Indie-rock as a genre has been pretty well defined for a while now. A meeting of the two musical forms not quite tipping into the latter’s cliched quagmire not getting too caught up in the former’s fashion led excesses. Having evolved from its original political meaning within the music industry to become a genre label in its own right, it generally indicates pop aware melody and musical adroitness, that fine line between commerciality and underground cool, between accessibility and integrity. But what does the indie-rock artist of 2018 do to stand out from the pack?
One answer is to do what Jeffery Zalta has done with Super Hero. Forget warping the genre and kicking down generic barricades or cross-pollinating your sound with the tricks and trappings of other genres, and trying to gene-splice indie into some sort of modern musical Frankenstein’s monster isn’t the answer either. It isn’t about subverting expectations, it is about feeding them. It is about doing what the rest of the pack do but just doing it so much better. Underline – so much better. The result of such an attitude is exactly what runs through Super Hero.
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