Join us for a virtual conversation with Chris DeVille, to celebrate the release of Such Great Heights.
“A comprehensive and colorful account of the rise, fall, corporatization, and partial revival of indie rock… the breadth of DeVille’s knowledge is impressive, and his analysis of what subcultures both lose and gain when they enter the mainstream is astute. Readers nostalgic for the days of the Postal Service and Passion Pit should take a look.” ―Publishers Weekly
Maybe you caught a few exhilarating seconds of “Teen Age Riot” on a nearby college radio station while scanning the FM dial in your parents’ car. Maybe your friend invited you to a shabby local rock club and you ended up having a religious experience with Neutral Milk Hotel. Perhaps you were scandalized and tantalized upon sneaking Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville from an older sibling’s CD collection, or you vowed to download every Radiohead song you could find on LimeWire because they were the favorite band of the guy you had a major crush on. However you found your way into indie rock, once you were a listener, it felt like being part of a secret club of people who had discovered something special, something secret, something superior.
SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion by music journalist Chris DeVille brilliantly captures this cultural moment, from the early aughts and the height of indie rock, until the 2010s as streaming upends the industry and changes music forever. DeVille covers the gamut of bands―like Arcade Fire, TV On The Radio, LCD Soundsystem, Haim, Pavement, and Bon Iver―and touches on staggering pop culture moments, like finding your new favorite band on MySpace and the life-changing O.C. soundtrack.
Nerdy, fun, and a time machine for millennials SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS is about how subculture becomes pop culture, how capitalism consumes what’s “cool,” who gets to define what’s hip and why, and how an “underground” genre shaped our lives. It is the definitive history of 21st-century indie rock―from Iron & Wine and Death Cab for Cutie to Phoebe Bridgers and St. Vincent―and how the genre shifted the musical landscape and shaped a generation.
Chris Deville is the managing editor at Stereogum, where he has written extensively about the full spectrum of indie music for the last twelve years. In 2014, he launched The Week In Pop, a column exploring mainstream music from an indie fan’s perspective, and he has profiled bands like Tame Impala and Run The Jewels. Chris has also been featured in outlets like The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone and The Ringer. He lives with his family in Columbus, Ohio.
Please register; Zoom links will go out the day before the event.
This event will be at 6:30pm, EST (Eastern Standard Time). To find out what time it is in your area, ask Google, “If it is 2pm in Avon, CT, USA, what time is it in (enter place)?”