For many years, there
has been endless (futile and somewhat tedious) debate online about the original use of the word “goth” in a
post-punk musical context, and which groups either belong or do not belong
within that genre, but it is generally accepted that there was a first wave of
bands that started with the likes of Bauhaus, Joy Division, Killing Joke and
Siouxsie and The Banshees and developed through groups like Southern Death
Cult, Sex Gang Children, The Danse Society and The Sisters of Mercy. From
around 1985, these groups were then immediately followed by the “second
generation” of bands which were clearly influenced by the afore-mentioned ensembles,
beginning with Fields of the Nephilim and other bands which were largely retreads
of TSOM (The Merry Thoughts, Rosetta Stone et al) or the bats'n'graveyard-obsessed American "death rock" scene or had gone down the “dressing-up not music”
route (with many resurfacing in the steampunk movement
more latterly).
Musically, however,
things had already moved on by the end of the decade, and those who still clung
to the alternative scene had to accept that their moment in the sun (or rather,
in the dark!) had passed. With his band's singles increasingly struggling to scrape
the Top 60 rather than burst into the Top 20 in the UK charts, The Cure’s
Robert Smith wryly observed (of 1996’s Mint Car) : “I thought it was a better
song than “Friday”. But it did absolutely nothing because we weren’t THE band
at that time. The zeitgeist wasn’t right. It taught me that sometimes there’s a
tipping point, and if you’re the band, you’re the band, even if you don’t want
to be, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
It is hard to pinpoint
exactly when the scene really started to fizzle out, but despite the efforts of bands
like Type O Negative, The 69 Eyes, Tiamat and even Marilyn Manson to breathe new
life into the gothic corpse as we headed into the new millennium, the movement
seemed to be dead as a creative artistic force, bar a few diehards and the occasional impressive reunion album (eg FOTN’s Mourning Sun in 2005 or Bauhaus’ Go Away White the
following year). By then however, almost all of the original early/mid 80’s
goths had long moved on to the many vaguely-related subsequent musical movements,
whether grebo, Madchester, grunge, shoe-gaze, industrial, trip-hop or emo (to
name but a few), or were in reality now too busy changing nappies or focussing on their career (or both) to know who
was on the front of the NME.
However, the 2010’s
have seen a worldwide revival in gothic/post-punk music, appropriately so given
that the decade shares its name with a release by one of the original movement’s
brightest stars (“Twenty Tens” by Virgin Prunes, although that was in fact a cigarette reference!). This is not merely the result
of fashion turning full circle but is also partly due to the rise of global
broadband internet/smartphones/wifi technology which has resulted in the increased democratisation of the music industry. No longer does a band or artist need to
convince an elite of journalists or music industry figures for their music
to be heard by their potential audience, and so genres that were presumed to be
extinct, such as goth, have been able to undergo a spectacular renaissance,
appealing to both a new and a returning worldwide audience, initially via the
myspace platform, and then via soundcloud and now (in particular) Bandcamp.
Although many of the
current crop of bands show signs of influences of the major post-punk bands of
the early 1980’s, they are equally influenced by the more melodic end of the
indie movement of that time, groups such as And Also The Trees, The Chameleons,
The Sound and The Comsat Angels who enjoyed very little success at the time in the
UK. Add to that the effects pedals of the shoegaze bands, the pulsing backbeat
overdrive of the electro-industrial bands and advances in (home) studio
technology, and you realise that the modern plethora of bands are not actually
gothic or post-punk, but have created new genres, generally described as
coldwave (if synths are part of the mix) or darkwave (if more guitar driven),
or more simply (to cover both strands) “wave”.
As Swedish band Then
Comes Silence, one of the leading artistes on the new scene and one of very few
signed to a relatively “major” label (German metal label Nuclear Blast), stated in a video interview last
year, rather than being based on a local scene (in the way that Leeds and The
Batcave were the two epicentres of early 80’s goth), “(dark)wave” is in fact a global
network of individual cottage industries, with bands springing up all over the
world, from Russia to Brazil, from Italy to the USA, all inspired by the same
sounds of the 1980’s but creating their own modern aesthetic which is then
shared with aficionados via sharing sites, notably Bandcamp which allow potential followers to
stream the music initially before (hopefully) making a purchase. Then Comes
Silence also correctly point to the mushrooming of the scene over the past five
years, with new bands seemingly springing up somewhere in the world on an
almost daily basis.
Certain individuals
and organisations have been key figures in this rapid development, with
entrepreneurial fans setting up record labels to release physical copies (on
CD, cassette and/or vinyl) of bands whose streamed content has particularly
excited them. Unknown Pleasures (Spain), Manic Depression (France), Post Gothic (Finland), Swiss Dark Nights (Switzerland, funnily enough!) and Alchera Visions
(Poland) are all examples of labels which have as a result become synonymous
with the very best new content alongside the more traditional Cleopatra Records (USA), the 1990's home of goth and deathrock. Alongside these, the many internet podcasts on the genre (too many to list here) and YouTube channels such as George Chlioumis,
Guitars and Sound, Sound In The Distance and onlyyesterday1967 have become the
“go to” sources on a daily basis for brand new bands, together with websites such
as post-punk.com. Those artists whose music attracts significant attention via
this route can find themselves in demand for the burgeoning raft of “wave”
festivals whose bills are often fleshed out by returning names from the 1980’s
scene, such as 1919, Twisted Nerve, Skeletal Family, The Society (featuring Paul Gilmartin,
formerly of The Danse Society), The Eden House (featuring Tony Pettitt,
ex-FOTN) and BFG, all of whom are still a major draw outwith their native UK.
The more successful bands can also begin to earn an income through advertising
on their YouTube channel where view counts extend into the millions (Lebanon
Hanover’s unremarkable Gallowdance has nine million and counting!).
However, with the gothic genre still
marginalised and ridiculed by the mainstream media, and with many “empty nest”
80's goths disappointingly sticking with their preferred bands of the original
era and dogmatically unprepared to listen to newer material, the “wave” scene has remained
an underground phenomenon for now, enjoyed only by those who have lucky enough
to have stumbled across it, but as the decade draws to a close it is clear that “the storm is coming” (in the words of one of
the more forgettable second generation bands).
For the remaining
twenty weeks of this decade, this blog will feature (in roughly chronological order) my top twenty personal
choices from the past ten years, hopefully highlighting some of the breadth
and depth of talent which has emerged or re-emerged over that time. As with all
lists, readers will no doubt disagree with many of my analysis, choices and opinion, or will be
scandalised by the many omissions – please feel free to comment after each
post!