Photo by kamneed

Bill Wasik wrote a great essay, “Hype Machine,” on indie rock as a web extra for Oxford American’s 2007 music issue. Wasik dissects the culture of indie rock and the power of the blogosphere to turn an unknown band of yesterday into the It band of today, and ultimately, the passé band of last year. Wasik illustrates his point with The Annuals, a band touted in 2006:

As promised, half past ten on the morning of July 18 saw Ryan Schreiber, the founder and editor-in-chief of Pitchfork, place his imprimatur upon the new band, which he likened to “some fantasy hybrid of Animal Collective, Arcade Fire, and Broken Social Scene.

We’ve provided a few references to some of the songs and bands mentioned in the article for the uninitiated.

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Yesterday in the NYTimes, David Brooks lamented the decline of arena rock and decried that the music of young musicians “stinks” in his article, “The Segemented Society.”

Brooks sounds like a curmudgeon complaining that Rock n’ Roll ain’t what it used to be. Despite his longing for “all-purpose rock,” Brooks is honestly trying to participate in a debate about the effects of racial, socioeconomic, and technological forces on today’s music. Brooks was rather clumsy in his argument, perhaps because he is limited by the space of an opinion column in the NYTimes and the fact that he isn’t a rock journalist. But he refers to two great articles by people who don’t share his limitations.

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