For a new generation of indie rock acts, country music is king
ABC News
Buckle up, cowpoke
LOS ANGELES -- Singer-songwriter Mitski’s “My Love Mine All Mine,” plays out like a whispered dirge.
The song is gothic lounge music for a listener who only has about two minutes to have their heart broken — a silky soft slow burn stacked with a choir, organ, bass and most critically, pedal steel guitar, the kind favored by country and western purists.
In no way does that description scream “mainstream hit,” and yet, for 12 weeks, it has been on the Billboard Hot 100, an unusual metric of success for a wholly independent artist. And for 10 weeks, her indie rock-meets-chamber pop-meets-country held the No. 1 position on Billboard’s TikTok trending chart.
Mitski is not from the American South, though her discography has long considered small town U.S.A. and she relocated to Nashville a few years ago to mine the geography’s humanity. (“Valentine, Texas” from last year’s “Laurel Hell” album is an example, but there are many.)
She is, of course, not the first indie artist to explore weeping Americana sounds. Many of the leading acts in contemporary indie rock pull from the South – like Mitski – or hail from there, like soloists Angel Olsen and Waxahatchee, or groups like Plains, Wednesday and two-thirds of the Grammy-nominated band boygenius. Lucinda Williams ’ “too country for rock ‘n’ roll, too rock ‘n’ roll for country” style is a clear predecessor; and every few generations, it seems like a great new band pulls from alt-country's narrative specificity.
