It's Worse Than I Thought

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Compiling the weekly chart polls it has often struck me that there seems to be a fair bit of indie in the Top 40 right now. To be more specific, British Indie.

And it's true! Below the cut is a list of UK indie bands who had a hit in 2007 and first charted during the last two years. The 2006 cut-off point has meant excluding characters like The Rakes, Biffy Clyro and The Cribs, who all seem to have previous.

CLASS OF 2006:
The Automatic
Get Cape Wear Cape Fly
Guillemots
Larrikin Love
Little Man Tate
Long Blondes
Maccabees
Pigeon Detectives
The Fratellis
The Holloways
The Klaxons
The View

CLASS OF 2007:
Air Traffic
Ben's Brother
Cherry Ghost
Elliot Minor
Enter Shikari
Foals
Gallows
Ghosts
Good Shoes
Hadouken!
Hoosiers
Koopa
Mesh 29
Mumm-Ra
Reverend And The Makers
Scouting For Girls
The Enemy
The Horrors
The Twang
The Wombats
Tiny Dancers

I have a couple of questions. First and foremost is who on earth are these people? I think we can provide a useful service if we turn this post into your cut-out and keep guide to nindie, 07-style. So, if you ACTUALLY KNOW what a band here sounds like or is trying to do could you use the comments box to summarise it in a sentence. Keep abuse to the minimum. Details of gimmicks particularly helpful! I would also like to know who each band are ripping off most (aside from other bands on the list).

That way we can provide an invaluable guide to chart nindie with details for:

SOUNDS LIKE:
GIMMICK:
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE:

Which is all you need know about a given band, surely?

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Obviously some of them are very easy! OTHERS HOWEVER...

[martinv.livejournal.com]

Never heard of Ben's Brother, Elliot Minor, or Mesh-29. Never heard anything by Ghosts. I know what at least 1 song by all of the others sound like. In almost every case the answer is utterly shite, especially for the 2007 bands.

And I really like indie.

All this proves is that all this new charting indie is rubbish. I've heard loads of good indie this year, very little of it charts. Because Zane Lowe doesn't like it, I presume.

[martinv.livejournal.com]

I'm actually really stunned at how depressing it is reading that list.

No wonder most of you lot hate indie! :o

[whalefish.livejournal.com]

A fair few of the 2007 ones are really major label MOR crap being marketed as indie acts for a bit of 'credibility', I'd say - Air Traffic, Tiny Dancers, Scouting For Girls, Ben's Brother, that sort of thing.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes but "if the cap fits" has to apply! If Tiny Dancers sound like actual shite indie and are just on a major label then there's no difference as far as I'm concerned.

Who are all these people trying to sound like? What's the aesthetic?

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

The View...

SOUNDS LIKE: my worst nightmares
GIMMICK: being from Dundee (can your place of origin be a gimmick?)
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: something that isn't total dog-s**te

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Compare to the class of 2004/5: Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Maximo Park, Kasabian, Kaiser Chefs and this lot really stink. There are only about three bands in that entire list that I can conceive of being able to bear listening to for more than about 3 minutes.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Oh, apologies, I didn't read the "keep abuse to a minimum" bit. But irrespective, they're still talentless twats.

My Understanding of these bands' USPs

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

(USP = Unique Selling Point, if yr not a marketer)

CLASS OF 2006:
The Automatic - they did "Monster" but beyond that I'm not sure what the gimmick it.
Get Cape Wear Cape Fly - "British Bright Eyes"??
Guillemots - they do jazzy stuff and are a bit improvised.
Larrikin Love - post-Doherty Albion sorts I think.
Little Man Tate - NO IDEA
Long Blondes - synth-led lyric indie.
Maccabees - NO IDEA
Pigeon Detectives - some sort of oi revival???
The Fratellis - terrace indie, 'street' kind of appeal
The Holloways - NO IDEA
The Klaxons - NEW RAVE! Everyone knows the Klaxons.
The View - unpretentiousness as a selling point, busker-friendly.

CLASS OF 2007:
Air Traffic - NO IDEA
Ben's Brother - NO IDEA
Cherry Ghost - NO IDEA
Elliot Minor - they're sort of scruffy pop-punk I think
Enter Shikari - the idea here is trance meets metal, right?
Foals - recent enough that I remember. Post-punk, dunno what the specific post punk USP is.
Gallows - fiercer-than-thou punkiness.
Ghosts - NO IDEA. Jeff Worrell likes them!
Good Shoes - is this girl group?
Hadouken! - new rave again! Dunno what flavour.
Hoosiers - power pop
Koopa - their gimmick was being an unsigned band in the charts! Doesn't explain their three hits though.
Mesh 29 - NO IDEA
Mumm-Ra - NO IDEA. Surely pop-punk?
Reverend And The Makers - gritty lyric indie.
Scouting For Girls - NO IDEA, have avoided hearing them.
The Enemy - kind of post-Hard-Fi this-is-real-life-maaan stuff?
The Horrors - gothier-than-thou punkiness
The Twang - baggy revival
The Wombats - nerdy scouse pranksters
Tiny Dancers - NO IDEA

Re: My Understanding of these bands' USPs

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Hadouken = new rave with the added twist of WHITE SHOREDITCH TWATS DOING GRIME :oooooo

Re: My Understanding of these bands' USPs

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Ghosts

SOUNDS LIKE: Keane

GIMMICK: "we're not part of any scene, we don't have any gimmicks, we're not gonna go around slagging off other bands to get attention (it always seems like a symptom of insecurity to me), we just write great songs with lyrics that hopefully people can relate to"
(that's a genuine quote, i.e. their gimmick is MOR conformity, I s'pose)

MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: Coldplay

Re: My Understanding of these bands' USPs

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I saw the Guillemots at Glasto and absolutely hated them, and I like jazzy improvised stuff.

Re: My Understanding of these bands' USPs

[martinv.livejournal.com]

Little Man Tate - From Sheffield, sub-Arctic Monkeys BAD
Maccabees - Supported katstevens's band when she was in one lots iirc. Inoffensive, tuneful post-Libertines. MEDIOCRE.
Holloways - "I can buy a record player, and a generator, generate the music that makes you feel better" - heard that? That them. Catchy. Otherwise awful. Bad hats.
Air Traffic/ Cherry Ghost - post-Clodplay awful moan music.
Scouting For Girls - TERRIBLE. In no way indie, tbh. Whatever indie means, it doesn't mean these people.
Mumm-Ra - not pop-punk, not really distinctive enough for genres.

I like the Long Blondes out of all this list. I don't mind Guillemots (in small doses), Klaxons (occasionally) and Good Shoes (again occasionally - and they're not a girl group.)

Re: My Understanding of these bands' USPs

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

Cherry Ghost - Snow Patrol but with G Lightbody replaced by a bloke from Nottingham trying to sound like Michael Stipe.

Re: My Understanding of these bands' USPs

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

Ben's Brother - utterly awful MOR somewhere between D Gray and Turin Brakes but much lower than either.

[ms-bracken.livejournal.com]

The Twang

SOUNDS LIKE: James
GIMMICK: unknown please advise
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: Happy Mondays probably

[spazhammer.livejournal.com]

that should read:

The Twang

SOUNDS LIKE: Hard-Fi
GIMMICK: supposedly "baggy" but end up sounding like a brummie hard fi. "I LUV YERRRRRRR!"
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: Happy Mondays probably

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The Maccabees are old chums of generalkhaki who are now rich and super famous and have their songs on phone adverts. Good for them.

The really important question...

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

...is not what any of them sound like.

It is: HOW DO WE - WE THE PEOPLE - GET THEM TO STOP. SOON. NOW. ALREADY. PLEASE. Or at least peddle their wares outside the top 40.

Re: The really important question...

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

Or at least peddle their wares outside the top 40.

Stop buying the records in sufficient quantities to get them there?

Re: Question for Tom

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Hahaha great question. I'd have hated it obviously, at least initially. I like to think I'd have come round to it, though.

a ghiffer writer: bah

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

u&k to cut and paste this into reformat this so it doesn't fold up

doin mah civic duty

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Elliot Minor
SOUND LIKE: one of those bands my friends were in during the whole Nu-Metal thing (nb: I was thirteen at this time)
GIMMICK: choirboy background
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: Iron Maiden probably HAR HAR HAR HAR DI HAR

Enter Shikari
SOUND LIKE: Lostprophets' lairy younger brothers
GIMMICK: synthesiser
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: Battles. Actually this is not right. There was a trance-punk band I thought of the other day and realised it was what Enter Shikari will never be.

Gallows
SOUND LIKE: hardcore punk screaming business
GIMMICK: from Hertfordshire or wherever. Srsly, you cannot read anything about them without it being prefixed by this fact.
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: Err, Napalm Death maybe?

Ghosts
SOUND LIKE: Delays
GIMMICK: sounding like Delays
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: Delays

Hadouken!
SOUND LIKE: a recording of some drunk 16-25 year olds
GIMMICK: hats
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: Lethal Bizzle

Reverend And The Makers
SOUND LIKE: parody of the Arctic Monkeys
GIMMICK: rumors re: whether they really wrote the Arctic Monkeys' songs
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: Arctic Monkeys

The Enemy
SOUND LIKE: Libel case for Paul Weller alert!
GIMMICK: being sulky about having to get a job and/or student loan -sorry, revolutionary discourse, my mistake...
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: The Jam

The Horrors
SOUND LIKE: tuneless "goth" drone
GIMMICK: looking like Russell Brand
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: The Cure?

The Twang
SOUND LIKE: collection of dads in indie band
GIMMICK: being collection of dads in indie band
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: U2
(sorry dads!)

The Wombats
SOUND LIKE: Irreverent and jolly indie chugging
GIMMICK: marsupials and annoying Joy Division fans
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: Blur?

Re: doin mah civic duty

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

bah, don't encourage me to check out Delays

moar jooty

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

The Automatic
SOUND LIKE: hyperactive welsh types
GIMMICK: the one that plays the keyboards apparently but personally I suspect it's more 'Monster'
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: I genuinely do not know this one

Get Cape Wear Cape Fly
SOUNDS LIKE: folktronica (WAIT, COME BACK)
GIMMICK: being nice/intelligent
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: no, I do not know this one either

Little Man Tate
SOUNDS LIKE: every other band that list 'The Libertines' as an influence
GIMMICK: err?
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: The Libertines

Pigeon Detectives
[see above]

The Klaxons
SOUNDS LIKE: psychadelia with modern words
GIMMICK: nu rave
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: Happy Mondays probably

The View
SOUNDS LIKE: ARGH
GIMMICK: wearing the same jeans for four days LIKE THAT'S UNUSUAL
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: something aggressive and dangerous. Which they're not.

It depresses me to realise I have had to write reviews of most of the bands above and can still barely tell most of them apart.

Re: moar jooty

[cis.livejournal.com]

i applaud your devotion to the coal face of having to review anonym brit indie! you are truly the best of us all.

(also having read yr rundowns i now really want to hear gallows! in a way it's unsurprising people keep mentioning the herts thing, doesn't herts have some fairly huge well-kept-secret of a hardcore scene?)

Mesh-29

[disco-bis-cuit.livejournal.com]

Mesh-29

SOUNDS LIKE: No-one else I've heard. They are unique. Although common assumption is that they are very popular amongst the Keane community.
GIMMICK: No gimmick. Just well written songs, that get better every time you listen to them
MOST WANT TO SOUND LIKE: Themselves. No-one is the next anyone. Everyone and every band is unique.

www.mesh29.com

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

As an old person, a few of these bands do read as "indie" in an identifiable way. The Horrors, for instance, are – contrary to Pirate Moggy's description – to me sound like something that would have been played by Peel in the early 80s: from the Cramps/Birthday Party side of the broad goth church, but on bed of Nuggets garage rock. Godawful vocals.

And The Enemy are the Easterhouse of these times.

Scouting For Girls, on the other hand, would so not have been considered "indie" back in the day.

Question: have Weezer cast a greater shadow than is commonly acknowleged?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Of all of these, I enjoy-in-a-general-sense two of them, The Horrors (kindasorta) and the Fratellis. Haven't heard well over half, and a few of 'em have their moments. Like the Klaxons, I guess. And Guillemots, I guess. But it's all pretty shruggy (which is maybe it's appeal? RIYL: sneering a bit and shrugging stuff off?).

PS, dubdobdee taught me the proper barfy emoticon for those who want to keep abuse to a minimum:

>X-Oß%œ%˚®