While I could go on about Sasha Frere-Jones’ white-indie-rock guilt piece in the New Yorker, I’d leave it to three smart scribes for a response. First, is Margaret Wappler’s piece for the Los Angeles Times (Turning the beat around again) covering how dance music is indeed making a comeback in the indie world. The other is Grace Brodie Cruz (of the great Playlist blog) who proclaimed: “Shocka: Rock Music Made By White People Is Surprisingly White.” Best of all is Carl Wilson’s article in Slate, where he not only parses out some worthwhile things in the article but he also nails what’s off-base or just plain wrong about it too and shifts the argument to class conflict.
Honestly, you’d think that SFJ would have stopped after calling Stephen Merritt a racist and then having to apologize (somewhat). I was mad enough at him already for making Fiona Apple look bad.