I think Indie in the UK is pretty much any band to have descended from The Smiths / Stone Roses and/or bands like them - Oasis, The Verve, Ocean Colour Scene etc.
It’s decidedly not about being an art snob. Go to an Oasis gig and try find an art snob.
“Indie Rock” means music released on independent record labels - labels that are not subdivisions of major labels and aren’t owned by larger coporations. That’s why I take issue with people when they ridiculously refer to bands signed to major labels as “Indie” artists.
But “Indie Rock” also refers to a specific musical genre that no longer exists - it specifically refers to the 1990’s brand of rock music released on independent labels that was grouped together by a specific aesthetic. I’m talking about the big bands of the era like Sebadoh, Pavement, Guided by Voices (the holy trilogy), Beat Happening, Archers of Loaf, Built to Spill, and so on. “Indie Rock” implies that nineties brand of favoring lower production values and “lo-fi” recording techniques (as a reaction to the overproduction of late-eighties and early-nineties mainstream music) wrapped around guitar-centric pop songs. There were of course many variations; bands like the Apples in Stereo and Olivia Tremor Control favored emulating the british invasion while later twee groups like Belle and Sebastian and His Name is Alive looked to sixties folk-pop for inspiration. Bands like the Magnetic Fields and Land of the Loops embraced synth-pop, albeit in a consciously wink-wink nudge-nudge ironic way, while Built to Spill and Karate broke with the popular “amateurism” fad and embraced guitar heroics. Regardless of those different strains and divisions, there was an overriding aesthetic gel to the whole thing; it just made sense that completely different bands like Butterglory, the Magnetic Fields, and Superchunk were on the same record label (Merge).
Those days are no longer. The entire indie scene completely changed and melted into what can best be described as a “generic hipster” scene now, if it can even be called a scene. I think that, between file-sharing and the complete genre-melt that we’re in the middle of, there’s actually no scene at all to speak of. There are a lot of independent bands out there, a lot of completely different bands on the same indepedent labels that share no aesthetic sensibility in the way that the nineties bands did (the New Pornographers, Laura Cantrell, Interpol and Matmos on the same label, Matador), a lot of bands that used to be independent bands living quiet lives on major labels (Built to Spill, Modest Mouse), and so on.
Basically, the phrase “indie rock” no longer has any meaning.
This whole hipster melt thing is interesting, though, because everyone looks the same - kooky - and you can’t tell who’s a complete fraud or what anyone’s into. The guy with a messenger bag, scruffy beard, and ironic t-shirt might be a hip hop beatmaker, a filmmaker, a rock band guy, or just someone that sort of likes the Decemberists and Modest Mouse but doesn’t really know anything about anything other than that. The chick in weird glasses with kooky that looks like a total artster might be a performance artist, a punker, a recovering rave chick that’s into noise from Fag Tapes, or she might like Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne and just look the part. Crazy! it used to be a lot easier out there, because there was a scene and things like “indie rock” meant something.
Personally, I think we’re better off now, but it’ll change more.
I think I actually like your definition better than mine. But then, I’m more of a fan of early indie music - Pavement, Built to Spill, My Bloody Valentine, etc. I like some of the new groups like The Decemberists (some of their songs anyway) but I hate Sufjan Stevens and his ilk, and can only tolerate a few Andrew Bird songs.
I guess it’s true that there are a lot of different types of people who dress in the hipster way. But when I’m at indie shows, everyone there is dressed for the part. Except me, because I try to be different - for example, I’m usually the only guy there wearing calf-high Wolverine logger boots. But I like the people, anyway. In contrast with certain other college-age scenes, I find them to be almost universally clever, well-spoken, and polite.
It helps that I grew up in the heyday of indie rock - the nineties - and that was when I got into music in the way that only teenagers can. I still have a ton of affection for that stuff - Sebadoh’s Bakesale is basically my personal “Wonder Years” soundtrack - and I made out with enough girls in horn-rimmed glasses to still get a half-stiffie when I see a pair.
But part of acknowledging that is acknowleding that that stuff exists in time - it’s specifically tied to that era and its general zeitgeist. And, to be honest, a lot of it hasn’t aged well. The slacker ethos was in full effect then, and the products of that mentality had an amazingly short half-life. It’s amazing how many bands from that era like, say, the Fastbacks, Jale, Heather Duby, East River Pipe, Kittycraft, and Butterglory - just to take a completely random sampling of bands that were on the biggest indies of the day like Sub Pop, Merge, and Matador - wouldn’t have a hope of being signed in today’s climate. They sound like shit, lazy and uninspired, like the slacker mentality of the era. It’s amazing how bad records from that era sound too, and I’m not talking about intentionally lo-fi stuff. Just laziness and slackdom reigning supreme.
That’s why I get frustrated when a band that I consider still stuck in that era manages to garner some critical acclaim and cred in '07, such as when critics went nuts over that lazy and forgettable Wolf Parade album a year or two back. To put it simply, the bar has been (thankfully) raised higher than that on every level of the craft of making records and being a band, and the Quasis and Selfs of the world have to try a hell of a lot harder to get by 10 years later.
And they should have to try harder.
I do have to admit that the whole fashion/appearance melt thing has driven me nuts. It just used to be so much easier to tell what subgenre of hipster a person was by their personal appearance choices such as grooming and fashion. The girl with the cardigan and barrettes = into twee, likes to cuddle. Guy with the kooky hair and tight jeans was probably a post-punker, or into the mathy stuff of the day like polvo. The girl that looked like a smarter and more restrained goth was probably one of those 4AD chicks that would let you bum a smoke and make out while listening to Pale Saints, but only the first album. But wait, here comes the guy with the goatee and baggy jeans - I know he’s up on the latest Ninja Tune and Mo’Wax imports. And so on.
Now, you just can’t tell anything, man. That chick that looks like the heiress to Lydia Lunch’s legacy might just as well be an administrative assistant that’s into Coldplay.
I’m gonna place the blame on Urban Outfitters!
Indie rock, or indie? I’ll agree with indie rock, but never with indie. You can’t be so dismissive of an entire genre that may or may not exist, etc etc
What does Fall Out Boy have to do with indie, or nu-metal? 
Genuinely curious.
I managed to get out of it, as diluted as it was, that quirky lyrics were the primary indicator of music that can be categorized as indie rock. That seemed to be the one defining characteristic.
Therefore, The Beatles (songs beyond counting with weird lyrics) were indie rock, as is Gwen Stefani. Both, after all, have some very quirky lyrics. (Hollaback Girl?) I think we can also agree that The Police were indie rock (Murder By Numbers) and Led Zeppelin (Stairway to Heaven, Kashmir, The Battle of Evermore, etc.) certainly qualifies under the lyrics requirement. The Doors are as indie as they come by the QRL (Quirky LYric Requirement) and The Tragically Hip are in the Beatles stratosphere in quirky lyric land. And let’s not forget Meat Loaf, Ray Parker Jr., and Weird Al Yankovic.
So in other words, yeah, you’re bang on. It’s meaningless.
The strange thing about this statement is that I never would have put Coldplay in the indie rock genre. I could be wrong.
If you want indie rock, look at bands like Cornershop.
::ducks::
Well, indie rock is so varied it’d be a bit presumptuous to come to that conclusion. Plus I personally wouldn’t consider Coldplay indie rock–that’s more Brit pop that anything. When you have hard rocking bands like Rocket from the Crypt and Sleater-Kinney to softer bands like Death Cab for Cutie all lopped in under the umbrella term “indie rock,” it’s kind of hard to make such a statement.
My musical roots are primarily in blues-based hard rock of the 70s, but my current interests lie primarily in those indie rock bands of the 90s that VC03 mentioned, mainly because it does cut across a wide swath of genre and styles. It’s very varied music, very exciting music, and is the only rock “genre” (I’m using that term very loosely here) in the past 20 years that has actually given me hope that rock is not very much a dead and played out musical form (which I, unfortunately, think it is). It’s the only “genre” that has reproduced that sense of wonder I had when I first heard Led Zeppelin IV in its entirety.
Yes, the indie hipsters can be annoying, but, at least the ones I know, certainly seem to be very earnest about their love for these “obscure” bands. While some use it as a front to be cool or hip, a good number of them are simply music geeks, who eat, breathe, live, and love music.
I know what you are getting at here, but don’t forget that Police was sort-of indie for awhile. They paid for their own recording and were record label less. Well, more punks than anything else, but had indie touring/marketing style.
The Beatles are a huge influence on indie rock. Not so much for their lyrical exploration but for their influence on Power Pop, and experimental-yet-not-dissonant lighter rock.
[hijack] Go listen to Arboretum: Arboretum | Listen and Stream Free Music, Albums, New Releases, Photos, Videos Unfortunatly, they don’t have Pale Rider Blues online, which is my favorite song of theirs. [/hijack]
OK. Go add these bands to the Wikipedia entry for indie rock and see how long it takes before the admins there delete it.
I think it was just a joke playing on the visual image of representatives of different music genres vying for the attention of a girl at a party (who would represent the listener.)
But I wouldn’t really lump Incubus in with Korn, Limp Bizkit, and other bands that I think of when I hear “nu metal.”
With the caveat that I’m older than dirt, what indie rock means to me is all about access. In the 80s, we used “college rock” and “indie rock” interchangeably. You had to listen to college radio to hear it, and go to indie record stores to buy it – they didn’t have it at the record stores at the mall. Now I laugh about how … smug and superior my friends and I were about listening to indie music, but I have to admit that we really did put more work into getting our music than some others who liked different styles. It involved waiting for a lot of special orders and driving around trying to tune in the weak signal of the college radio station.
If someone put The Police on the Wiki site, and if the admins removed it, I might have to go over there and give them a stern talking to about walking to school, uphill both ways, in the snow, listening to the Police taped off the radio on to cassette and how WE LIKED IT etc etc because they were absolutely part of the indie worldview back in the day.
We were excited about MTV because it provided us with a way of getting more exposure to some of the indie bands who were interested in video (this all seemed very cutting edge at the time). To this day, I am perplexed by how MTV went from that to showing Cribs 24-7, but I suppose the world has moved on.
I would call them “hipsters” or “scenesters” or possibly “scene kids” if I was feeling old. They’re defined by a lot more than their music taste, which, as we’ve seen, can be all over the place. But you’re right, there’s definitely a “scene”, even out here. And I’d call all the blazer-wearing artsos at last week’s Lomography exhibit “scenesters”
This is analagous to saying “DNA is a huge influence on hair colour.”
Well, DUH.
The Beatles were a huge influence on all popular music.
I didn’t write the OP, pal, you did. Your description of “indie rock” essentially boils down to quirky lyrics. And come on, you’re now not only citing Wikipedia as a source, but imagining a theoretical deletion of a Wikipedia entry based on a sarcastic reply as a source? Wow.
You asked what people think “indie rock” means, don’t complain if you get responses that you don’t like. VCO3’s posts were 100% correct, in my opinion.
Hey, I’m not trying to get into an argument here. Sorry if I sounded flip. You’re right, I shouldn’t complain.
The Beatles are a huge influence on all pop music, true. But there are certain things they did that seem to have specifically influenced indie. Their ad-hoc instrumentation, for instance, that they made use of on Sgt. Pepper’s. There are very few rock bands out there that are using piccolo trumpets, clarinet choirs, and accordions - but The Decemberists and Sufjan Stevens are. (I personally don’t like Sufjan Stevens but I like that he’s trying to use lots of different instruments.) Likewise “twee” indie pop bears a lot of resemblance to Paul McCartney’s songwriting style.