Give us a minute or two to get back to Blabbermouth and why you should come and see them play at The Crypt in Hastings on 23rd July. *TICKETS*
First – let’s break this one down a bit… what do we mean by ‘indie’ – and what does it mean to you?
Roll back the clock to the late 70s and ‘indie’ was shorthand for ‘independent’ and referred to the DIY record labels that sprang up at the time to challenge the dominance of the big boys…music was changing, and democracy was on the horizon.
It was 1980 when the UK had it’s first separate ‘Indie Chart’, and it may well have ‘irked’ the big four (EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal) because the two top spins were the single ‘Where’s Captain Kirk’ and the album ‘Dirk Wears White Sox’.
Now, fast-forward to 2021, and ‘indie’ has a new meaning – but that meaning is far from clear, because the criteria for entry into the chart may exclude any artists who are part of the big-four empire, but that doesn’t mean big names are off the menu.
Let’s look at the current official ‘indie top 30’ – and one band has seven entries in the mid-week chart.
Arctic Monkeys certainly have that ‘indie guitar sound’ that many people associate with the ‘indie’ genre…but their mainstream status would seem to distance them from the original emphasis of the concept.
And then we look at the Number One song by KSI.
KSI could be a lot closer to the spirit of DIY musical success…after all, he was just an Internet upstart whose YouTube channel propelled him into megastar status.
But on the other hand let’s listen to his current ‘Holiday’ single and his other recent output.
None of that Spizzenergi quirkiness of ‘Captain Kirk’. Not a hint of the blasphemic punk energy of Adam and the Ants in their artschool punk proto-format…except of course for the carefully positioned expletives that are slipped into the generic beat-structure of his raps, which follow the world-weary path that all songs of this nature seem to tread.
It’s over-polished and hyper-produced formula ‘hip-hop’ for the masses.
It’s not challenging. It’s not interesting. But it sells.
Which is fine I guess, because who is this 50-something with no comprehension of what a teen in 2021 ought to ‘get’?
…but while writing this I’ve been forcing myself to listen to a few KSI tracks, and I’ve only just avoided ripping my own intestines out of my navel so I could ram them into my ears to avoid having to put up with another second of him.
The antidote – Blabbermouth!
(Promised I’d get back to them didn’t I?)
Now I’m not going to make any stupid claims that this is a band who are ‘totally unique’ or ‘groundbreaking’.
The reality of music is that it’s been around long enough now that pretty much everything that can lay a claim to being musical will be derivative of something.
So why do Blabbermouth float my boat – and why should you give them a listen?
Here’s where music journalism falls down… how can anyone put excellent music into words that does that music proper justice? It’s like trying to find language to describe the vivid purple of a spectacular flower.
So this is where brevity rules…
When I listen to Blabbermouth – especially when it’s a live gig – I quite simply get very excited by their perfect combination of anthemic lyrical passion and polished stagecraft.
This is a band who haven’t just emerged fully formed – they have evolved – but in an accelerated timeframe.
These four young guys from Hastings have absorbed many decades’ worth of riffs, hooks, and rhythms and have put their combined learned wisdom back together into songs which are immediately familiar but also dew-fresh and 100% theirs.
Did we mention they are playing at The Crypt on 23rd July?
See you down the front.