Why do I say indie-pop, not indie rock? I don't know. It's just a habit I picked up, but to the extent that there's a conscious motivation, I think it's because of the way all the bands I like turn out to have some relationship with dance music. The odd thing is that this happens regardless of whether or not the songs that get me into the band are like that. So. . . let's go through bands I like:
-Pulp: Dance-y from the first, I think. "Common People" sounds dance-y to me. What's more, this is a band that has a compilation CD named "Goes to the Disco" and actually recorded a song that is pretty straightforward house music.
-Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts - Well, this isn't even indie to begin with ;-). "Cosmic Dare" is kind of dance-y nonetheless, but it's hardly typical.
-Franz Ferdinand - "Music that girls [such as myself] could dance to." 'Nuff said.
-Belle & Sebastian - Okay, I first got into B&S thanks to "Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying" and "Judy and the Dream of Horses." Not dance-y at all, right? So how could I expect when I first heard those songs that I was also falling in love with the band that put out "Your Cover's Blown"?!?
-The Delays - Actually, their third album was less dance-y than the first two, and I didn't like it nearly as much.
-of Montreal - I think this is the most egregious example. Started out intrigued by hearing "Penelope" on Pandora. Wound up addicted to, I don't know, "Faberge Falls for Shuggie" or something. "Faberge Falls for Shuggie," btw, would be the most hilarious title ever, but "Strawberry Letter 23" is actually probably less funky than "Faberge Falls for Shuggie," which ruins the joke.
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3 comments:
One potential problem with this nice classification you've achieved here is that there's unfortunately another, far less obvious meaning of the term "indie pop". (Go read the article! It's awesome and it caused me to buy an album!)
I'm. . . not sure I see a problem. I was talking about why I use a particular term. The reason why I use the term may, in fact, have nothing to do with a more common definition of the term.
Anyway, interesting article. I know some of it already (after all, you'll notice that two out of the five bands on this list are mentioned or alluded to in the article (or - if you didn't know - of Montreal started out on the Elephant 6 label), which means that I've done research on "twee" before), but the article was far more entertaining and therefore more informative than a Wikipedia article. Which album did you buy?
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