Who was the indie antichrist?

By Jay Edgar

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It happened to me — it’ll happen to you.

Man, those were the days.

I never thought I’d be the kinda guy to write something like that. As a gig drummer in the 2000s, I always thought that the day you first complained about “music these days” was just the day your soul started aging. Yet I heard that very statement from so many people my age, and especially my parents, saying that pop music on the radio was trash and that kids these days just didn’t know how to write great music anymore.

Have you gone down the street? I’d think. Have you even looked in the indie charts? Have you looked anywhere at all?

Underneath the Justin Biebers and the Katy Perrys was some of the most interesting pop-adjacent, experimental alt-rock we’ve ever had — truly. You didn’t even have to go that far afield, and many people didn’t. Another gig-drummer buddy of mine who filled in as the drummer of The Smashing Pumpkins, something of a semi-permanently open position, was playing arenas full of people even in the 2010s. Modest Mouse, Death Cab, The Strokes… they got so big that the alt-rock vein was basically just as strong as all-out pop. Bon Iver was winning Grammys; The Killers and The White Stripes made songs that survive today as fan chants at stadiums across the world. 

That was the music of those decades, and you’d have to have been living under a rock to miss it. But now I must be living under my own rock, because I just don’t see that kind of beneath-the-mainstream vibrance anymore.

Those were the days.

Things change, music evolves, and interesting bands churn out interesting new music that just isn’t for old guys like me anymore. I’m an old guy, now. Like Grandpa Simpson warns:

Look: I’m not gonna write the piece about indie rock, here. Many better writers than I have tried to define the genre, rank the best indie albums, and pin down the day indie rock peaked. I don’t think it’s really that interesting to do. What I haven’t seen anybody ask, though, is: When could we call the era officially dead?

Because make no mistake, the indie rock era is dead. It’s over, gone, kaput. Sure, you’ve got interesting new rockers like boygenius and Wet Leg doing their thing, but it’s a different thing now. And maybe future writers better than I can define what that is, rank the best new alt-rock albums, and try to pin down its peak. 

But first, let’s solve the mysteries of the past. The indie rock era came to an end, and someone brought that end with them when they lumbered up out of the sea. With apologies to Yeats, Vexed to nightmare by a rocking age, some rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouched towards Chelsea to be born. And with it, killed the era.

Who was the indie rock antichrist? I have an answer.