Phair Liz - Liz Phairs Exile in Guyville

According to a 2009 article by ethnomusicologists Vincent Novara and Stephen Henry in , a scholarly journal, the term indie rock is actually British rather than American. They define it as a genre that sees itself as differing from the business practices and creative control operating at major labels, and which is characterized by a sound that includes the careful balancing of pop accessibility with noise, playfulness in manipulating pop music formulae, sensitive lyrics masked by tonal abrasiveness and ironic posturing, a concern with authenticity, and the cultivation of a regular guy (or girl) image.

Better (and longer) books have been written describing the genesis and devolution of that era. (See, for example, by Michael Azerrad.) It is not my purpose to rehearse that history here, but to put it in a nutshell. This was a scene that evolved from that of American punk via a series of city-centric independent record labels: Matador in New York, Twin/Tone in Minneapolis, Sub Pop in Seattle, and so on. The records made by artists on these labels were publicized outside the mainstream music system, mostly on college radio stations that eschewed major label fare for independently owned and produced rock. These bands then toured the country playing a network of small clubs in towns where their records were sold in independent record stores, often in towns with liberal arts colleges, or cities with established music scenes. And, as noted above, one thing all these nodes in the network of indie rock generally had in common was that they championed a small-is-beautiful policy that forewent the clutches of corporate capitalism.