“Anyone can make it”: Is garage rock due for a revival?
Rock and roll is and always has been music for the outcasts and misfits of the world. Although recent decades have seen mainstream rock transformed into something disgustingly safe and marketable, this has not always been the case. Throughout musical history, all notable subgenres and countercultural movements which have rock and roll as their focal point have resulted from grassroots movements and musicians. Since the 1960s, garage rock has been inspiring countless artists all over the world to strip away the superfluous, and target rock in its purest form.
Emerging from North America during the mid-1960s, the original wave of garage rock saw the means of musical production placed firmly in the hands of outsider artists and young rock obsessives. Dominated by short, sharp, usually simplistic compositions utilising a handful of blues guitar chords, the beauty of the garage rock movement was its simplicity. Virtually anybody with a few instruments and enough willpower could create a garage rock anthem, and there were enough tiny independent labels in every college town across America to make sure they got published.
On the whole, the records produced from this original wave of garage rarely made it to the singles charts and, aside from notable exceptions like The Kingsmen’s ‘Louie Louie’ or the many now-iconic tracks featured on the Nuggets compilations, largely remain in obscurity for most audiences outside of garage rock obsessives. However, their pioneering spirit continues to inspire artists to this day. After all, it was the garage rock scene of the 1960s which spawned groups like The MC5 and The Stooges.
These furious, amphetamine-fueled outfits offered a stark contrast to the spaced-out hippiedom of mainstream rock during the late 1960s, and their influence was essential in the development of virtually all future punk and alternative rock. Although garage rock largely fell out of favour following the 1960s, save for outfits like The Cramps aiming to carry on its legacy, the spirit of the movement has been repeatedly resurrected over the years.
Notably, the early 2000s saw a colossal resurgence in the spirit and sound of garage rock; The White Stripes and The Hives being among the leaders of this renaissance. After the big-budget self-indulgence of mainstream rock during the 1990s, this return to rock’s grassroots origins was essential, and eventually morphed into the post-punk and indie revival that came to define the rock sounds of the 2000s. Since then, though, alternative rock has largely been dominated by those same moody post-punk and surface-level indie rock, while garage rock has been pushed into the fringes.
While there are certainly labels, cult scenes, and artists who have been keeping garage rock alive over the course of the past few decades, it is fair to say that mainstream attention has largely been placed on the post-punk landscape. While this scene has produced its fair share of notable and groundbreaking groups, it has not taken long for 21st-century post-punk to become incredibly repetitive and predictable, leading many artists to look elsewhere to flex their creative muscles.
This is certainly true of Leeds’ up-and-coming garage rockers The Oidz, who declared, “People are getting into rock and roll again,” during a recent chat with Far Out. For years, the music scene of Leeds has been dominated by cookie-cutter post-punk outfits attempting to emulate the sounds of Squid, Fontaines DC or, most worryingly, Idles. However, The Oidz noted a shift in focus back to stripped-down, raw garage rock.
“It’s a bit of a response to all of the post-punk shit,” Oidz member Ben Parry told us. “Like bands like Black Country [New Road] and Black Midi, where it’s from really highly educated musicians, and there’s something kind of out of touch about that. It doesn’t really feel particularly relevant sometimes.” The guitarist added, “There’s something to be said for not wanting to write just loads of depressing songs with slow bass and really gothic, dark lyrics.”
“That’s the best thing about garage rock, isn’t it? Anyone can make it. As long as you’re doing it with feeling, and you fucking mean it, then anyone can make it,” he concluded, summarising the inherent manifesto of garage rock which has stretched back as far as the mid-1960s.
So, are The Oidz correct? Is garage rock due for a revival in the 2020s? It certainly wouldn’t be all that surprising. Prison Affair, The Jackets, Misha Panfilov, Gnome, Billiam, Osees, King Khan, Ty Segall, Ausmuteants: you certainly do not have to look far to find a wealth of modern artists operating across the globe with the grassroots spirit of garage rock at their core.
As Parry claimed, there is something about the simplicity of stripping rock and roll back to its finest essence, and not taking yourselves too seriously as musicians. If rock and roll was built upon a grassroots ethos and, above all else, expressing yourself through raw, powerful music, then it is difficult to think of a style that encapsulates this any better than garage rock.
Both audiences and artists are rapidly becoming fatigued with the repetitive nature of post-punk revival, and failing the invention of a revolutionary new musical style that blows everything else out of the water, garage rock seems to be the obvious place to turn. After all, the style can be picked up quickly by virtually any hopeful artist, thrives in a live environment, and is endlessly adaptable to a range of sounds and songwriting topics. Garage rock has never truly disappeared, and it might be due for its day in the spotlight once again.
