2012 is not a good year to be in an indie rock band. Sales data released by the Official Charts Company has shown that in the UK in 2011, only 2 of the top 10 best-selling albums were classified as indie or rock; with those being hugely pop-influenced records by Coldplay and Ed Sheeran. The only new indie band to make any sort of impact were the Vaccines, with even that yet to go plantinum (300,000 sales) after no end of exposure, while the great hopes of a guitar-led comeback by the likes of Viva Brother and Mona amounted to very little indeed.

So, why is pop dominating so much, and is it a problem for the music industry?

Shambles to supernova

Many would argue that the current fashion is simply a result of music and fashion’s cyclical nature; after all, we have been here before. Britpop’s vibrant birth led by Oasis, Blur, Pulp and the rest, led to the poor imitations of Menswear and Kingmaker, causing the public to turn its back on indie for years, until The Strokes and The White Stripes emerged in 2001. This inspired the ‘second coming of Britpop’ in 2005, led by the Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand, which then again gave way to the ‘indie landfill’ of The Pigeon Detectives and The Automatic, as conservative labels rushed to capitalise on the current trends. Again, by 2009, the public had enough of second-rate imitations and since then, the musical landscape has been unremittingly pop and dance-influenced.

However, the worry for guitar bands this time, is where the new wave is going to come from. Both Britpop booms, and the Madchester scene before it (Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and the rest) were incubated by indie labels, who were unconcerned with the prevalent styles of the time, and allowed their artists to develop with time, convinced that they would come good.

The legendary Tony Wilson signed a shambolic early Mondays to his Factory Records and watched them grow into the act that crossed over into the mainstream with Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches. Alan McGhee’s Creation was a hotbed of, appropriately, creative-led decision-making that housed the manic brilliance of Super Furry Animals, before Oasis came along. Franz Ferdinand and, later Arctic Monkeys, were on Domino Records, headed up by the irrepressible Laurence Bell, whilst Kaiser Chiefs were on B-Unique. All of these labels were places where the early emphasis was on creativity and staying true to musical principle, which paid off when bands hit commercial crossover. None of them – particularly Factory and Creation – seemed overly concerned with making money: Factory’s artists owned all their recordings, paid for by the label, which is unheard of before or since… ironic, when you consider that they ended up hosting such big-selling acts.

Crushed by hype?

In 2012, there seems to be an absence of such a label for bands to develop before taking us into a third Britpop movement. XL, headed up by Richard Russell, is a contender – but with Adele’s enormous sales, the temptation must be to deliver more music in her MOR-style. In addition, Russell has always had an extremely eclectic taste, with US hip hop just as likely to catch his eye as a young guitar group. Domino and Rough Trade are still around, but are now large-scale operations. It feels like new blood is required, but new indie labels are thin on the ground.

An added complication is that it has never been harder to break even on a low-level indie release – the people likely to be early adopters of a new band are also the most likely to be tech-savvy, and thus have an easy access to free, pirated music. Many major-label A&R execs are indie fans desperate for the return of halcyon days, but signing bands too early, and for too much money – only for the acts to be crushed by hype – is not going to be the way forward. Guitar music coming back is certainly in the interests of the industry and, indeed the country, as bands tend to last, and inspire loyalty in fans in a way that pop perhaps doesn’t (with obvious exceptions such as Madonna), allied with the possibility of exporting bands, or indeed the whole movement, around the world.

It certainly seems like the stage is set for a new Tony Wilson or Alan McGhee to emerge and lead us out from the ‘in the club’ darkness that pop has recently become, but it will need creative vision and a long-term approach, married with some serious tenacity.