“Are You Shitting Us?” Part Two: Can Someone Please Choke “New Rave” With A Glowstick?

Reading the NME daily is a hazard of our job, but at least it’s helped teach us a lot about the value of using superlatives sparingly. By now, we’re pretty immune to their over-the-top ranting about any bowl-cut-topped blokes who pick up a guitar, but if there’s one thing about it that gets us, it’s their constant big-upping of “new rave,” or “indie rave”–the amorphous genre’s code name changing, we guess, depending on how edgy they’re feeling that morning. Anyway, we ran out of PLUR for the NME’s next big thing today, when we found this quote from Muse lead singer Matt Bellamy:

“New rave will save me,” frontman Matt Bellamy told NME.COM. “I like the idea of going to a gig and getting a few glowsticks out.”

Well, we suppose he had to get sick of ripping off Radiohead sometime. But really, this is a breaking point: The phrase has only been in use for weeks, yet we’ve heard more than enough citations of “new rave” to start going nuts. It kind of reminds us of the grunge-fashion era, although in that instance, at least there was more than one band to base the genre around. Right now, when you ask people, “So what’s new rave?” they answer “Oh, you know, Klaxons ….” before their voices trail off and their faces redden, because they actually had a sort-of answer to your question.

We can kind of understand the desire for a more technicolor take on dance music; we’re just as sick of the coke-and-ice glare of the MisShapes as anyone. But really, people–is this what you want your future to look like?

Muse love new rave [NME]