EVERY GENRE PROJECT - March 18 - C86
Genre of the Day - C86
Album of the Day - Foxheads Stalk This Land by Close Lobsters (1986)
March 18, 2024
Social media is rife with talk about the idea of microtrends. In a social media economy where a look, joke, or wellness craze can be run into the ground in the matter of a few days, a fair amount of trends are born to die at a quicker rate than a housefly. Yet, strangely, I get the feeling that it’s gone the other way on the pendulum with music genres. With TikTok extending the lifespan of songs and becoming an algorithmic crate-digger, any sound has the chance to be flung out into the digital spotlight. Yet simultaneously it feels like we’ve been drowning in 2000s nostalgia for about five years now. Any song that goes viral will inevitably be mashed up with one of Cassie’s You & Me, Britney Spears’ Gimme More, or Nelly Furtado’s Say It Right. Where are the year-long genres that peter out once their moniker’s year expires? Perhaps they existed only in the days of cassette tapes.
To elaborate, C86 is the closest thing imaginable to an ‘80s music microtrend. In the year 1986, the famed music magazine NME was picking up on sonic changes in the post-punk and indie rock scene in the UK, and put together a cassette tape unceremoniously dubbed Cassette ‘86—C86—featuring tracks by 22 different bands in the sound. While curating cassette tapes or the modern equivalent of Spotify playlists, music magazines have always sought to be the first to curate a sound. C86 was a particularly aggressive affair, though, meant to invigorate interest generally in the indie pop scene as hip-hop was rising up and the rock scene generally was inundated with what editors saw as too much of new wave and sanitized synth rock.
This strain of jangle pop was unabashedly poppier than even its parent genre, thus making it a potent musical lens for NME to push its anti-contemporary rock dissidence through. Additionally, an assumed lack of self-seriousness was integral to the genre: performances were looser and simpler, more wistful and nostalgic. Musically C86 bands styled themselves like their jangle pop forebears but also pulled freely from post-punk. While it would prove to be something of a microgenre, it’s easy to see how it was a watershed moment for indie pop that reverberates to this day. That sense of tweeness and aspirational naiveté is still a defining facet of indie pop in the eyes of many, for better or worse.
Evidently that naivëté also translates to silly names as the Close Lobsters visit us today. Interestingly, today is the second day we have influences of surf rock filtering in, evidenced by subtle surf rock-esque licks throughout the album’s sonic architecture, but what stood out most to me is the often drawn out resolutions in riffs that helps build a well of emotions of hope and wistful anticipation, such as in the parable of something—I do see why a genre with lyrics this esoteric couldn’t last for too long, although I do love Stevie Nicks so I’m not sure if I can speak—“I Kiss The Flowers in Bloom.” While veiled by the jaunty music a bit, “Pathetique” underscores the palpable vocal influence of punk bands that lingered in C86, though it oscillates to a more ethereal Cocteau Twins-esque vocal stylings of “A Prophecy.” Though the title may promise some vision of sagacity, it really comes as a reminder of the genre’s lack of emphasis on lyrical breakthroughs: “‘Cause you don’t know / Where you’re going / It’s not surprising since / You don’t know where to go.” However, it’s not all a dreamy-eyed walk in the park with these lobsters. “In Spite of These Times” starts off as a gorgeous wash of nostalgia before splintering into more jagged, biting guitar riffs, and closing track “Mother of God” fully descends into apocalyptic freakout. While many detract from C86, and in its cultural moment I can see why, it’s a fascinating synthesis of lyrical and sonic elements. Maybe we’ll have to run it back for the fortieth anniversary: the ball is in your court, NME.