Writer’s Block Turns 20

In the late 2000s, “Young Folks” was like fairy dust. You’d hear that whistling hook wisping down a city block, and a microbrewery and a Whole Foods would spring up around you. Every Discman spinning it on a burned CD magically transformed into an iPod Nano programmed by Alex Patsavas. When the music wafted into a roomful of actual young folks, they were suddenly clothed in garments from Urban Outfitters, debating which quirky sitcom to binge on DVD.Here is the negative spin, the cultural context I can’t escape no matter how much I enjoy the music: Writer’s Block, the album Peter Bjorn And John released 20 years ago today, might as well have been the tipping point in the gentrification that swept across indie rock and its attendant culture throughout the early 21st century. Take it from the guy who wrote the book about how indie went pop: Revisiting the Swedish band’s breakthrough LP, it’s hard not to hear it as a bridge between scrappy homespun blogger music (say, Jens Lekman, since we’re talking Swedes) and the pristine lifestyle soundtrack of the future (e.g. Foster The People). So many of these songs literally became commercial fodder, licensed by music supervisors and ad execs...