“Suddenly the big rap on indie was that it was po-faced and insular and lacking in passion, a self-congratulatory system of people in plaid shirts playing to audiences with their arms crossed. The songs were tasteful, polite, and predictable, and no one, allegedly, danced. No noise, no sudden moves, just a comfy, private bubble where everything tried to be so clever and cerebral and nice…
All sorts of new things wound up getting absorbed into indie’s sensibility, because indie is a superb thief: It gets into things and then picks up their trappings.”
