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Hey everybody, Chris DeVille here. If you’re a regular around here, you know me as the managing editor of Stereogum, and if you follow me on social media or are part of our Discord server, you know I’ve been rolling out my debut book for the past six months. At every opportunity, I’ve been telling you to pre-order this thing. I promise to never do that again because as of now, I’ll be telling you to buy it instead. Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History Of The Indie Rock Explosion, is out today. I hope you read it, and I trust you’ll enjoy it.
We celebrated the release last night with a launch event at Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn. Friend of the site Jason Lipshutz from Billboard was on hand to moderate, and the store sold out of its initial stock of the book, which I’m taking as a good sign. Thanks so much to everyone who came out. My hometown launch event in Columbus is this Wednesday, Aug. 27 at Used Kids Records with The Ringer’s own Rob Harvilla, Ohio’s favorite son. More events are coming up in September and October. Get in touch if you want to schedule a book event in your town!
Back in February when we officially announced this thing, I explained what it’s all about. I’m going to repeat that information here:
So, what is this book? In multiple senses, it’s about how indie rock went pop. Such Great Heights takes a big-picture look at the way “indie” music and the attendant culture transformed over the course of the 21st century, evolving from an insular subculture to an aesthetic descriptor so flexible it was applied to Taylor Swift’s folklore. I start by establishing what “indie rock” meant by the end of the ’90s; then, following alongside my own journey with the music, I trace how the public-facing version of indie transformed throughout the first two decades of this millennium, illuminating how indie rock changed the mainstream and how the mainstream changed indie rock.
There are chapters about how disco-punk and the New Rock Revolution got the indie kids dancing, how The O.C. and Garden State kicked off Hollywood’s indie rock feeding frenzy, how indie folk led us to Mumford & Sons, how Pitchfork and blogs like this one developed into a star-making pipeline, the impact of iTunes and Myspace, the connections between bloghouse and “indie sleaze” fashion, the indie rock audience’s sometimes awkward relationship with rap, the rise of the “indie” pop star, and more. We end up in the 2010s, as streaming and social media irreparably alter the Big Indie ecosystem and a new generation of indie artists takes hold, perhaps to start the cycle all over again. Along the way, there is discussion of coffee shops and indie dance nights, of Urban Outfitters and Bonnaroo, of (sorry) hipsters and (sorry) poptimism. I don’t think there’s been a more comprehensive look at the trajectory of indie music over the past quarter-century.
The narrative I’m telling played out over many years, via countless MP3 downloads, TV and movie moments, and live concert experiences — but also through hundreds of articles and blog posts, many of which have become dead links. As someone who lived that story and knew it intuitively, I felt like it deserved to be pulled together into a less ephemeral, more permanent historical document. I especially saw the need for a book that follows onward past the Big Indie blow-up of the 2000s to its 2010s aftermath.
If any of that piqued your interest, I can almost guarantee Such Great Heights is for you. Get yourself a copy and let me know what you think.
English (US) · 