The current wave of 80's-revivalist, reverb-drenched indie pop/rock all blends together to me. Off the top of my head, artists like Porches, Japanese Breakfast, Beach House, Fazerdaze, Chvrches, Frankie Cosmos, Adult Mom, Everything Everything, Diiv, Grimes, The War on Drugs, Wild Nothing, Neon Indian, Future Islands, Car Seat Headrest (not really 80's-inspired or reverby but you get the idea), and the infinite number of bandcamp bedroom musicians all feel like drops in an ocean. Their music isn't even bad, it's serviceable, some of it's pretty catchy. But my problem isn't that the music is bad it's that it doesn't feel genuine.
I'll use this song, Porches - Be Apart as an example, chosen arbitrarily. Again, not even a bad song, but I don't get the feeling when I listen to it that it was written from any burning desire for self-expression. It was written to be an inoffensive indie song and that's exactly what it is. It's decent and kinda nice to listen to but it's ultimately bland, uninspired, and unremarkable. And I could link more songs from any of the above artists that fit this criteria than songs that don't.
I'm struggling to think of any popular indie artists who are really experimenting with sound or song structure in any meaningful way, or are innovating and pushing the genre forward. It's all very safe and inoffensive and lacking in real depth and emotion, and it feels like artists are making music just for the sake of making music I guess? All of the "best" indie albums of the last few years have felt very disposable, mediocre, and forgettable to me, like the genre has stagnated and it's in this purgatory of reverb, falsetto vocals, vintage synthesizers, programmed drums, 2-3 minute verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus pop structures, and pretentious music videos, waiting for the next big innovator to come save it.
Have any albums come out in the last few years that people will look back on the same way they do with albums like Merriweather Post Pavilion or OK Computer?
Charles Rivera
>oblivion >not written from a 'burning desire for self expression' You're probably the user who posted that, just so you know you're a fucking retard and I hope you literally get benign cancer.
Jose Allen
grimes a shit and so are you
Henry James
You like vaporwave cunt I fucking hate your guts you're opinion is stupid and hideous. I take it back, I hope you get a malignant cancer and have to get your 2nd toe on your left foot amputated to remove the cancer.
Lincoln Smith
i hope you get smash to bits by a speeding truck you sack of shit. grimes is definitively the worst "artist" to ever exist
Kayden Peterson
Honestly Grimes is the most overrated, over-reported musical act of this decade. I love a few of her songs and she is clearly Rated just right as a fashion model and youth celebrity, but as a musician, she doesn't deserve the place she's in. There's not enough to warrant it on a musical basis, it's all "X Factor." And that's fine, but I would rather see music media focus on music and she can be a YouTube star like Rosanna Pansino. There's plenty of room to talk about her fabulous clothing and visual aesthetic. I don't know if I could talk about her music for five minutes.
Xavier Morris
Yeezus :^) To Pimp A Butterfly :^)
Dylan Morgan
Just fucking admit you made a mistake including grimes in that list user, you're making me mad I hope you start balding you insufferable fucker. I hope your front tooth get's chipped in the corner after you bite on a fork. I mean this isn't just literally the worst opinion on music ever right? No it actually is, you're cancer. Grimes is a fucking amazing in everything she does.
Wyatt Wood
grimes autist status=triggered face it, your mayo consuming mustached waifu is shit and so is her music
Mason Reyes
...
Jaxson Murphy
grimes is another mediocre le quirky shit that hasn't done anything interesting in her entire life. i hope magic johnson rides you ad gives you aids retard
Lincoln Murphy
Yes
Easton Morales
Actually kind of agree with the reddit OP but I feel like he's using indie in an incredibly loose and disingenuous sense when you look at the albums he's using from previous eras for comparison (if you read the whole post). There's definitely a trend towards more stripped down, confessional or somewhat "minimalist" tendencies in indie music right now but on one hand, in some ways maybe it's a reaction to how "maximalist" a lot of music in the last decade could be and how the term indie doesn't really mean the same that it once did? It feels like he's falsely conflating being experimental with being sincere, two entirely different arguments. We're definitely in a currently less experimental era of indie pop/rock and I agree that even though I find a lot of it pleasant, much of it blends together but that's just how scenes tend to be. I mean look at the post-punk revival period of the early 00s and how for every The Strokes, there were 5 bands that no one talks about now that were kind of relevant at the time but all blend into more or less a singular zeitgeist now.
Elijah Kelly
Who is the dude on the right?
Jaxon Taylor
oh you're in for a treat
Jackson Thompson
>grimes is another mediocre le quirky shit that hasn't done anything Fuck I've got you here! >I love a few of her songs and she is clearly Rated just right as a fashion model and youth celebrity Bitch admit that you're just fucking dumb. She isn't my waifu, she's an inspiration to me and her music is uplifting and empowering.
Xavier Fisher
i'm not that guy you moron. i hate grimes with all my being.
Jason White
Those are not indie albums
James Long
Oh sorry then. I found that picture very funny though, thanks for posting it. It kind of looks like baby grimes ahahaha.
Bentley Russell
there is next-level indie shit happening always user. most of it doesn't get buzz because there's no money in it or because the dudes making it just dgaf about being in p4k.
this shit was released 4 years ago and sounds way "further ahead" than anything you listed in your OP. listen to how primal and psychedelic it is:
you can tell it's indie, DIY and really raw, but you can also tell these dudes are really good musicians who are just approaching music from a totally different angle than a band like Porches. it sounds really pure.
normies hate this shit but lots of indie musicians who know about them love this band, i think they were signed to Circulatory System's record label for a while.
Hunter Kelly
>music is uplifting and empowering if anyone ever says this about my music just kill me right where i stand
Joseph White
I didn’t read it, but no.
Ayden Collins
>it feels like artists are making music just for the sake of making music Oh no how terrible! Also you don't need to be sincere to make good music that's a pretty pretentious notion
Aiden Martin
>you don't need to be sincere to make good music that's a pretty pretentious notion the irony
Noah Edwards
post your band
Easton Turner
how do beautiful women like that need to get gangbanged on cam to make a living? just find some rich chad and get taken care of your whole life if you don't want a real job
Chase Flores
Based Ott.
Caleb Rogers
>how do beautiful women like that need to get gangbanged on cam to make a living?
Shitty economy and a culture that endorses thottery.
Andrew Stewart
user, his opinions on Grimes were literally BASELESS.
Oliver Nguyen
listen to different stuff. Sun kil moon is "indie" (mark owns the label) & are experimenting more than any other time in his career.
Charles Reyes
Why the fuck is an entire genre named indie? It's supposed to be a movement or a way of making music, like indie films, or indie games. Half of these faggots are signed to labels, this will never not bother me.
Why do people like MPP? It has one perfect, god-given song (My Girls), a couple ones that are okay I guess (Summertime Clothes, In The Flowers) and that's it.
Cooper Mitchell
Nah... you just need to stop living in the past
Austin Edwards
If serious: "Guys Eyes", "Also Frightened", "Bluish", and "No More Runnin'" are all incredible. Years later, I revisit them and find new things to appreciate.
Nathaniel Perez
sauce on the girl
James Campbell
elsa jean blacked
Kayden White
>blacked thanks but no thanks
Nathaniel Collins
indie isn't a genre
Xavier Brooks
I mean a good counter example would be cosmo pyke he makes heavily indie inspired music but with a lot more complex song structures and technical cord progressions. I mean its nothing that will shift the paradigm but id say you could cherry pick "serviceable" artist and degrade any genre. Weather or not one genre is more bland is really difficult to say but there will always be counter examples.
Tyler Moore
she's got vids of her just going at it alone, i was just messing with you friend lol i'm a jokester
Eli Powell
guitar music hasn't been relevant since kobain killed himself
Brandon Howard
no wonder mu is so shit its full of retard redditors
Cameron Evans
Sup Forums's got better discussion amirite such as kpop, grimes, chvrches, trump, fantano threads
Connor Gonzalez
>reads DFW once
Luke Clark
t. buttmad redditor
Parker Wood
>caring about anyone's opinion on music other than your own >posting blacked images >posting reddit links Unless your hawking your own shit who gives a fuck what other people think. Indie bands pushing gigs just for gas money to go to the next spot are always sincere as fuck. Yeah there are vanity projects out there and a bunch of washed up shit but this opinion is just a sweeping generalization.
Nathaniel Jones
prove me wrong
Christian Clark
Was thinking the same thing
Adrian White
Might as well of said you need to go black because you are shitposting with effort you nobody.
Justin Diaz
all of those threads are full of redditors so you really only proved my point
Juan Ramirez
i mean 80s is just the in thing at the moment, i think all of history has been about copying your idols/periods of time before you but with the new knowledge that has come about since that period actually happened in the real time if you get me and because of that it will be slightly different because we have more knowledge, new tech to draw from
Leo Ward
>reddit >trump >gooks wrong
Hudson Hernandez
Elsa is so smug.
Aiden Bell
The only modern indie band I like is King Gizzard mostly because I always liked the Oh See. They feel genuine enough even though they express their genuinity through quirky garage/psych/noise/jazz-fusion/prog songs
