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It’s Friday; that’s what we’re going to do now, since we can’t spend all day reading Jean Cocteau by the pool like Jacques Elordi.
What is an independent film?
What do we mean when we use the word “independent”? What No What do we mean? This week on the website, Q Journalist Meaghan Garvey examines the resurgence of so-called “indie grime,” a collective term for a post-millennium aesthetic characterized by “raunchy advertising, flash photography, wild club nights and quaint technology”. The stuff is (allegedly) back in style thanks to artists like Dare and Charli XCX, who even pulled the once-ubiquitous party photographer and indie grimy aesthetic definer Cobrasnake out of the sparkling mists of time Come out and shoot the flash.
What is truly “resurrected” here is unclear – when Garvey dug deeper into indie music’s so-called representation of 2024, she found only clear signs of a reappropriation of what used to be called “hipster” culture. Ambiguity (a Spotify playlist that collapses genres and histories by combining) Dare, MIA, vintage chillwave and Postal Service (girl, it’s so confusing!), plus many, many millennials denouncing the entire phenomenon as A big force. “Of course,” Garvey writes, “they were speaking mostly to themselves, a generation experiencing for the first time their youth culture being repackaged, their position within the target market demographic finally eclipsing their own. “
a special new band
He sported what could be described as an indie-mustache back in the ’90s, when few other than Chris Cornell would dare to sport a beard – RIP).
Last year, Malkmus and Sweeney quietly joined forces with multi-instrumentalist Emmett Kelly and Dirty Three drummer Jim White to form a new band, Hard Quartet, and recorded 15 songs live at Rick Rubin’s in Malibu; you can check out their debut on The sometimes charming and sometimes raw results are heard on the album of the same name, which can be released today by the usual means. (Best one-two punch: Malkmus’s “Heel Highway” from Sweeney’s “Killed by Death,” by far the cutest Motorhead song of the same name, which begins, “If you squeeze my lizard, I Will put my snake on you.
All four members spoke Q Journalist Sam Sodomsky talks starting a new chapter together. “These guys are So fucking cool,” said Malkmus, admitting that his inner monologue before them was this: “Am I cool or just a show-off? You know-Maybe I’m just…a 90’s dad”. (If Stephen Malkmus fears he has been cleared, is there hope for any of us?)
Heartache, clownand more
Speaking of cool dad/2000s indie music: Ezra Koenig wore Hokas for a surprise show with his band Vampire Weekend on the sidewalk in front of New York fashion oasis Time Again, reports GQ senior fashion writer and Time Again bureau chief M. Hein; click to see Koenig kicking the ball in photos captured by GQ visual editor Bowen Fernie, who also shot some of the show’s exclusive mass merchandise and CitiBike traffic jams (which is, in part, part of this story The most amazing thing about Vampire Weekend).
