The definitive history of twenty-first-century indie rock―from Iron & Wine and Death Cab for Cutie to Phoebe Bridgers and St. Vincent―and how the genre shifted the musical landscape and shaped a generation
Maybe you caught a few exhilarating seconds of “Teen Age Riot” on a nearby college radio station while scanning the FM dial in your parents’ car. Maybe your friend invited you to a shabby local rock club and you ended up having a religious experience with Neutral Milk Hotel. Perhaps you were scandalized and tantalized upon sneaking Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville from an older sibling’s CD collection, or you vowed to download every Radiohead song you could find on LimeWire because they were the favorite band of the guy you had a major crush on.
However you found your way into indie rock, once you were a listener, it felt like being part of a secret club of people who had discovered something special, something secret, something superior. In Such Great Heights, music journalist Chris DeVille brilliantly captures this cultural moment, from the early aughts and the height of indie rock, until the 2010s as streaming upends the industry and changes music forever. DeVille covers the gamut of bands―like Arcade Fire, TV On The Radio, LCD Soundsystem, Haim, Pavement, and Bon Iver―and in the vein of Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties, touches on staggering pop culture moments, like finding your new favorite band on MySpace and the life-changing O.C. soundtrack.
Nerdy, fun, and a time machine for millennials, Such Great Heights is about how subculture becomes pop culture, how capitalism consumes what's “cool,” who gets to define what's hip and why, and how an “underground” genre shaped our lives.
1 有用 耳田 2025-09-15 18:25:08 宁夏
梳理了00年代以来大众音乐领域的“poptimism转向”
0 有用 泽维尔酱 2026-04-12 10:53:30 美国
独立音乐从一开始就有矛盾的两面性：既要“难“听与众不同，又要“易”听留住听众，流派历史上的起落也大抵归因于两极之间的拉扯。诚如作者Chris Deville所言，在过去的二十年里独立摇滚的声音越来越流行，面向大众，以至于它最后飞出了摇滚的圈层，被主流流行乐吸纳为背景板的一个色块。独立也不再是音乐人的创作宣言、厂牌的运作模式，而变成了可以被营销的tagline；不过，我认为流媒时代真正的独立再次回到... 独立音乐从一开始就有矛盾的两面性：既要“难“听与众不同，又要“易”听留住听众，流派历史上的起落也大抵归因于两极之间的拉扯。诚如作者Chris Deville所言，在过去的二十年里独立摇滚的声音越来越流行，面向大众，以至于它最后飞出了摇滚的圈层，被主流流行乐吸纳为背景板的一个色块。独立也不再是音乐人的创作宣言、厂牌的运作模式，而变成了可以被营销的tagline；不过，我认为流媒时代真正的独立再次回到了地下，它回到了去中心化的各个local scene里，和同样被支离的乐评产业形成新的生态系统——也许，江湖和庙堂之间，天平正再一次向历史的方向倾斜。 (展开)