Yeah, I mean, Wavves is music for dildoes who live in college towns and hipster enclaves, for stupid kids with no perspective who don't know shit about music or anything else f'that matter. I feel the same way about a lot of supposedly "underground" music coming out now. Fuck 'em.
For me there's a really clear distinction between pop and underground music.
It takes vision and integrity to make consistently challenging music. I think there's still a place for an avant-garde, and for rock and roll music that's full of tension, that cuts against the grain, that makes me uncomfortable and fills me with doubt, that raises more questions than it answers. Or that's just aggressively ugly or stupid and has no commercial potential. That's what I think of as "underground" music, I guess, and that's what I like best.
I never gave a shit about C-86 music, or Powerpop, or Slumberland, or pop-punk, or glitter, or any of that shit and I still don't. Doesn't mean I can't enjoy shit like the Vivian Girls, but let's face it, that shit is commercial music, it's pop, pure and simple. It aims to please and it's no surprise that people like it. Its attitudes and politics have more in common with Kanye West or Animal Collective than with Coltrane or the Electric Eels, that's f'sure.
Ignoring the attitude and the politics doesn't make any sense. This music doesn't exist in a vacuum. Its attitude and its politics are part of what we're listening to and consuming.
What's irksome I guess is that summa these bands earned their cachet thanks to the support of legit underground labels, promoters, etc. But so what. Artists with integrity and vision will continue to do what they do and there will always be an audience for it, even if it's small.
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