"Intolerable noise constructed either electronically, with computers, or with electrified instruments."

We suppose it's pathetic that we're obtaining musical info from TNR's pop music critic (as if wasting the last X yrs. of our existence behind a keyboard is anything but sad) but there is a new genre on the horizon, & we think it has potential, having always been of the "We've suffered for our art, now it's your turn, audience" school.

 The Depression brought blues to the pop charts and led to the rise of folk and country music. If new forms (musical or otherwise) emerge from the current meltdown, they might well be ones now held in such low esteem that we cannot begin to take them seriously yet. I do not know what they might be.

For informed counsel, I turned to a colleague whose taste I abhor, and he pointed me to a new genre of intolerable noise constructed either electronically, with computers, or with electrified instruments. Its purpose, he said, is to challenge prevailing standards of normalcy by "sounding as awful as possible." Its early advocates have given it a name, derived from the rock genre "shoegaze." It is called "shitgaze." I tend to doubt that it will blossom to become the dominant music of the coming years, though music critics for publications such as The New Republic felt the same way about blues a hundred years ago. For now, I am kind of tickled by the idea of shitgaze, as much as I am maddened by the sound of it. Maybe Neil Young is onto something. Perhaps the music appropriate to this shitty time should properly sound like shit.

Shit yeah. We hope that the intolerable noise of shitgaze (Why not "shitcore?") is considerably less tolerable (i. e., better) than Metal Machine Music, to name but one.

A cursory Google™ reveals it's close to over, but you can sift through the ruins there, & actually listen if you're such a philistine that you just can't believe any of this. The fact that the WaPo has a blog entitled PostRock may indicate the unequivocal end of civilization, & possibly all of humanoid culture. (Back to the trees, we say. We'll need to, when the water's risen a few meters.)

But if the end days aren't nearer because of the WaPo (they certainly should be) shitgaze may be the long-awaited "conservative" rock: Loud, distorted, performed by people who don't appear (or may not want to appear) as if they know much about what they're doing, & played in an echo chamber.