“Mom, your music was so much better”: the new rock scene of the 2020s

When I was fifteen, my stomach clenched in envy thinking of the screaming girls living through Beatlemania. My sixteenth birthday was spent wishing I were born early enough to see the rock scene of the ‘70s. I was the annoying 17-year-old who looked down on people wearing Adidas without connecting them to Britpop. I became an adult trying to emulate the rock revival of the 2000s, and playing the Strokes at every party. I talked about the indie sleaze scene with the same pretentious adoration as other 20-year-olds in my internet bubble.

And throughout these years, I thought mine was the one, damned decade without a prominent rock movement. Except it’s not.

The same way people in the past weren’t — at least immediately — aware of living through a historically important musical moment, I didn’t realize it either. I now believe it firmly, even when hearing complaints about commercial stagnation. A first thought about it came into my mind when Fontaines D.C. finally got out of their subcultural fan base and got mainstream popular with the release of their album Romance, last summer. While people I followed were divided between those who thought the band got too far from their post-punk influences and those who claimed they were listening to a generational masterpiece, I finally got a sense of involvement. It was no longer a fact I read about in books written by experts, one that everyone had already formulated an opinion on; it was a breathing discussion I heard from the “cool” teenagers drinking beers in pubs, one commented on social media videos, one I had to explain to my dad. It was Fontaines D.C. that summer, and it became other musicians’ later on, even if on a smaller scale. Inhaler and Sam Fender were mentioned by those with pop preferences. There was Wunderhorse for guys who missed the rawness of British indie. IDLES brought LCD Soundsystem back into the scene with “Dancer” and gathered a public searching for a more aggressive sound. I heard something new from every rock subgenre, even those I did not know or care much for.

Living in Zurich, last October, I was bored out of my mind when a friend suggested going to a random concert. It was at Exil, a small club I occasionally visited for their “indie rock” nights — which actually started with Arctic Monkeys’ AM album and ended with Swiss German hits that convinced me to go to sleep. Since the band was from Yorkshire, my teenage and ever-present interest in English music convinced me to buy the ticket. Thank you, British Invasion. It turned out to be one of the most immersive evenings of my life: Deadletter, a post-punk band still now playing festivals and small venues, filled the place with a thrilling energy that I used to only imagine. I watched the singer transfixed, thinking about the stage presence of Ian Curtis, and when I got a beer after the show, I felt like the public that first saw Julian Casablancas. It was the exaggerated mind of a 20-year-old in search of the next big thing, sure, but it wasn’t a common feeling for me. I had never experienced so much hope for the success of someone. After that, I fell down a rabbit hole that made me think another post-punk revival was bubbling beneath the surface of the music scene. But was it really? Or rather, is it post-post-punk? I think it might be something else, maybe a child still waiting for a nickname.

This October, the rock band on everyone’s mind seems to be Geese. I had first heard about them one year ago from Syd Trip, a 70s-oriented fashion and music influencer I follow. I remembered her being completely enamored with the group: going to the concerts, talking about them in multiple videos, putting them in every playlist. My first time listening to them, however, I didn’t hear a particular appeal. Their presence on my Spotify was soon hidden among many other artists. It was with a bit of surprise, then, that I listened to their new album this week, after the algorithm had drowned me in videos about them. It was great. Simply great. For me, their past music had missed a recognisability and specialness that, I thought, you either have or don’t have. They were skilled and determined, they had a fanbase, but I somehow felt like they were actively choosing not to be catchy, to remain serious in their underground scene.

The new album slapped me on the face. It was like a small town kid now turned celebrity laughing in the face of the classmate who had not believed in them. Those new sounds ring in your ears for days after the first listen. *Taxes, the lead single, is getting streams like a pop song. [Au Pays du Cocaine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGE-JRsJ2uo&list=RDRGE-JRsJ2uo&start_radio=1)* is quickly becoming a trending song on TikTok. And, while the “original” fans are torn between being proud and pointing their fingers at the new fans stealing their tickets, I smile and think about a new section on Wikipedia. There is talk of a new wave of post-punk, a new wave of classic rock, a new wave of pop punk. But I am waiting for a new name to be created, and I am waiting for the day a teen will be jealous of me for having lived through it.