Early in this blog’s history, I was obsessed with indie-pop. Whether it was a holdover of my time in college where I bragged about liking The Field Mice (not the coolest kid in the dorm, as you could imagine) or because I still sometimes read Nitsuh Abebe’s “Twee As Fuck” article in awe, Make Believe…
Indie pop can be a strange mistress. I’ve gone on record as declaring I’m hopelessly doomed to love twee-leaning music probably for the rest of my life. Yet, contrary to the amount of posts tagged “twee” on this here web log, I’m not googly-eyed over every single cutesy band. Sometimes this sorta wimpy stuff can…
Moscow Club’s official blog is a hodgepodge of English, Russian and Japanese (the latter being the language of their actual home country), an appropriate mix given their preference for the sort of indie-pop that transcends cultural barriers and goes straight for the heart instead. New track “Daisy Miller Pt. 1” further backs up this universal…
It has been a great year for retro-leaning acts in Japan. Sloppy Joe put 80s-era indie-pop into a big ol’ bear hug on their excellent debut album, while Friends smothered 60s beach pop under waves of distortion. Joining them in 2011…the unexcitedly named Traffic Light. Behind that very bland name, though, exist some very lovely…
So who do these guys sound like? Yo La Tengo? Sorta like The Smashing Pumpkins? Kinda like Britpop? “Indie music?” Tough to call, but they come off as definitively 90’s as a flannel-clad dude drinking OK soda. Thing is…that’s OK! Everyone is running back to that Clinton-tastic decade…you read a (bafflingly postively) Yuck review? Or…