10,000 Wunderhorses: The boring curse of the label copycats
A few weeks ago, I found myself watching Keo at Mutations Festival in Brighton, a band I’ve heard plenty of buzz about. It was a while before the next acts I really wanted to see would be on, so I figured I’d do what you’re meant to do at these all-dayers: wander into a venue and see if you like what’s playing.
Unfortunately, I did not like Keo. As I stood in Chalk, listening to the band rattle off a few bland indie songs, I couldn’t believe that they were as high up on recent festival line-ups and being as talked about on TikTok, like they were the next big thing. The problem is, there’s a rapidly increasing number of inoffensive indie bands that are cropping up right now, mainly consisting of 20-something-year-old guys who look like they’d sneer at you if you said you quite like the new Addison Rae album.
Instead, these bands are interested in following in the footsteps of the indie bands that have gotten big over the past few years, just without the originality, lyrical skill, or a standout element that makes their sound definable and interesting. Ever since Fontaines DC evolved from being introspective-looking poet types into neon-clad hitmakers (that’s not even me badmouthing them), and the likes of Wunderhorse and Inhaler have risen to the top of the indie band hierarchy, you have to admit, a new era for the genre has started to blossom, raising doubts about whether it is for better or for worse.
Everyone wants to be on the level of these bands now, but unlike Fontaines, few seem to have the knack of making music that actually sounds distinctive. In researching this article, I kept stumbling on new British and Irish bands whose songs could all be interchangeable with each other, their vocals incredibly polished, their riffs unmemorable. Sure, some of these tracks are rather hooky, and you can see why people are drawn to watching them in a live setting, but if this is the current state of British indie music, then I can’t help feeling that we’re doomed.
I don’t want to be too negative, because there are loads of other great bands currently making waves across the UK who are genuinely doing innovative and creative things by drawing from genres that aren’t all that accessible and daring to experiment. Yet, with the likes of acts ranging from Keo and The Guest List to Overpass, The Royston Club, Lucia and the Bestboys, The K’s, and Bighead all making music that is nothing more than formulaic, uninspiring indie, it makes you wonder how this epidemic has come to be.
The thing is, a lot of these bands sit pretty high on the line-ups of festivals like Live at Leeds, supposedly showcasing the best new music in the country. But how can this be the best when it all sounds the same? I think we’re out of that era of British post-punk now, which saw artists like Black Midi, Squid, Black Country, New Road, Shame, Goat Girl, and Dry Cleaning lead the charge as the ‘cool new bands’, and of course, besides Black Midi, they’re all still going strong, evolving their sound over the past few years and maintaining a solid fanbase, but they’re not the ‘cool new bands’ anymore; they’re well established.
Love or hate them, at least they pretty much all had something unique going for them, particularly in their vocal deliveries. From Geordie Greep and Isaac Wood to Florence Shaw and Ollie Judge, their recognisable voices defined the late-2010s to early 2020s British indie and post-punk landscape, but can you really say the same about the likes of Keo and Overpass? If they’re the big new bands who are filling the slots these kinds of bands used to take, what makes them so special?
It seems like labels are clinging onto the kind of accessible sounds made popular by the likes of Wunderhorse in recent years: inoffensive but heavy enough to move to, well-written but not particularly experimental. If you want to please the masses, you can’t push the boat out too far, and really, that’s the sad secret to success. Copying a band like Black Midi is going to be much harder than Wunderhorse, because, whether you can stand BM or not, at least they always delivered some mad musical concoctions that always felt blindingly authentic.
So, if there’s one thing we can take from this, it’s that popularity breeds copycats, but only if your music is formulaic enough to inspire such easy ripping-off. To balance it off, let’s not forget about the much more interesting and creatively-enriched bands rising up from the UK’s underground right now, such as SILVERWINGKILLER, Hank, Bug Teeth, The Cindys, Jeanie and the Whiteboys, Fuzz Lightyear, Bathing Suits, RIP Magic, Kiosk, The New Eves, thredd, Butch Kassidy, Pearl2.
And whether these bands are driven by guitar or prefer to mess about with synths, I can assure you that you’ll get a much more fulfilling listening experience from them rather than yet another boring old Wunderhorse rip-off.
