Regular No Tags listeners will know that we often talk about living through several revivals at once, from '90s shoegaze to the '10s blog era – but indie sleaze feels like the odd one out. So what the hell do people mean when they talk about an "indie sleaze" revival in 2024?
Chal and Tom dig out their skinny ties and Tatty Devine necklaces (not to mention some brutal photos from the depths of their archives) to figure out whether this is a genuine musical moment or a cynical ploy cooked up by millennial marketers. Are we dealing with nostalgia for a genuine scene, or simply yearning for a time when big cities sustained thriving underground scenes? And is there actually a much more interesting scene from this era that we could and should be excavating instead – one whose cultural contributions have been forgotten in the rush to celebrate shutter shades, skinny jeans and smoking in the club?
In summary, this is an episode where we evoke both Mark Fisher and Jamie from the Klaxons – a No Tags manifesto if ever there was one. Enjoy!
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26: What the hell was indie sleaze?