 50 Cent, and Ketchup. You have some potential with your rock, but it's outdated, and I'd have to invest too much in marketing to recoup the investment. Leave your demo in that drawer marked "junk," and we'll get back to you.

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Thus, bands managed to organize themselves for a while, but lacking other options, they either self-produced at a very limited level, sometimes without even recording a physical CD, but instead distributing their music via MP3, or they went with the smaller record labels that had survived the historic carnage. These labels also didn't dictate their direction. They didn't care what they recorded, nor did they force them to sound commercial. Their commitment was to the music, not the money, so these bands found themselves transitioning into the new millennium with complete and absolute creative freedom. There are many bands in this era, although in the '90s there were undoubtedly pioneering musicians with their own sounds, such as Beck, Modest Mouse themselves, PJ Harvey, Pavement, among others. That's why it's impossible to pinpoint a specific starting date, but rather the boom that occurred in 2004. The band I mentioned as the core of the indie movement, with The Strokes, Kings of Leon, Franz Ferdinand, and The Killers, would be the most commercially successful, and the ones that forced major corporations to turn their attention back to rock. Some sent the major labels to hell. Others betrayed themselves and signed, though using the labels only as distributors, thus maintaining creative independence. Curiously, all of these four, with or without external pressure, would change their sounds by their third or fourth album to sound more commercial.

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However, this core group is by no means all of the bands. Many others continue with varying degrees of success, exploring sounds, emotions, and lyrical themes with complete independence, which has led to extremely interesting projects like Arcade Fire and the Black Keys. For this reason, they don't need trillion-dollar budgets for marketing campaigns. Word of mouth (or blog to blog or tweet to tweet) is what spreads their music. It's therefore impossible for a figure like Nirvana or Radiohead to emerge, a new rock messiah with an all-encompassing sound. Those days are gone. The audience is very fragmented, and many projects are managed at a very local level. The record label crisis has meant that today only four labels remain in the market, fighting it out: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music, and EMI, which maintain an increasingly strict oligopoly that doesn't want to take risks.

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It's not that any idiot can make good rock music these days, but that any idiot can record an album with basic knowledge of programs like ProTools and some musical knowledge. This has both pros and cons because it allows for the expression of countless ideas and has generated a musical boom like never before. Never before have so many albums been released; never before have so many artists emerged, never before have so many proposals. Never before has there been such accessibility through technology, to the point that you don't even need to own a physical album. You no longer need an entire room to expand your audio library to 5,000 albums; you just need a half-terabyte hard drive! The downside is that not all ideas are good, and also that there are so many that it's impossible to appreciate them all. Many good bands remain hidden amidst so much on offer. Rock is pulverized by countless proposals that you have to dig through to find what suits you best; just look at the endless lists of "indie rock musicians" on Wikipedia.

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We'll have to wait and see if there's some radical change that will bring back those colossal rock figures that are sorely missed, but if rock as a movement filled with ideals died in the early 1980s, new market conditions seem to have buried it. Today, it's almost an individual product: take what you like best.

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Rock, then, died as such. It freed itself from the physical chains that limited it for so many years and now flows omnipresent through the internet.

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Rock is dead: Long Live Rock!!!

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By Corvan

May/13/2011

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