Indiepop, dreampop, shamble, jangle, C86, or cutie – whatever
you call it, were certainly seeing something of a revival at the moment.
We’re seeing it in new bands like Brighton indie “supergroup,”
Milk and Biscuits, with their child-friendly name and sweet sound, in
the buzz generated by the extensive Scared to Get Happy 80’s indiepop
compilation and festival, and even in the way the past few years have
seen women (me included) swap their grown-up handbags in favour of school-style
satchels. But … why now? Revivals don’t usually occur without
a good reason.
The whole point of a counterculture is to offer an alternative to the
mainstream, and as Simon Reynolds influential essay on C86, “Younger
Than Yesterday,” pointed out back in the eighties, the mainstream
world was telling us to grow up fast and join a glamorous adult world
of sex and money. Indiepop was a movement built on the idea of returning
to childhood (the children’s tv- referencing names such as The
Woodentops and Tallulah Gosh, the fondness for hairslides and school-trip
friendly anoraks, the lyrical coyness), in the hard, fast, mature, shoulder-padded
eighties. “Indiepop” is the generally used term when it comes
to labelling, but considering “pop” is a diminutive of “popular”
this might not be terribly appropriate. Sometimes the term “C86”
is used to describe the whole genre, as a reflection of how important
the cassette compilation of the same name which came free with the NME
and introduced many of the bands of the movement for the first time
was.
Twenty seven years later, all of this is still relevant as we replay
the eighties. Conservative governments often encourage a sense of social
Darwinism; and this goes beyond merely pandering the yuppies. Last year,
David Cameron said that he thought it was important that physical education
in schools kept the focus on being competitive –the essence of
sheer play is getting well and truly lost. Its not hard to see why the
Situationists wanted to reclaim play as an alternative to capitalism
– capitalism, in short, is what you what grown-ups make.
This is now...
The original 80’s indiepop movement also built itself on a sense
of chastity and innocence as an alternative to the sexualised mainstream.
This is certainly even more relevant now. Watch the music-video chart
on television and the level of bared flesh, sexual aggression and X-rated
lyrics seems to have accelerated rapidly in recent years. My recent
article on pornography raised concerns that unrealistic views of sex
were being sold to adolescents; well, the same could be said about mainstream
pop music. Early sexual experiences are not like a Rihanna video; they
are more likely to be reflected in the awestruck uncertainty of possibly
my favourite indiepop song, The Bodines “Therese” (“it
scares the health out of me!”).
Of course, some of the revival is just down to cultural chance –
in the case of Tallulah Gosh, for example, interest has been generated
again by former member Elizabeth Price winning the Turner Prize and
their major role in Jon Spira’s documentary on Oxford music, “Anyone
Can Play Guitar”, while recent years have seen the Pastels return
with beautifully delicate music once again. The revival of such the
indiepop “look” is probably just a mere case of celebrity
(cue Alexa Chung, who the Mulberry bag which made satchels de rigueur
is named after, and Zooey Deschenal, herself a creator of whimsical
loveliness with her band She and Him.) But on the whole, environment
can have a lot to do with revivals, and right now the “grown up”
world forced upon is … well, not much fun. Childhood isn’t
perfect, and neither are children themselves with their playground cattiness
(something the original indiepop movement recognised – witness
the hair-pulling spite of The Shop Assistants “I Don’t Want
to Be Friends With You”, sung with childlike joy and innocence)
but perhaps William Wordsworth was right with his “the child is
the father of man,” statement. Even more so Pablo Picasso and his
claim “every child is an artist, the problem is how do they remain
one when they grow up?” In a world which is forcing us to grow
up fast, a timely indiepop revival is a great way of letting us know
that there are some fields in which we can embrace that childlike artistry.
