I Called It
I was so right, it’s not even funny. I’ve never been more right about anything in my entire 31 years of existence.
Two weeks ago I alerted you all to the important truth, namely that the Pacific Northwest was a crucial point in the journey towards getting to Stomp-Clap-Hey as a bastion of less-commercial-but-still-on-its-way indie-folk.
Blame (in part) the PNW for Stomp-Clap-Hey
If you distill down this chart from Max Read, I think you could say it makes an argument that Stomp-Clap-Hey is a global genre that pulls out elements of regional vibes and regional music across the following areas:
And today we get an excerpt from Stereogum editor Chris DeVille’s forthcoming book on 2000s indie that is the allegedly the chapter before getting into true Stomp-Clap-Hey, talking about the journey on our way towards full “gentrification of indie folk.”
And guess who is the big artist mentioned at the end of this excerpt? The artist who is set up as a transitional point, more nostalgic and soft-edged than true freak-folk, but too legitimately good to be full Stomp-Clap-Hey Target-ad music?
FLEET FOXES.
Forgive the block quote but:
Fleet Foxes’ big win suggested millennial tastemakers were now comfortable with loving the same new bands as their boomer parents—or in other words, that the taste gap between Pitchfork and Rolling Stone was growing smaller. Songs like “White Winter Hymnal,” with its crisscrossing vocal melodies and pastoral wordless flourishes, and “He Doesn’t Know Why,” with its overwhelming blasts of harmony, were too potent to write off as pure nostalgia, even if nostalgia was baked into the band’s DNA. Fleet Foxes were triumphant right out of the gate, and they’ve continued to be a big deal—yet they still aren’t even the biggest indie-folk success story of their era.
I CALLED IT. You’re welcome!!