Review Summary: alt-J's "An Awesome Wave" encapsulates everything wrong with the medium and mainstream indie in general. A portrait of a genre plunging into the abyss.
Right now, at this very moment, I am listening to a band I find repugnant and despise with a passion. Why am I doing this, you may ask? Presumably for the reason you're reading this, as I have undertaken the burden of reviewing their newest album "An Awesome Wave", not for simply personal reasons but to knowingly illustrate the downfall of contemporary indie music and guitar-based rock music. Not to say, that alt-J is the worst band to appear over recent years as that title belongs to another. None the less, I can say with all honesty the alt-J's "An Awesome Wave" encapsulates everything wrong with the medium and mainstream indie in general.
From the early doors of the 80's new and no wave movements with acts like Sonic Youth, Pixies and The Smiths to the 90's Madchester scene and Britpop bands like Suede and Blur, there was a noticeable undercurrent of tenacity and intensity present in the majority of songs that made it an enjoyable listen. This is noticeably absent within a "An Awesome Wave" rearing towards chill-out music, with obvious influences of African vocal melodies especially noticeable on the track "Matilda". This would be all fine and dandy if the album didn't sound as dry and hollow as a breadstick.
The vocal melodies sound less like Ladysmith Black Mambazo and more like school children trying to impersonate a dog. The guitars are very sparse on this album and play little role other than tinkering in and around the droning bass so much so that you could only call this rock music in the most the liberal sense. The vocals of Jason Newman are, for the most part, incredible in that he's managed to mix an aural cocktail of incessant whininess and unintelligible mumbling akin to the ravings of a drunken man. Not to say that I have any serious gripe with unintelligible vocals as a honest fan of Converge and Rolo Tomassi. It's rather, the lack of passion or virility that prevents this album from being in anyway cathartic or exothermic in any sense. You could argue that is more of a chill-out album and does not need to pander to that specific type of release. Yes, and that is essentially what angers me as a genuine fan of indie music. It's lost its sense of movement and progression becoming watered down, less threatening.
Mainstream Indie music had, in many ways, died after the release of The Stroke's "First Impressions of Earth" and now it's become a landscape full of middle class chummies from Cambridge trying to pluck guitar strings. Though, I enjoy bashing this album I must give some credit to the noticeable variety of styles ladened within the album from folkie songs like "Something Good" to the more dub sounding "Fitzpleasure" something to consider given the amount of unabashed monotony found in some contemporary albums (I'm looking at you, Munford and Sons "Babel").
