Today’s Noise

Typically when we think of Noise Rock, we think of Sonic Youth.  They are, undoubtedly, the poster-boys for the genre.  Although more melodic than most of their songs, Teenage Riot is a good example if you’re unfamiliar with the sound.  Bull in the Heather is another pretty accessible song indicative of Sonic Youth’s dissonant style.  Alternatively, Hüsker Dü and The Jesus & Mary Chain are arguably more mainstream (or at least less experimental) versions of the 80s Noise Rock sound.  Both bands went on to have a huge influence on the Pop-Punk and Shoegaze genres (respectively).

However, if we consider dissonance and over-utilization of feedback as defining motifs for the genre, the sound was probably pioneered by the Velvet Underground with their songs “Heroin” and “Venus in Furs.”  In this case, the genre dates back to the 60s.

Coming back to the 90s, we see that Noise Rock has gone the way of all sub-genres of Rock’N'Roll: it has splintered further into more distinctive sub-genres.  Leading the Shoegaze movement, you have My Bloody Valentine with their lush yet abrasive, super-distorted style.  Math Rock was being defined by Don Caballero, taking more from the experimental time signatures and dissonance of Noise Rock than from the overly-distorted sound.  Earth was pioneering the Drone (or Doom) Metal genre, focusing on drawn out experimental distortion played at extremely loud decibels.

Post-Rock, combining elements of all these sub-genres in a more musically and conceptually intricate fashion, would become a mainstay throughout the late 90s and early 00s.  But we’ll save that for another post.

What I really mean to talk about here is the resurgence of Noise Rock as it applies to bands today.  We’re seeing more and more bands within the indie scene rejecting the stylings of the alt.country and twee-pop bands that were so common during the early and mid ’00s.  As the pendulum swings back towards distortion, we see something more like this:

The sound, heard in recent bands like Parts & Labor and Titus Andronicus, relies heavily on percussion.  The constant driving beat is really what holds the songs together, because the majority of the other instruments are quite chaotic.  There’s a certain frenetic yet stripped-down quality to today’s Noise bands that draws more upon its punk ancestry than many of the genre’s predecessors from the 80s and 90s.  However, that’s about as far as its connection to punk goes.  The songs are filled with the synth pop “doop beep boop” that’s been so common in recent indie pop, yet it seems strangely novel and refreshing when placed against the wall of sound being emitted by the other instruments.

Definitely give both of these bands a chance.  Not all of the songs will be your cup of tea melodically, but if you’re looking for something with a frantic kind of energy that the indie scene has been missing recently, this is just what you need.