In 1996, the film Hype! documented the evolution of
“grunge” from underground scene to critical acclaim to mainstream
popularity to inevitable backlash, a cycle that will be as familiar as
verse-chorus-verse to anyone who pays attention to popular music. But
consider this: That film came out seven full years after the
Seattle scene first broke in the international press via (former
Stranger music editor) Everett True in Melody Maker.
A decade and change later, and such a lengthy hype/backlash cycle is
almost unimaginable.
Take the analogous arc for the vague and dubious new genre dubbed
“chillwave” (or, if you prefer the pointy-headed Brits at the
Wire, “hypnagogic pop”). Coined around July of this year, the
fledgling sound received its would-be kiss of death in
September—that’s three freaking months later—in
the form of a trend-collapsing Hipster Runoff post entitled
“ChillwaveGate—Do u feel violated/misled by sample-based music?”
which concluded with the blog’s enigmatic author Carles declaring, in
his usual clipped and scare-quoted cadence, “Searching for a ‘new
aesthetic’ now that summer is over. Want a new ‘movement’ to ‘get
jacked up about’/listen to on my iPoddy.” (Ugh—is the Decade in
Music over yet?)
Seattle hasn’t really been at the vanguard of a musical moment since
grunge—the very geographic and cultural isolation that allowed
that scene to gestate in peace has more often than not kept the city a
year or two late to trends taking hold in denser, more connected places
(cf. our late arrivals to electroclash, freak folk, disco punk, etc.,
etc.). But as the internet has alarmingly accelerated the hype cycle,
it’s also decentralized the way trends spread—or even removed
geography from the equation entirely. If grunge were to happen today,
it wouldn’t need a bunch of bands living in the same city to reach
critical mass; it would only require enough acts linked up online. (Or,
to defer once again to Hipster Runoff: “Chillwave was a genre created
by the internet, 4 the internet?”)
Chillwave may prove to have the life cycle of a mayfly, but at least
this time Seattle is buzzing along right on time, thanks to a nascent
local scene that includes acts like U.S.F. (formerly Universal Studios
Florida), Big Spider’s Back, and Secret Colors. But let’s back up a
minute—hypnagogi-huh? Just what exactly are we blogging about
here?
Sonically, this stuff is generally as mellow and relaxed as its name
implies, hazy and soft, with lo-fi washes of guitar, synth, and voice
all blurring together; delay and echo are common traits, as is looping
and the use of samples. Aesthetically, it’s bright but faded, beachy
and pastoral. The genre’s great unifying theme is a kind of fond
nostalgia for some vague, idealized childhood. Its posture is a sonic
shoulder shrug, a languorous, musical “whatevs” (perhaps inspired by
the bleak job prospects, especially for would-be musicians, in our
current crap economy). Animal Collective are perhaps its immediate
ancestors. Neon Indian, Memory Tapes, Washed Out, and Ducktails are its
current leading lights.
On some level, this stuff could be seen as a rebuke to the
Day-Glo-dazzled, upper-drug-addled hipster hop and club-ready party
music of the past year(s); whereas that stuff is extroverted and brash,
chillwave is introverted and soft-spoken (grunge was to hair metal as
chillwave is to Mad Rad?). Or it could be taken as an escape from the
recent crop of rootsy, retrograde Americana—just as nostalgic as
that genre but unbound from the strictures of tradition, a “post-“
music that’s made as much on effects pedals as it is played on “real”
instruments. Taking the longer view, though, this sound draws on
decades of music—notably such ’80s punch lines as yacht rock and
“healing” or world musics, but also shoegaze and ambient as far back as
Brian Eno’s coining of that enduring genre.
Utopian internet talk aside, Seattle chillwave does have a physical
epicenter, a house on a block off Broadway where a couple of these
bands either live, hang out, or practice. It’s there that U.S.F., the
duo of Kyle Hargus and Jason Baxter, meet to talk to The Stranger before rehearsals on a recent Wednesday night.
Hargus and Baxter met and began making music together when they were
assigned to the same dorm as freshmen at UW, where both are now seniors
wrapping up creative writing majors (did we mention the crap job
prospects?). For the past three years, both have worked at the school’s
student-run online radio station, Rainydawg Radio, where Baxter is
general manager and Hargus is music director (Hargus hosts the
station’s variety hours; Baxter hosts a specialty show called
Floating in Space, which focuses on “shoegaze, IDM, dream-pop,
ambient, drone—spacey music,” an ideal incubator for U.S.F.’s
sound).
U.S.F. began in earnest only after the two moved apart and began
collaborating by sending tracks back and forth to each other. In
December of last year, while snowed in at their parents’ houses in
Edmonds and Magnolia, they recorded many of the tracks for their debut
full-length, Ocean Sunbirds, in this manner. U.S.F. released
their debut EP and played their first show in January of this year, and
released Sunbirds in late June. By October 26, they had been
featured on Pitchfork four separate times, twice for tracks from
Sunbird, once for a remix of like-minded Florida act Blind
Man’s Colour, and once for an interview in the site’s “Rising”
column.
“Pitchfork approaching us was really cool,” says Hargus. “I think it
started with getting friended on MySpace by Ryan—what’s his
name?—Schreiber, the site’s founder, then he Twittered about us,
and they asked us for the record. It was definitely really cool and
very unexpected.”
If the attention was unexpected, it’s not undeserved.
Sunbirds is as fine and dreamy an ambient pop album as you
could hope to hear this winter and a welcome synesthetic escape from
the encroaching cold season.
“We started making Ocean Sunbirds during that crazy
blizzard in December 2008,” says Baxter. “It was super-deliberate,
trying to be like a tribal, tropical electronic record. It’s
super-uplifting, lots of major chords, no sad stuff.”
That deliberation is evident on track titles like “Capri Sun
Caravan,” “Ambien Fort,” and “Haze Coasting,” all of which reinforce a
pretty specific aesthetic vision of the natural, the nostalgic, the
narcotic. The largely instrumental album is also meant to land as a
song cycle, with individual tracks interconnecting and bleeding into
each other, and it does feel like one long, continuous expanse of
sound. (A couple of vocal collaborations with Big Spider’s Back and
Alaskas break up the album.) It’s easy and pleasant enough to sort of
space out through the album’s first half only to be woken from reverie
by the occasionally thumping drums on tracks like “Haze Coasting.”
Throughout, polyrhythmic percussion and indistinct vocal chants (the
kind often meant to signify tribalism) blend with glossy, tinkling
little keyboard melodies, soft synth pads, and smeared guitar loops.
Because much of their music is loop-based, especially live, U.S.F.’s
songs tend to gradually accrue, building to densely layered climaxes
punctuated by sometimes abrupt, sometimes subtle dropouts and
resurgences of sounds. Like all good ambient music, the album’s
impressionistic songs work as passive background as much as they reward
active listening. (I first really listened to the album in its entirety
while driving along the Oregon Coast, and it was a pretty ideal
soundtrack.)
Since being featured on Pitchfork, Hargus and Baxter say they’ve
noticed some signs of growing interest, such as increased MySpace plays
and interest from smaller labels. “It’s not like we have Capitol
knocking on our door or anything,” says Baxter. “But venues and bookers
have approached us; some kid sent us a MySpace message and made a video
for one of our songs, and that was really cool and bizarre.”
Big Spider’s Back (aka Yair Rubinstein) has also been getting some
unexpected attention for his recent debut EP, Warped (out
November 10 on Portland’s Circle into Square Records). On October 12,
BSB’s song “Perfect Machine” was posted to Pitchfork. On October 17,
influential KEXP DJ John Richards posted to his Twitter page calling
the track his “new fav song… Beautiful electro moody pop on this
‘warped ep.'” Two weeks later, Rubinstein was at KEXP for a live
in-studio performance on the afternoon show, nervously explaining his
unwieldy band name (a reference to some jazz musician by way of a
Family Circus cartoon) and fielding host Cheryl Waters’s
fairly gushing praise. (As of this writing, BSB’s Warped is
number 54 in KEXP’s variety chart; Neon Indian is up at number 7.) “It
definitely took me by surprise,” says Rubinstein of the sudden
attention.
At five tracks in 18 minutes, the Warped EP is a slight
offering, but it contains the most structured, songlike material of any
of these acts. While U.S.F. hide vocal traces in the depths of their
productions (or host guest vocalists), BSB puts his singing relatively
front and center, albeit treated with generous reverb. There isn’t much
in the way of traditional verses and choruses, though, so much as there
are just a few insistently repeated, then gently receding lines (“Again
Agent” and “Spooked” are instrumentals, “Don’t Make Me Laugh” has all
of 16 words, “Perfect Machine” 18, and the EP’s title track tops out at
30). If the lyrical content is light, it’s counteracted by the album’s
flowery liner notes, a kind of short story describing what sounds like
a bird dream of the Pacific Coast.
Rubinstein’s singing voice is a little mumbly, a little thin,
reserved but not unable to reach the occasional high-altitude strain.
The light vocal and metronomic piano melody of “Don’t Make Me
Laugh”—by far the catchiest thing here—wouldn’t sound out
of place in a Band of Horses song, if not for the
backward-slipping background loops and the electrical vibration
that stands in for a guitar solo at the song’s understated apex.
“Perfect Machine” backs stretched-out singing with chiming, slightly
tinny chords submerged in warm jets of guitar. The title track begins
with an oddly poppy loop—loping guitar strumming, golden bursts
of background vocals, a fluttering flute—then the bass and snare
rolls drop in, and the whole thing slowly fades out under a nagging
vocal refrain.
Secret Colors (aka Matt Lawson) is, appropriately, perhaps the least
known of this core group of acts, and his music is also the most
ambient and introverted, sounding like nothing so much as local
electronic-shoegaze producer the Sight Below, only without the steady
if subdued 4/4 pulse. Secret Colors’ most recent release, Infinite
Wandering (available as a CD-R and initially as a now-sold-out
limited-run cassette tape via British microlabel Bumtapes), is a half
hour in seven tracks of billowing, gaseous tone-scapes with every edge
so blurred as to make sound sources indistinguishable—a synth? A
guitar? A chain of effects pedals? In any case, it’s the most
seamlessly immersive record of this bunch, although it’s probably not
destined for radio airwaves in anything but the predawn hours (however,
he is performing at Rainydawg’s upcoming anniversary show).
The flipside, of course, has been the backlash. Commentators on one
prominent music message board (on an epic thread about Animal
Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, no less) savaged
U.S.F. for hitting the chillwave talking points too hard in
explaining that their band name was “based on memories of
vacations—like an idealized version of childhood nostalgia.” The
mob’s consensus was that nostalgia for old Nickelodeon shows was a
pretty feeble basis for an attempt at a new musical genre.
“It’s kind of a double-edge sword,” says Hargus of the genre tag.
“It’s cool, because it had a lot to do with the amount of attention we
got, honestly. We got compared to Ducktails and Sun Araw, and having
like three or four of those bands to propel upwards with helped us. I
have no problem being called ‘chillwave,’ but I would kind of resent
people disregarding us just because of that label.”
And as self-professed music geeks and college-radio
programmers, they’re also aware of how flimsy such labels can be. “If
you really dissect the sounds of these bands—Best Coast,
Ducktails, Memory Tapes, Delorean—if they’d come out maybe five
years apart, there’s no way people would lump them together,” says
Hargus. “It has more to do with chronology as anything else. If you ask
someone what chillwave is, you’re gonna get, ‘Well, synth-based, maybe
sample-based instrumentals—but not always—nostalgic,
beachy. And at some point, you just start to get these abstract
concepts to define the genre.”
“I think we’re both just surprised that chillwave happened so
quickly, and that it’s already in the snarky-backlash phase,” adds
Baxter.
“Genres used to last whole decades,” agrees Hargus. “And it’s like,
it’s been three months. It doesn’t have room to grow the way,
say, disco or other genres of past decades could grow and meander and
become new things. It really is like just a way of saying, ‘This is
something that happened in the summer of 2009. Remember chillwave?’ And
what’s really frustrating is that it’s a genre that didn’t come around
until after our album was done.”
Next up for all three of these acts—along with Alaskas, a
one-man racket that’s less chill than it is rambunctiously
feral—is a collaborative record to be released on an
as-yet-to-be-determined label (although they have some offers) in which
all four acts will record songs together. For a second, this sounds
like a massive undertaking (it’s like the entire Seattle chillwave
scene on one record!), until you realize that it’s only just five
people total, not all that unusual a number for a regular band. Looking
forward, U.S.F. aren’t worried about going down with the ship whenever
the chillwave trend happens to tank.
“We’re music nerds, we work at a radio station, so we’re really on
top of these trends,” Baxter jokes. “We have every intention to keep
making music, regardless,” says Hargus. “That’s not going to stop.” 
The genra of ‘genras’ is what’s dead. Music journalists (and now bloggers) created the idea of popular music genras and they have now effectively killed it. Not to blame them, it’s just what they do and it was enevitable- as new sounds emerged the rush to be the first to break the new sound/declare the old one dead intensified and coalesced with increasing rates of communication speed. The snake eating it’s tail finally got so far down it’s tail that it is now eating it’s own mouth.
But it’s OK, as anyone who lived on capitol hill in the eighties will no doubt tell you over and over again, the true heyday of grunge had passed by the time the True story of grunge was published. Crass was singing that punk was dead before the rest of the world even knew what punk was.
The idea of selling out is gone, we can enjoy good music without regard to how the enjoyment of a certain band defines our identities. Music is now truly post-modern. Sampling is a part of music making, pedals and processors can be hooked up to any instrument, synths can rock. People can and do like a variety of music and good bands always live beyond genra death.
The new challenge is to journalists to learn a new way of writing about music without relying on ‘the next big thing’.
this was a great read, and I love a lot of the bands mentioned. that being said…. wasn’t this genre in fact invented on Hipster Runoff? Doesn’t that sort of invalidate any thoughtful analysis of said genre? The fellow from USF was right on in saying “if they’d come out maybe five years apart, there’s no way people would lump them together.”
Not sure how many people have noticed this, but it seems to me that the most prominent of these bands, Neon Indian IMO, is little more than a facsimile of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. I mean seriously, listen to the Doldrums and then tell me Psychic Chasms isn’t ripping it off big time. Just sayin’.
As far as that quote…if all the “grunge” acts had happened years apart from each other, no one might’ve lumped them together either. What more is a scene really than a bunch of like-minded artists making music at the same moment in time?
This was an insightful and thoughtful piece, and it’s nice to see a paper give sufficient space to its Music editorial staff to make it possible, particularly given the local emphasis.
A few thoughts:
Although it’s difficult to argue with the fact that technology and the 24-hour news cycle have accelerated the boom-bust aesthetic cycle, I think it’s also very easy to have romantic notions about the pace of such things in the past. Seasonal musical fads that burned out quickly have been a core component of pop culture at least since the advent of Rock n’ Roll. I think what’s changed is largely the ways that the public (formerly critics) frame these trends. No one would have thought to call the Raiders’ and Kingsmen’s dueling versions of “Louie Louie” a genre, likewise with response songs such as “Hound Dog” v. “Bear Cat.” They were just part of a musical dialogue, one whose practitioners and fans, I don’t think, would ever have made claims of genre-hood.
I think that arguments about beach imagery and childhood nostalgia being somehow zeitgeisty are interesting, but I think Eric is right to attribute the proliferation of those themes and imagery to the rapid-fire exchange of music through the internet from band to band. Plus, beach songs and bands have been a core element of pop music DNA for decades, and a seasonal revival that brings that strand to the forefront during summertime is kind of appealing to me. On the other hand, I find very few of these “chillwave” bands to my taste, so many of them seeming like unabashed Animal Collective acolytes. I do really dig Best Coast, though.
One point of contention I have, however, is with the notion that the real-time exchange of aesthetic ideas that the internet facilitates (and which is so clearly illustrated by the critical grouping of “chillwave” bands if not necessarily their actual content) makes geography irrelevant. On the contrary, I think that the feedback loop of the online music media shines such a tightly focused spotlight on a handful of musical trends at any given moment that its effects in terms of homogenization are similar to, if rougher-edged than, those of major lables and payola-based radio in their heyday. While internet-based musical communities and groupings are almost inherently based on aesthetic similarities, location-based communities at their best are defined by containing a broad spectrum of stylistic viewpoints belonging to people who work, live and support one another because of sharing a city. Local communities are still the key to heterogeneity and innovation in music, I think. The internet can do good for that too, of course, don’t get me wrong, but writers/bloggers (not speaking of Eric here) mistaking seasonal flavors for genres does not.
lotta fucking words for something called…chillwave?? uh, yeah- rock and roll is dead, or at least you’d think so reading this rag. I know, let’s overanalyze the next not-so-big thing (scrotebeat, tech-lo-wavefuck, dancestab, shitriot, etc.)until we convince ourselves and 3 others just how important it is.
Holy shit, do I ever hate that Hipster Runoff must-be-one-month-ahead-at-all-times bullshit. When did music stop being fun for people like that? Was it ever?
“If grunge were to happen today, it wouldn’t need a bunch of bands living in the same city to reach critical mass; it would only require enough acts linked up online.”
If this is actually true it is really sad. However, I don’t believe it is true. Any music “scene” with any real soul gets that from people, fans and musicians, interacting physically. Then again, maybe I am just too old to see it any other way.
@2-
I agree with you on the Ariel Pink comparison. In fact, when I mentioned this to a friend who is really into this whole “chillwave” movement he checked Ariel Pink out and thought it was awesome. Of course, not a year ago I recall this same friend shutting of my car stereo because he thought Ariel Pink “sounded like garbage”…sigh. It’s sad how much people place their aesthetic tastes these days in the hands of Pitchfork, Hipster Runoff, GvsB, and yes, The Stranger. I’m not saying this is a new phenomena–prior to the internet, people of various generations would head to Creem or NME or whatever for their musical aesthetics–just that it’s vexing.
oh what up hargus
Shitriot for the win!
This article leaves me with the sort of “huh?” a goldfish might experience who, 5 minutes after becoming sentient, has just watched a commercial for Activia yogurt.
Who’s in the picture? Are they just a couple of “whatev” dudes?
As someone who does not live in or near Seattle, I find this article disturbing in that it makes you look shallow and needy.
Seriously…
Grunge was great in its day – and plenty of Seattle grunge bands, as well as those they inspired, are still cool even today – but the writers and editors of this paper need to get over thinking Seattle is the center of the musical universe. Is it so important for you to be the home of the next big thing or music genre? Seattle is NOT NYC or London, nor will it ever be. That’s a good thing, btw. New Orleans has its blues, New York has its Punk and Hip Hop, Chicago had its house music, Nashville has its country/western, Germany has its techno, etc….
Get over having to be the center of the next big thing or movement (even though I hardly think “Chillwave” is the next big thing). I think you writers are grasping at straws to put a label on everything.
As far as music influenced directly by electronics and the internet, well, Chillout, Downtempo, and Electronica have been on top of that for quite a few years now.
Your need to label every variation of music sucks the fun out of rock and roll and puts musicians and fans in the boxes they usually fight to stay out of.
It’s nice for a city to have a music scene, but I hardly think Seattle is ever going to be the home of the musical universe. Be thankful your city received so much international attention in the 90’s. In the meantime, the world is still dealing with a Starbucks on every corner.
-Charles
Boston, MA
charles. as a musician that lives in seattle i can tell you; seattle sucks and this article is a symptom of a bigger problem. seattle understands music and art as purely superficial and labels are all they have the ability to see it as. it’s fashion, it’s self-serving, it’s a trend, it’s disposable. music in seattle is merely a vehicle hipsters use to gain personal attention and to progress themselves as pseudo-artists because they are self absorbed, egotistical assholes. their bands are an outfit they wear and a conversation piece they use to seem interesting and make people care about them. the music they make is just an extension of their garb, nothing more. furthermore, there is no room in seattle for people that actually care about progressing the art-form of music. the “diy scene” in seattle is the prefect example of how seattle completely misinterprets art and music. venues such as healthy times fun club, the black lodge and the loose knit collection of house venues that stem from them are geared more toward being the exclusive providers of all things non-creative and uninteresting while leaving well-meaning artists and bands left out to dry because they have too much substance and make you contemplate more than the singers outfit or how cute the drummers silk screened crew neck wolf sweatshirt was. that “scene” is suppose to provide a place for art to grow and develop but it has been reduced to promoting fads and masturbation… it’s no wonder then when i talk to bands from portland they think seattle sucks and don’t play here and why all the good bands from seattle move…
i don’t know.. maybe i’m just bitter about feeling completely alone in a city that has been relentlessly disappointing from the moment i moved here.
Then maybe we could all chip in and buy you a bus ticket?
dismissive, yeah.. great way to approach a problem.
wasnt sure what was really said with this article. i saw these guys live and they sorta just pushed a button and stood to the side.
@13 and 14: supercoolstorybro
@5:
I’m totally naming a song ‘Dancestab’. It’ll be some next not-so-big shit too.
I’d never read Hipster Runoff before. Then I tried to read it. Then I vomited. EVERYWHERE. Thanks!
@ cosby
that’s cool, I’ma keep SCROTEBEAT though. I feel that one really might have legs enough to get me to the magic land we call “teenfingertown”.