SLACKER POP

I think I read the phrase in a Pitchfork review and banked it for future use. I do know that baroque pop was birthed in the sixties. A quintessentially English pursuit, that grew out of the psychedelic movement. Journalist and St Etienne member Bob Stanley writes,

This was a sound informed by Paul McCartney's contributions to The White Album, the Zombies' Odessey (sic) and Oracle, Scott Walker's weighty chamber pop, and a dash of Crosby, Stills & Nash harmony. Just add a harpsichord, a pot of tea, a ginger cat on the windowsill, and you've got the picture.

Slacker rock is the laid-back, lo-fi sound of mostly American groups like Pavement, The Lemonheads and Vivian Girls. Perhaps these two disparate genres have been triumphantly spliced by a bunch of bands I’m yet to hear of. And that’s the point. The excitement of the new in music is without end because what’s new to you or I may have been created ages ago. As the record label Analog Africa has it in their strapline: The future of music happened decades ago.

Tim Fishlock