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A14 PEOPLE /ARTS
Friday 29 december 2023

For a new generation of indie rock acts, country music is king

By MARIA SHERMAN of Texas,” she says, laugh-
AP Music Writer ing.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sing- KEEPING IT CLOSE TO HOME
er-songwriter Mitski’s “My Karly Hartzman, frontper-
Love Mine All Mine,” plays son of the Ashville band
out like a whispered dirge. Wednesday, has never
The song is gothic lounge left North Carolina. “I think
music for a listener who only where we live is insepa-
has about two minutes to rable from our music at this
have their heart broken a point. Of course, we are in-
silky soft slow burn stacked fluenced by country music,
with a choir, organ, bass but country music sounds
and most critically, pedal and feels the way it does
steel guitar, the kind fa- because of the environ-
vored by country and west- ment it’s made in. A great
ern purists. country song feels like
In no way does that de- where it’s from,” she says.
scription scream “main- Wednesday’s 2023 full-
stream hit,” and yet, for 12 length “Rat Saw God”
weeks, it has been on the made AP’s best albums of
Billboard Hot 100, an unusu- the year list for its alt-coun-
al metric of success for a try rock sensibility, where
wholly independent artist. pulling the listener into the
And for 10 weeks, her indie quiet parts of a Carolinas
rock-meets-chamber pop- hometown is as much a
meets-country held the No. part of the sonic fabric as
1 position on Billboard’s Tik- lap steel or guitar fuzz or a
Tok trending chart. Mitski performs at the Primavera Sound festival in Sao Paulo on Nov. 5, 2022. poetic line sung out of key.
Mitski is not from the Ameri- Associated Press Hartzmann adds that the
can South, though her dis- music experienced its big- organic-sounding music as and “ma’ams” from their complications of living in
cography has long consid- gest streaming week ever a way to connect with oth- speech and music they’re the South are “the stereo-
ered small town U.S.A. and this year, a whopping 2.26 ers,” she continued. The in- embracing them. Ban- types … which are founded
she relocated to Nashville billion. die twang playlist was born jos and lap steel abound. of course. The politics, the
a few years ago to mine The genre has historically out of all of that, amplified Songs about God, rural racism, and the inequity,”
the geography’s human- been enjoyed by Eng- by successful indie artists roads, trucks, guns, humid- she says.
ity. (“Valentine, Texas” from lish-speaking Americans, like Ethel Cain and Plains. ity, and crickets do, too. “I’m strongly against leav-
last year’s “Laurel Hell” al- but their reporting shows “I’m seeing this space as a Like Turi, Jess Williamson of ing this place ‘cause I dis-
bum is an example, but growth in non-Anglophonic kind of movement, rather Plains sees the connection agree with the politics of
there are many.) territories such as Philip- than a trend,” she adds. to country music from a those in power, though.
She is, of course, not the first pines, Indonesia, India, Bra- “The sound will always more traditional indie rock It’s invigorating cause I
indie artist to explore weep- zil, Mexico, Germany, and have its peaks and valleys. audience as a post-COV- feel empowered to fight
ing Americana sounds. Vietnam. I do think that the fanbase, ID-19 lockdown revelation. against that (expletive), es-
Many of the leading acts In March 2023, Spotify overall, continues to grow. “We saw people leaving pecially for those who are
in contemporary indie rock launched a new playlist I think that this sort of surge cities, moving to smaller unable to do that them-
pull from the South – like dedicated to the phenom- of Americana and singer- towns and out to the coun- selves here.”
Mitski or hail from there, like enon of country-influence songwriter music here in try. She says the South is her
soloists Angel Olsen and in indie rock titled “Indie the States has shifted listen- We saw people in cities “favorite place on Earth”
Waxahatchee, or groups Twang.” It’s curated by ing habits across the entire baking bread, starting herb beyond its influential mu-
like Plains, Wednesday and Carla Turi, Spotify’s folk and country.” gardens, craving some- sic but the appeal to stick
two-thirds of the Grammy- acoustic music editor, who AN ALTERNATIVE STATE OF thing simple, nostalgic, and around and create there is
nominated band boygen- says the playlist was the re- MIND that feels good,” she said. economic, too, which may
ius. sult of conversations dat- In 2023, these indie artists “On tour, we covered have an impact on indie
Lucinda Williams ‘ “too ing back to summer 2022, offer an alternative to the ‘Goodbye Earl’ by the artists pulling from country
country for rock ‘n’ roll, too when they noticed grow- pop-country acts domi- Chicks, everyone is singing sounds.
rock ‘n’ roll for country” ing “country influence in in- nating mainstream charts along, and that’s the least “I think affordability is a big
style is a clear predecessor; die rock,” as she calls it. It’s like Morgan Wallen, Luke cool s I can imagine. Peo- factor for people trying to
and every few generations, a legacy that extends to Combs, and Jason Aldean. ple are through being cool make it from their home-
it seems like a great new the late 2010s when coun- The movement is led by fe- and are embracing who towns now instead of mov-
band pulls from alt-coun- try iconography started male performers, for one, we are and what we really ing to big cities,” she says.
try’s narrative specificity. cropping up in spaces not- and artists who don’t im- like. “The internet makes that
A WORLD INTERESTED IN possible, obviously.”
COUNTRY traditionally considered mediately fit into a tradi- And for a lot of people, It also means, for listeners
that’s country music.”She
country: everything from Lil tional genre format.
Interestingly, indie rock’s Nas X’s “Old Town Road” to They also offer an alterna- says she had to leave the on an Indie Twang playlist,
current adoption of coun- Mitski’s 2018 album “Be the tive to traditional images South in order to return to or those at a rock club in a
try comes at a time of in- Cowboy.” of indie rock: instead of it and fully appreciate her major city or a honky tonk
creased global interest in “I also think, through the shying away from their love for both it and coun- in a small town, new ap-
country music. According lockdown we experienced geographic identities like try music, the way “Texans proaches to familiar South-
to the Midyear Music Re- in 2020, listeners sort of moving to New York and leave and then immediate- ern sounds are more acces-
port for data and analytics emerged craving more smoothing out to “y’alls” ly get a tattoo of the state sible than ever before.q
platform Luminate, country