The Ongoing History of New Music, encore presentation: Variety returns to alt-rock – Globalnews.ca

Music is always evolving, mutating, and modifying itself in a self-organizing way. Enough people may agree on a certain new direction that a new sub-genre is created. In time, that sound might become popular enough for new sub-sub-genres to bud off it.

Here’s what I mean. In the 50s, you had rock, pop, country, and R&B. Most everything that was released back then could be classified under one of those four headings.

How things have changed. Spotify has organized its library into nearly 2,000 difference categories. There’s music with names like “dark psytrance,” “stomp and flutter,” “vapor soul,” “fussball,” “gymcore,” “catstep,” “footwork” and “sleaze rock.”

Now let’s circle back to alt-rock in the early 2000s. After a decade of things staying fairly close to a certain set of sonic specs, it began to mutate again. Yes, guitars were still important, but not essential. There were also certain shifts in attitude and outlook created by world-shaking global events. As we’ve learned, the sound of an era’s music is always downstream from what’s happening in society at large.

Let’s deconstruct this concept a little further. This is alt-rock in the 00s, part four.

Songs heard on this program:

• Aztec Camera, Oblivious
• Black Flag, Gimme Gimme Gimme
• Depeche Mode, Just Can’t Get Enough
• Dashboard Confessional, Screaming Infidelities
• My Chemical Romance, Welcome to the Black Parade
• Alexisonfire, Boiled Frogs
• MGMT, Time to Pretend
• Modest Mouse, Float On
• Interpol, PDA
• Daft Punk, Robot Rock
• Mumford and Sons, Little Lion Man

Eric Wilhite has his usual playlist for us.

The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:

We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor,  Montreal, Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, and St John’s and anywhere else with a transmitter. If you’re in any of those markets and you want the show, lemme know and I’ll see what I can do.

If you ever miss a show, you can always get the podcast edition available through Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your on-demand audio.