The musical scene would evolve into a full-blown culture with people taking on every aspect of what it stood for. Indie pop was not merely music that was both ‘indie’ and ‘pop’ it became much more than that. The scene became labelled many different names the most recognizable being ‘twee’, a British word derived from how a baby would pronounce ‘sweet’. ‘Twee’ was defensively rejected by the scenes British founders but was taken under the wing by the mid-’90s American kids who would adopt indie pop as a lifestyle.
Indie pop on whole represented innocence and everything cutesy and pretty but it did have its problems. The cultures excessive quaint prettiness was embraced by some just as an excuse to be cool at a time when the scene made heroes of the cripplingly un-cool. For now I shall reject these flaws and give a brief insight into why indie pop was loved and should be held in higher regard than it currently is in the bigger musical picture.
The roots of indie pop have been traced to many places but many accept it came out of the mire of the UK punk scene in the late ’70s to early ’80s. Punk embodied a snotty, sneery approach that came with a lot of hatred and anger directed at many different places, but punk did have that DIY attitude in which your favourite band did not have to be someone playing to thousands of people, it could just be the kids down the street. The latter part was adopted by the kids who would eventually go on to inspire what became indie pop, scrapping the harsher attitude of punk in favour of a nicer outlook on life.
Arguably the place that embodied the beginnings of this scene most was Glasgow the best example of this being the output of Postcard Records, with label leaders Orange Juice and Josef K often sited as the inspiration for the scene. Postcard certainly formed a foundation for the NME’s C81 compilation, the prequel to C86 which is often sited as the first to group together indie pop and is regarded a benchmark in founding indie pop as a scene. Another notable band that embodied this attitude were London’s Television Personalities who took on the DIY aspects of punk injecting this quaint, caring outlook which in some ways completely opposed punk. Television Personalities went on to become one of the scenes staple acts.
NME’s release of C86 in 1986 brought about a further following for the music and accelerated the foundation of the indie pop scene. Then around the same time something happened, British indie became popular with The Smiths at the forefront of the whole movement. The Smiths embodied a lot of things indie pop held dear they were signed to an independent label and Morrissey appeared the type of person these kids would make a hero of with his awkward personality and flower waving. But The Smiths popularity required the mass production of records and came with a huge public awareness of the indie scene.
With indie becoming popular the culture of exchanging mix-tapes and fanzines about indie music became elite. The bands that featured on the tapes were now thrust into the public eye defeating the purpose of their efforts made in making them. Cue Sarah Records the Bristol based label specialising in releasing indie pop records. Sarah took on the whole cutesy attitude and again encouraged the adoration of the kids who would not typically be considered so. The Field Mice were the epitome of what indie pop stood for and became the first heroes of Sarah Records. The next major product of Sarah were Heavenly, coming out of the ashes of Talulah Gosh Amelia Fletcher and co. become the poster stars of a generation of indie pop kids and are vastly regarded as the best indie pop band ever.
However by 1995 the demise of indie pop was underway, Sarah’s bands had begun to experiment with new sounds and complexify their music and the ‘anyone could make this music’ attitude just was not there anymore. The emergence of My Bloody Valentine and the obsession with shoegaze caught the imagination of the scene and the take-off of Britpop somewhat spelled the end of indie pop as a movement in the UK, the closure of Sarah during that year only went further to confirm this.
The death of Sarah did not mean the end of indie pop it was still alive and well across the sea in America. In America indie pop had taken a bit longer to emerge and it did so in quite similar fashion to the way it had done in Britain. In a way it followed an almost parallel path but something happened that keeps indie pop alive today.
In America punk had lasted way into the mid ’80's as a popular scene, still running through this DIY ethic that the UK punks had in the late ’70's. It was out of this scene that the American indie pop emerged. Olympia, Washington was at the centre of this event with Calvin Johnson, his band Beat Happening and label K Records becoming the rock that everything was built on. K became essentially what the likes of Postcard were in the UK and inspired a following of hero-worshiping kids for this generation of indie pop stars. K’s much acclaimed International Pop Underground festival is responsible for the emergence Modest Mouse among others, while indie pop’s feminine roots which K championed led a path to the popularity of riot grrrl in the early ’90's. Then, just like in the UK American indie became popular; bands that would have typically been labelled twee were entering the mainstream and indie pop found itself in the same scenario as it had been in the UK a few years earlier.
This is the point that the American story takes a different path from the British one because the American indie pop scene did not die, instead it flourished. People took the scene to heart; indie pop mix-tapes and fanzines came back into the lifestyles of thousands of Americans. Twee as a culture had begun. This generation of twee kids were different from those of the past, while the indie pop scene the UK had created rejected the label of ‘twee’ and ‘cutie’ as insults, this new wave adopted them as their own. T shirts sporting the terms like ‘Twee as Fuck’ were aplenty and bands like Tullycraft actively poked fun at the very scene they occupied. The once insults became in-jokes. Topping this one of their own was to be seen at the very centre of public attention sporting a K records tattoo for everyone to see. Yes, Kurt Cobain had once been an indie pop kid in fact his favourite band were Glasgow indie pop act The Vaselines and he had once been part of Calvin Johnson’s project the Go Team.
Twee lived its height in America through the mid-1990’s and after that faded back to a small niche that kept the scene alive. But with today’s indie guitar music beginning to tire there must be an avenue for something fresh that could possible thrust twee back to its height. New York recently has seen a minor breakthrough with the Pains of Being Pure at Heart leading the way to see twee pushed to the attention again of musical underground again. Whether indie pop will relive the heights of the mid-’90's is questionable but the scene is certainly not dead. As long as there are kids making music and appreciating the nicer things in life it will continue, and with such a rich back catalogue of records it certainly should be held with more esteem in the wider musical world than it is.
Thank you for this article.
ReplyDeleteTwee forever!!!