birth of the flattened cool: the origins of the indie voice?

How much of it can simply be credited to a dying out of singing as an everyday part of culture (especially in white America)? If you don't know how to do anything else with your voice, the irony covers up a multitude of sins, or so people seem to think.

And obviously it's not all indie voices -- John Darnielle, e.g., takes a different tack. And then there's Sleater-Kinney, where Carrie Brownstein uses the flattened voice to blunt Corin Tucker's sharpness.

But I'm thinking more historically. Like, where and when did this really emerge, and why?

I mean, there were precursors in the '80s--Thurston Moore comes to mind--but really, aren't we just talking about singers who don't have traditionally good sounding voices? I think the really significant precedent for them singing ANYWAY dates back to punk and then continues through post-punk, '80s college radio rock, and indie-rock.

Right, not traditionally good-sounding, but in a sort of specific way. There's all kinds of not-traditionally-good singing.

What connects a lot of this stuff, to my ears, is an assumed worldliness on the part of both the singer and the listener -- almost like, I'm not going to hit that note, because a.) I probably can't and b.) even if I could, it would be too obvious. Like there's something artificial -- or some artifice, anyway -- about hitting the notes?

Which I guess is the difference between Daniel Johnston -- who registers to me as Naive -- and Stuart Murdoch, who doesn't.

And I think Mo Tucker's vocal on "After Hours" is the direct precursor to about 50 percent of punk/postpunk/indie female singing. But I can't think of any exact precedent for it. Not in the sense that everyone listened to that song and said, "That's what I want to sound like," but in the sense that it introduced a vocal approach that made sense in its context and couldn't have made sense before that context existed.

Do Jesus & Mary Chain count (because I think they did sound like they were imitating Reed to a degree)? Or are they more post-punk than indie? (I am always a little fuzzy on where indie begins and ends.)

Yo La Tengo sounds to me, from what I've heard, like they are going for a VU sound at times, but I wouldn't necessarily the vocals there sound too much like Reed, so I don't know.

x-post (sexyDancer's joke lost on me--who's the woman?)

I don't think Ira Kaplan sang in a Lou Reed style. I could say that maybe Georgia Hubley sang in a Mo Tucker style, but having already said that about Heather from Beat Happening, I'm wondering if it's even true.

BTW what do you think of the vocals on things like Royksopp's "Remind Me" or Bill Frisell's "Perritos"? It seems to combine the 'detachment'/'lack of affect' thing with a more traditional notion of vocal 'chops'. It's maybe a more direct descendent of Astrud Gilberto. I find these very appealing, much more so than most indie rock vocals.

Well, which indie-rock people do you think tried to sing in a Lou Reed style?

Julian Casablancas? Him from Yo La Tengo? Maybe even Thurston Moore a bit (I can hear it in "European Son").

(about 7 x-posts. Mary Chain - good call)

I agree. I was turning against my own claim (though it got a little garbled).

"the "indie" voice? You know the voice I mean. It can be male or female, and it can front music noisy or lissome, but it has a kind of flattened self-awareness -- which sometimes signals irony, sometimes melancholy, sometimes even happiness but happiness of a knowing this-too-shall-pass variety"

referred to the prototypes sundar lists:

"Kraftwerk? Syd Barrett/David Gilmour? Closer/New Order/Pet Shop Boys? The Wire singer who's not Colin Newman? Hip-hop?"

if the "self-awareness" is essentially wrongheaded then i think it can still be characterized as naive, i think.

Are you saying that Lou Reed was doing a "McGuinn vocal readymade???"

As for hip-hop, I think Q-tip fits the mold in some ways. Maybe Mos Def too. Including Jay-Z would be pushing it, but he's probably the "coolest" of the superstars. (Nothing cool about crunk, e.g.)

But obviously, I'm just making up shit as I go.

(x-post) haha, yeah, maybe faux self-awareness is a form of naivete. I don't know.

that's a good point. east coast vs. west coast?

I gotta check out the pronunciation of "ship." Are you referring to a line in "Mr Tambourine Man" and the great big clipper ship line in "Heroin?"

Pete Lush of Things In Herds has this voice. I think he sounds even more like Nick; he maintains more of the huskiness.

Audio sample

Not exactly comic, no -- but there is a kind of implied absurdity, it's part of the whole self-conscious thing. Like, I'm aware I'm singing a song, and you the listener are aware that I'm aware I'm singing a song, and the song might be a beautiful thing that we can both appreciate, and maybe even connect with each other at some level by way of, but at the same time it's just a song that I'm singing, and it will be over soon, and such is life, etc. etc. Which might be a lot to read into Astrud Gilberto, e.g., but that's kind of what it sounds like to me.

and it doesn't even have to be "ship" it could be "grip" as well.

and you should get michael franks's debut if you want to here stuart murdoch in 1970.

As I argued upthread, I don't hear it. The only specific examples anyone came up with was someone like Julian Casablancas.

(xpost) As for Lou, what about Richard Hell, Tom Verlaine and Jonathan Richman? And Patti Smith, for that matter? I don't think any of them exactly sounds like Lou Reed, but they all have stylistic things in common with him that they don't have in common with, say, Ben E. King or Roger Daltrey.

Lou's always been prickly on Dylan, from what I've read. I think he thinks of himself more as a contemporary and peer than a descendant. I remember one interview where he made some backhanded compliment about how Dylan sometimes writes lines that just knock him out. (Paul Simon is always similarly admiring of but undeferential to Dylan. I guess it's hard to be a singer-songwriter of Dylan's generation.)

he's totally malkmus-ized for someone so 'heartland.' with dylan influencing out to the coasts, maybe now you have coasts influencing back towards the center?

And, as I understand it, the music of Jonathan Richman as we know it would not exist without Lou Reed.

but just to have the idea to even want do that was cool, no? and in such a way that ramblin' jack would not ultimately be party to.

"Baker's singing itself functions on many levels, examining them constituting a certain kind of critical archaelogy. You start to dig and first you come across what Rex Reed and many other commentators on the subject have described with words like 'innocent' and 'sweetness.' Keep digging and at a certain point you come across a layer of irony, but hammer in your cerebral pickaxes a little deeper and you reach ... more innocence. His pared-down technical machinery at times suggests a hip Alfalfa, a little kid circa 1940, singing grown-up songs, cooing rather than screeching up to the mike and pretending to be a romantic crooner, like a little lady making believe in her mother's formal gown; the preciou precociousness of the thought makes it so endearing.

At other times Baker takes a 360 degree turn: rather than a child feigning emotional maturity, he becomes a rather tainted Lothario in a fruitless search for lost innocence. It's to Baker's credit that he's the most widely debated vocalist since Al Jolson: to some there are incredibly deep emotions stirring or about to be stirred when he sings, while to others, there's a whole lot of nothing going on, and to still others, that in itself is attractive -- a Jim Hoberman says, it's like 'being sweet-talked by the void.'"

Maybe there are loads of Lou types (the first John Cougar album is supposed to be Lou Reed influenced--you mention Dream Syndicate, etc.), but I still don't think this was the vocal archetype spittle was originally talking about.

The only Dream Syndicate record I like is the first, self-titled EP on Down There Records. Man, that record is good! A lot of people like the Days of Wine and Roses LP, but I think it's mushy sounding and maybe not too compelling as an album. Too bad that early EP is rare now.

i was saying almost the same thing today, except about neil hagerty's guitar playing.

bert williams was a (black) performer from the dawn of the 20th century, enormously popular (fairly well represented on record, for the time), who did stuff that was less about virtuosic singing than getting a story and an attitude across. the very lack of emotion in his voice (on some records; he could be fearsomely sentimental on others) serves to put a certain distance between him and the words and stories.

Tim, you don't hear this exact thing on Closer at all? Even compared to the delivery on something like "Shadowplay" or "New Dawn Fades"?

BTW I never meant to say that my examples contained every element of what spittle was looking for. Just that they could be seen as containing certain elements of what would eventually develop into a more well-defined 'indie voice'. Obviously David Gilmour is not himself an indie singer.

(sundar, they sing pretty poorly. I was just kidding. Actually, I have to admit it varies from church to church. Some churches are really good at cranking out dreary singing though.)

post-60's, also dylan-influenced. the whole guitarmassplainsongdaybydayunitarianuniversalist strain owes him a heap. don't know about lou reed.

why not ask, "where does the exaggerated overstated pop voice come from?"

no singing allowed!

but don't styles develop because a lot of 'given' voices are so similar to one another, naturally? or because what's given can be so transformed by style (for instance it was lee perry that taught bob marley how to sing, though we might now feel or have the impression marley was just singing naturally)
not that you necessarily were, but you can't knock style. it's a big reason a lot of people outgrow indie

'Pipe a song about a Lamb!'
So I piped with merry cheer.
'Piper, pipe that song again.'
So I piped: he wept to hear.

'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!'
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

'Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read.'
So he vanished from my sight;
And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.

Scott, you should right about Michael Franks for the freelance mentalists thing. You might even say I'm requesting that you do so! I'd love to read it.

Have you ever heard that Canadian band Christmas? I listened to their first record the other night; I think I actually auditioned it because I couldn't remember what they sounded like and I was wondering if they should go on that list. They were kind of bad, actually. I don't think they make the cut. Cool guitar tone the guy had, though.

as for actually influential, i didn't notice modern lovers era jonathan richman mentioned yet.

Yeah, Ian Curtis is much more dramatic. He's not operatic, obviously, but I think his style comes from some kind of Romantic traditions. I thought about Neil Young, but I hesitated to include him (in what is a pretty subjective and flawed classification system) because I don't think there's anything "cool" about his singing. I don't get detachment or irony or anything like that from him. I'd put him more squarely in the naive/primitivist camp.

And Mose Allison is a great call -- maybe as a successor to the Hoagy Carmichael technique discussed above?

(xpost)
But was Billie's singing self-conscious? A limited range, yeah, but I guess she's always seemed pretty heart-on-sleeve to me. Maybe I'm hearing her wrong.

Billie & self-consciousness: I thought about the whole "irony" thing before posting her, but I wonder if its an essential aspect of the indie voice. So much of indie is unbearably earnest...though I'm more than willing to admit I may have missed the memo that gave earnestness solely to emo.

Also, Billie could certainly deliver a knowing wink when a song called for it...is that close enough? ;)

Dave Gilmour's voice (Pink Floyd) is often described as "drab" or
"monotone." I don't hear that, but maybe he's an influence, nevertheless

I'm inclined to think that the "indie voice" is not a genuine phenomenon.
Instead, what you might call "indie" singing comes from some bigger
democratizing principle in modern music. It's okay to be not be that talented,
in some respects. Weekend poets, karaoke fans, and other average joes
who would normally remain nonsingers have latched onto this DIY attitude
and stepped up to the mic. I think today you see a laxness (which is really
just a diverseness; the dedicated, Singers with a capital S are still out there
too) in quality control all across the genre board. I think duke sprinkler used
the word "unashamed."

Of course, I'm sure there ARE plenty of singers who sing "indie" on
purpose. But how many are in truth like Pavement's Steve Malkmus,
who has confessed that he sings "indie" because he can't really
sing in tune.

The emo voice is the possibly worst thing to happen to music in the past few years, along with the "nasal, whiny pop-punk voice". I'll take the "flat, disaffected indie voice" any day.

Oh yeah, and they just couldn't sing.

The evolution of the "Heroin voice" could be traced also, the relaxed, "I am just about to fall head first into my pudding but I must deliver this phrase before the producer will let me do it" voice (See Billie Holliday, Lou Reed, Mazzy Star, SP* etc)

this comment way way upthread confused me. i'm wondering how you think lennon was distanced from either of the two songs you mentioned, or from other songs of that era. "rain" sounds to me like a sincere delivery of a rather straightforward lyric. "norwegian wood" is a slightly more puzzling lyric, but what is it in the vocal that you read as distancing?

i'd argue quite the opposite -- that paul was the one who was distanced from a lot of his beatles material. he was often great, but at his worst, on something like "rocky raccoon," he comes across to me like he thinks his own songs are jokes, and he's just trying to put one over on us.

but i wouldn't put either john or paul into the "flattened cool" category, whatever we're trying to make it mean. they both had considerable vocal gifts, and they used them to full effect most of the time. they were singing!

i do think he's forebear to this kind of thing which i think spittle was getting at, but maybe just in attitude/appearance.

Yeah, of course the Beatles were singing. I never meant to imply that anybody wasn't "singing", it's more the how of it. (It's true that several of the people referenced had limited ranges, but that's not exactly a requirement.) I think mid-period-Beatles is when Lennon starts to get arch and disaffected -- it's his moodiest, most mysterious phase (and my favorite Beatles stretch). And I think his singing changed -- partly under Dylan's influence, which he acknowledged, but more generally in what he was conveying with his voice. His sneer on "Rain" is almost punkish ("they might as well be dead"), and "Norwegian Wood" and "Girl" in particular operate from a sort of jaded, knowing vantagepoint -- again, not just in the lyrics but in the vocal approach -- that I think does connect to this other (at that time, emerging) style.

By the way, am I the only one who thinks he burns the house down at the end of "Norwegian Wood"? People always look at me weird when I ask that.

but for flat, affectless singing, noodle vague nailed it by bringing up nico.

Magnetic Fields are obviously a motherlode of flattened indie affect.

yes, totally, and what i meant to refer to specifically before. he even put on a few pounds then, right? he got to be a bored 'bad boy', still probably looking for the next inspiration, but:
"oh, i guess i write really good songs, guess i'm making history, zzzzzzz"
and then yes, orbit, on to heroin eventually.

the "flat, cool" sound was not an accident, imho. i mean the examples of flat and cool given here are so obvious, i mean nico for god's sake....

Yeah but the indie singing we're talking about is a limited voice NOT stretched to its limits through the application of ingenuity and craft. I don't think the typical indie singing style sounds anything like Billie Holiday.

I suspect Orbit is right about the importance of heroin.

Amen.

"clipped diction" = good name for pop punk band

they couldn't sing; or they were too blissed out to have intonation (the pudding theory) and that is what became "cool", emulated, repeated, associated with hip--and now we have the result: flat indie voice[tm]

I hear the same quality in the Left Banke--"She May Call You Up Tonight." A bit too in Colin Blunstone. And Alex Chilton, too.

also, some classic country recordings could be easily mentioned as precursors - "ragged but right", tons of stuff on the anthology box.

but i don't think you can get anywhere with this because essentially they're all pretty different at what they do. if you stop overthinking and just compare julian stroke with stuart murdoch and with laetitia sadier, three huge velvets fans, any common ground is tenuous.

if you listen to a new wave hits of the 80s cd, what you notice is that the singers aren't lacking in dynamic attack or even pipes, what unites them is just weirdness. some singers have really weird voices, or they yelp in an overexcited way, or they drawl, etc. it's analogous to when bop took over big band jazz - quite apart from the strange songs and solos, people talked about bird's harsh tone, dizzy's squeaks, to say nothing of monk or [late 40s] miles.

so if new wave hits have weird singers [of course disco and garage rock had plenty of odd singing voices too, but i think new wave was more about dressing and sounding different], deeper into indie and true punk [people who don't chart] you have further diversity. some of them do indeed sing off key quite a bit - both mark e smith and his erstwhile copycat steve malkmus have claimed they are a bit tone deaf, but the rest of their bands were often out of tune as well, so this must be a bit of a pose and they are going offkey on purpose - when people first hear stuart murdoch, his occasional wanderings offkey leap out and smack them. such a pretty song, why can't the singer sing?

you can't say it comes from lou reed or chet baker or any one guy; it's not as if feedback guitar noise wouldn't exist if not for jimi hendrix. there's always been people in folk music who drawl their songs. and it's not as if all singers in indie rock sound do what you're talking about. the key is: nonconformity. they are all trying to sound a little bit unique. as opposed to a metal band or a pop group, whose songwriting guitarists or keyboard players look for singers who will sound right, correct, normal.

he also had the proto-"devo yelp" as I like to call it.

"With a little historical distance, it's clear that what Chet Baker did with Chet Baker Sings is not unlike what the Ramones did with their first album: simply turned every contemporary expectation on its head. ... He sang those great sentimental lyrics by Larry Hart, Johnny Mercer, and Ira Gershwin (previously considered suitable only for female vocalists), but he sang them at one remove, cool and plain, acknowledging the sentiment without buying into it -- glancing at it over his shoulder, as through the window of a door closed behind him -- so that what we get is not the feeling but the memory of it. In contemporary terms, Baker does not so much "perform" these songs as "simulate" them...

...There is no vibrato, no "beautiful" singing, and no "strong" statement. There are no extended solos, no range dynamics, no volume dynamics, no tempo dynamics, no expressive timbre shifts, no suppression of extant melodies, no harmonic meandering, no virtuoso high-speed scales, and, in fact, very few sixteenth-notes -- none of the stuff, in short, that told jazz critics of the time what the player was doing and how "good" he was at it. All you got was the song -- dispassionately articulated with lots of spaces..."

Skeeter Davis?

I'll grant that this comes down to how much a given indie band/singer draws from the irksome, tedious, limply-sung Velvet Underground lineage, but I do think it's weird to paint all indie singing ("the indie voice") with that brush.

And then, as that becomes more of a usual style, you get little things coming out of it. There's the singer who can't pull off the fancy stuff but tries anyway, and we enjoy hearing the everyday-person really strain and work to emote. Or you have the slackery thing people are associating with Malkmus here, where the singer half-tries to do something fancy, mostly misses it, and there's some vague irony in the "oh, whatever" brush-off it gets. Malkmus actually runs the gamut on this -- on songs like "Here" you get the plain-voice "honesty," on a lot of Wowee Zowee you get the straining-to-emote thing, and obviously a lot of elsewhere you get the slacking.

Plenty of other things in here, too. The Reed/Dylan thing comes out in a cool-guy drawl, which might be the "rootsy" American equivalent to the French arched-eyebrow cool. And that cedes over into rock yowling. Also don't forget Neil Young. Also don't forget kind of jokey indie voices.

In terms of plain-voice stuff, there's one version of it that really interests me: UK post-punk women and the high choirgirl voice! A lot of them did odd things with it (Ari Up or Lora Logic's flutters), but there was a big long streak of singing flat and sweet like kids in school. (See Girls at Our Best, maybe?)

But the root of most of these seems to be "I am not a fancy singer" -- whether it's slackery or sincere, the idea seems to be to sing in the ways you would when you were alone and not really "performing" to other people. The version of this I like is maybe the one that runs from Joao Gilberto (less "cool" than Astrud) to Stuart Murdoch, this microphone-enabled voice that's almost like humming, simple and unornamented.

pomo fiction for sure. i don't know poetry. who are some poets in that camp?

I certainly wasn't arguing for affectation - that conversation seems to be an offshoot of the original question - but rather for their arguable influence on a certain subsect of the indie population in the "anyone can sing" stakes.

Where did it start? In recorded music, I would say with the very first known recording, that of T.A. Edison reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb. Only his voice was cylindrical cool.

Good point, although I'd argue it goes back to Cheever and Carver.

-- gypsy mothra (meetm...), March 12th, 2006.

John Ashbery is one of the founders of that style in poetry, and I know Malkmus is/was a fan of his.

honestly, though, this exists in the western genre.

I personally feel the word "indie" needs to go though as it just confuses the whole lineage of rock. Indie-rock has always seemed to me to be just another name for underground rock or college rock from the 1960s through today. I think if we stopped changing the word around every fifteen years to describe the music scenes we could avoid all kinds of problems with where trends come from.

I think the "indie voice" can be be traced back to earlier ideas in 20th-century art. The way the voice is linked with both irony and earnestness is probably more directly influenced from another rock artist, though. I think the indie-rock voice and persona has two main godfathers. The first one would have to be the Velvet Underground. When one of the guys in Kraftwerk was asked what drew him to the band I remember him specifically talking about the Dada influence. Dada was a sort of anti-art movement in the 20th century that (from Wikipedia) "...was characterized by absurdism, nihilism, deliberate irrationality, disillusionment, cynicism, chance, randomness, and the rejection of the prevailing standards in art." Both the anti-singing style defined by Lou Reed and general punk rock or the superficially clever and fragmented lyrics by Stephen Malkmus and general indie-rock come to my mind. The idea behind anti-singing, anti-music and many other counter-culture ideas that we sometimes act as though just "popped up" in rock come from Dada.

*Another group Kraftwerk loves, The Ramones, are mentioned upthread as well for the indie-voice. Perhaps Kraftwerk saw the influences in both groups?

The second act that I think defines indie rock, and indirectly, the weak indie-voice, is different from the VU. While the Velvets might represent the Dark Side of Indie-Rock I think that Paul Simon epitomizes the lighter, collegiate side and a lot of the clever irony that bands aim for. It is no coincidence that Simon and Garfunkel was able to soundtrack one of the defining counter-culture films of the 1960s (The Graduate) and can still appear seamlessly in films with indie-rock soundtracks like the The Garden State.

Paul Simon is as much the godfather of indie-rock as Lou Reed is IMO. One of the biggest traits Paul Simon shares with indie-rock is the chief importance they both place on being clever.

It's not just Belle and Sebastian's dark irony about religion that comes to mind but also name dropping other pop stars and famous authors in songs (Donovan and Robert Frost) and the idea of "cleverly" sampling other songs (the way Simon samples the outro to Strawberry Fields Forever for the intro and outro to Fakin' It is the type of clever "get it?" reference that is a staple of indie-rock) comes from Simon. The type of humor Simon employs in songs like Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard also strike me as being almost indie-like.

Still, irony is just one part of indie-rock. Another side of it is to be embarrassingly open i.e. emo, Bright Eyes, etc. Simon goes this route just as often of course (Only Living Boy in New York, Bridge Over Troubled Water, etc). Placing a high importance on cleverness and irony and mixing it up with embarrassing earnestness at other times is something that a lot of kids understandably do in college. I think Paul Simon was one of the first "modern" college kids to really have a voice in pop music and that indie-rock (being the music of choice for college kids) is naturally drawn to many of the same traits Simon had as a young man and popularized.

There are probably dozens of other influences but I feel these two are more immediate.

I think a lot of the personas have to do with the self-consciousness that comes with being a teenager/young adult and specifically in post-1950s America. Institutions like the family and the church and business were no longer places where collegiate intellectuals were going or wanted to go and so new personas were naturally going to be made by these kids.

Reed seems like more of a descendent of the Beats and their culture but Simon is interesting as he was one of the first people from that generation's pop music to popularize the now common way of hiding your genuine feelings (MASSIVE irony and sarcasm). But when Simon didn't use irony to hide any feelings he would be almost proto-emo ('I Am A Rock' for goodness sake).

Indie "heroes" like Dean Wareham are always tagged as Reed-followers but I think we see just as much of Simon's legacy in their work as we do a VU influence.

I mean, obviously he could belt it when he wanted to, and maybe for people who know him only by the somewhat grandiose "New York, New York", it might seem strange to think of him as understated, but that was, I think, the essence of his genius: that tough street-smart Hoboken wise-guy voice, always holding something back, the master of the off-the-cuff gesture, cosmopolitan and urbane - he could make any wide-eyed and innocent '50s love-song sound complex, grown-up and sexual - always in control, ironic, self-aware - in a word, cool.

"got hips like cinderella...

...

must be having a good shame

...

talking sweet about nothing

...

cookie, i think you're

...

TAME!!!"

Could I see that in German theater? Why not?

i'm glad there's already a thread about this. i just tried listening to a new 'indie'-pop thing with vocals for the first time in maybe a year? it was the new 'chromatics.' the music sounded nice but gah something about that voice just ruins everything for me. 'indie'-pop acts need to um ditch the self-learning thing and start focusing as much on singing as they do on production and synths or whatever. blech

like if you're gonna copy chilly, get the most important thing right

"as they do on production and synths"

production = flat dry digital recording into Protools
synths = softsynths they don't know how to use

haw

wait was that an insult to indie pop or chart pop? (really, I don't know)

indie pop

i had the same reaction to some of the after dark songs but i also get the indie thing. and i really like the album. i like indie cool when it's done well (i think the chromatics singer does it ok, not great). james murphy is very indie cool, but i like his vocals.

The thread seems to have been mainly about tracing back the elements of the indie-drawl. But its the combination that codifies the sound.

I'd suggest that its fair to call the originators of individual elements a 'precursor' but they aren't the origin of indie sound. Its when people start to mix the styles of Drake, Reed, Gilberto, Cohen, etc etc that you actually get the indie sound.

For instance Pavement may or may not have vocal styles which have a linage from 1950s beats, but that linage comes via Mark E Smith who is one of the originators as opposed to a precursor. I'd add in Edwin Collins, Paul Haig and maybe Howard Devoto/Pete Shelly as originator of a specific combinations.

Not so sure whether Patti Smith counts as the earliest originator, or a precursor, I'd probably put her just on the precursor side in my imaginary dividing line with the UK Smith-offspring - Slits, Raincoats, Au Pairs, Delta 5, Penetration on the other side as first origins.

Actually shocked Edwin Collins didn't get a mention in this thread already. He's the direct line via Stephen P to Stuart Murdoch.

... the "indie voice" (wish I could think of a better term for it) is very much in the world, but is somewhat removed from the songs themselves. Like, commenting on the distance between the (often) romantic nature of the songs and the unromantic realities of the world? -- spittle (spittle), Sunday, 18 April 2004 16:57 (3 years ago) Link

This is quite beautiful! And I think a big part of Malkmus style, it's not just plain ironic. Great thread.

Malkmus's vocal style isn't really indebted to Mark E. Smith at all. For one, he sings. Musically, of course Pavement took a lot from the Fall but we've had this discussion a hundred million times.

I don't really know very many artists who have a vocal style that resembles Mark E Smith. James Murphy vaguely, maybe.

The influence fell away, but Malkmus did do some E. Smith aping on early songs, especially "Two States", and referred to Slanted & Enchanted as sounding like the work of a Fall cover band.

For one, he sings

As does MES sometimes. Occasionally there is even a tune too.

Sure, there is plenty of examples where Malkmus is his own man, and isn't ever (well, hardly ever) a mere Fall tribute act, but to suggest there is no connection or indebtedness doesn't match what I can hear, or indeed what Ive read in interviews.

I still stand by hearing it only in the music and probably only three or four times in the singing, in their entire career.

I find it incredible how Ray Davies has yet to be mentioned here.

Yeah but you find a lot of the world incredible, don't you

Way too much. This thread lacks credibility. :)

chad & jeremy?
townes van zandt, when he wasn't self-consciously singing in a 'country' style.

i think i am just thinking chad & jeremy because they always remind me of B&S, but i don't think it's the voice that does it ...

Why All Indie Singers Sound Weirdly The Same

I think the sound of indie-rock as we know it today was created by the Red Krayola on their 2nd album. Listen to The Jewels of the Madonna. If that isn't an scarrily accurate precurser to what indie-rock would sound like in the 80s/90s I don't know what is.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), zondag 18 april 2004 17:49 (twelve years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Holy shit.

makes you wonder if they had similar sensibilites to the indie scene or if they just stumbled upon a sound that wld become influential 15 years later

I think Dan beat me to it but...

Red Krayola: 2nd album (I think I said somewhere else that this is the album that invented indie rock! In other words, you probably wouldn't want to listen to it too often)

― Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 22 April 2005 09:10 (eleven years ago) Permalink

"Children of Danger" by the Memphis Goons was recorded around 70, that always seemed v proto indie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXnoWb88Jr4

What is an example of a singer who is being spoofed in sleeve's video? I think I have an idea of what she is talking about but I think it is probably different from the singers the OP was thinking of.

This is the first thing I thought of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyASdjZE0R0

Well, yeah, if anything, it sounded more like she was talking about pop singers. Rozes totally sounds like that, though, I agree.

FWIW around 2000/2001 when I was first really becoming aware of "indie", some of the indie heads I knew were really into Red Krayola. Probably by then it had already been cited by some Wire-type mag as proto-indie though.

I find it incredible how Ray Davies has yet to be mentioned here.

― Geir Hongro, Saturday, December 29, 2007 2:50 PM (eight years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

imo he's too dynamic and Kinks songs move around melodically a whole lot. same with Syd Barrett as mentioned way above.

instinctually i want to trace cool indie voice to Lou Reed but he seems to have too much fun w his singing. it needs to be performative and bored. the vocal in "Sunday Morning" is kind of relaxed but a bit too dreamy. "Who Loves the Sun" could be a source, certainly lyrics-wise, but again it sounds too fun.

the early takes of "Strawberry Fields Forever" kind of fit. the vocal melody is pretty relaxed and obviously bored. it's just kind of one-note murmuring for a bit ("No one i think is in my tree") and then becomes self-conscious about that for the rest of it and starts gliding around sort of at random ("I mean i think I know..."). maybe? then there's "Revolution 1" on the White Album where the vocals were recording while lying on the floor for that bored/relaxed effect to counter the lyrics.

the root of indie cool voice is imo in that era of psychedelic pop, variety shows where the hosts put on sunglasses and "acted cool" introducing the Strawberry Alarm Clock or whoever. maybe the most high-profile form is in Monkees songs, that bored inflection used to the sing the verses of the theme song, the indie cool hinted at in that affected sigh after "We've got something to say ..... aww"

this seems like it should be a big influence on later folks, but i don't think anyone heard it until the 2006 archival release:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYB26-cqMMo

wait, not manfred mann, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syVOWmLWFys&t=434s

ugh i don't know if that is showing up. the sibylle baier record. recorded in the early 70's.

ALSO, since i notice that dan brought up red krayola above, i was playing corky's debt to his father recently and man oh man its hard to believe that came out in 1970. could have been yesterday.

"Who Loves the Sun" could be a source, certainly lyrics-wise, but again it sounds too fun.

Also it's sung by Doug Yule.