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PART 3 - NEW BANDS THAT TRY TO SOUND LIKE OLD BANDS Bands mimicking the sounds of their heroes from past decades is nothing new, but it's never before experienced the level of trendiness which it took on early in the new millenium. While 1960/70s rock revival has been going strong since the mid 1980s, the garage/punk revival scene really took off in 2001 for two main reasons - The White Stripes' White Blood Cells and The Strokes' Is This It? The White Stripes were something of a rarity, in that they were one of the few bands to have already released albums, before the trend hit. They'd gained a small following through 1999's The White Stripes and 2000's excellent De Stijl. As such, the popularity of their recent albums can be attributed, in part, to their hard work and gradual improvement, over the course of a number of releases. This can be said about very few of the other current prevailing revival outfits. White Blood Cells had a fairly popular single in "Hotel Yorba," but completely took off in 2002 (almost a full year after it's release) with the incredibly catchy followup single, "Fell in Love With a Girl." The album was reissued on major label V2, and the third single "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" was also moderately successful, but it hardly mattered by that stage, as the album had already sold into the hundreds of thousands. Is This It? proved to be an even bigger success. The Strokes were being hyped by the British music press as being the best thing ever before they'd even released the album (their debut). Given the ridiculous amount of hype, it's a bit of a suprise that the album almost lives up to it - it's definately a solid bunch of catchy, sing-a-long tunes. I personally think The Strokes are significantly inferior to The White Stripes, but the two groups do sound fairly different (The Strokes sound far more studio-polished), so it's easy to like them both, without feeling too conflicted. The critical acclaim and public adoration continued throughout 2002, so there was little suprise when many similarly themed bands went on to recieve major label deals and frequent radio airplay. It was definately one of the biggest cases of marketing based on image since the grunge outbreak. It wasn't long before The Hives, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Vines, Interpol, The Kills, Rocket Science, The Black Keys and a host of other groups were all getting plenty of public exposure. The garage revival groups take their sound from classic straight rock outfits like The Rolling Stones. They record hook-heavy, stripped back tunes, low on electronics but high on guitars and testosterone. The punk revival groups are almost all Sex Pistols worshippers, which is hardly suprising. They specialize in a similar stripped back, DIY method of songwriting, but their songs usually posess a level of wild, manic energy beyond that of the garage groups. The best of all these groups take their influence from the old sounds, but then craft songs that sound old while still being undeniably their own. After all, there's little merit in a band who sound identical to the hit-makers of decades past. There's a decent number of revival artists out there worth listening to, but try to look further than what's currently trendy - the popularity of many of these groups can be attributed to little more than media hype and marketing. There's not a huge amount more to be said. The main reason these groups warrant their own chapter in this feature is their massive presence in current alternative pop/rock. My advice is to buy every White Stripes album, barring their somewhat weak debut, because I haven't come across anything that approaches their high level of quality. I've also listed the albums by The Hives, Strokes and Vines in the recommendations below, but that's really just to give the list some variation. END OF PART 3. Album Recommendations. The White Stripes De Stijl (2000) The Hives Veni Vidi Vicious (2000) The White Stripes White Blood Cells (2001) The Strokes Is This It? (2001) *The Vines Highly Evolved (2002) The White Stripes Elephant (2003) *The Vines are really post-grunge, and they blatantly worship Nirvana, but they were embraced as part of the punk revival movement, so this is where I'll mention them. NEXT: PART 4 - INDIE POP/ROCK |