I’ve already mentioned that indie rock veterans Guided by Voices are calling it quits. SxSW’s Matt Dentler has a nice tribute post over at his blog.
They’re like the Woody Allen of indie rock: They release a reliably enjoyable (and occasionally brilliant) record practically every year. It’s even become a summer tradition I look forward to every 12 months. But now, the tradition comes to an end.
Actually, I liken them to the Fall, the band that keeps on producing even if people aren’t buying their records (as much) any more. And like the Fall, I expected Guided by Voices to be around indefinitely. Sure, bandleader Robert Pollard will continue cranking out solo material, but it won’t be the same.
Take their current album which, if not their masterpiece, is certainly a high note to leave on. It’s the well-produced work they’ve been striving for, one that matches the tone and energy of their earlier lo-fi work. And the appearance of Tobin Sprout on the last track is a nice, bittersweet touch.
But it’s not just the band’s departure that’s bittersweet. Somehow their demise seems an emblem of a larger trend in indie rock. For one thing, Guided by Voices were part of a moment in which American indie rock hit a certain stride in style, culture and popularity; no one would mistake Matador’s or Merge’s or even K Records’ or TeenBeat’s record sales figures for Bertelsmann’s or Warner’s, but their bands nonetheless served as a unified music culture for college kids and twenty-somethings throughout the 90s, similar to “college rock’s” function in the 80s. Of course there are indie acts now, some of them quite good, but rock no longer has hegemony, even among middle-class, overeducated white kids. Chicks on Speed or Dizzee Rascal seem as likely a touchstone of cool today as the retro-postpunk acts filling the college-radio airwaves.
Furthermore, American indie music isn’t all that American in tone or style. Guided by Voices crafted anthemic gems that seemed to touch on some AOR classic you knew but couldn’t name. Pavement, for all their Fall-worship, flipped classic rock cliches on their head. Liz Phair took out the over-indulgence from roots rock and made it personal and raw again. Superchunk updated the 80s SST/punk sound. Almost without exception, the sound was resolutely American, and was just as likely to come from Chicago or Dayton or Chapel Hill or Stockton as any place. Today, meanwhile - except for a few stalwarts like Austin’s Spoon or Chapel Hill’s Rosebuds - we’re under the hegemony of New York/San Francisco hipsterdom, and I can’t help but think that the music is suffering for it. I keep waiting for a musical Thermidorean reaction from the flyover zone.
Or maybe it will come elsewhere, from Canada perhaps. One of the bright lights in the recent releases has been the solo LP from A.C. Newman, the New Pornographers guy. It’s a brilliant record all around, just as strong as a New Pornographers entry. And its acknowledgements thank the Canadian government’s music fund. To look at the slate of recent good music coming from north of the border - Hot Hot Heat, the Stills, as well as the New Pornographers - maybe the Canadian-content rules and funding are actually (surprisingly?) paying off and the country is finally crawling out of the AOR/Adult Alternative music black hole. Or even leading the way. Time will tell.
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