Such Great Heights
The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion
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Such Great Heights
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Narrated by:
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Chris DeVille
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By:
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Chris DeVille
About this listen
The definitive history of twenty-first-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
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. In Such Great Heights, 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 in the vein of Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties, 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.
Critic reviews
"In the future, when the history of early 21st century indie rock is taught in schools, children will need a textbook to educate them in the ways of The Shins, Death Cab For Cutie, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. And those adorable cybernetic babes decked out in space suits will reach for one learned text: Chris DeVille's Such Great Heights." —Steven Hyden, author of There Was Nothing You Could Do and Long Road
"For those of us who lived through the indie boom and obsessed over every new micro-scene and major release, Such Great Heights is as passionate and comprehensive as that cultural moment deserves — but even the blog-agnostic will find tons to latch onto in Chris DeVille’s writing, which is at once funny, authoritative and full of touching anecdotes. Such Great Heights is a wonderful read, and the type of snapshot that any type of music fan will find accessible." —Jason Lipshutz, executive director of music at Billboard and author of It Starts with One
"What does indie mean to you? A ‘90s Pavement fan, a Millennial Seth Cohen devotee, and someone who owns every vinyl variant of Taylor Swift’s Folklore—they’d all have vastly different definitions, but they’re passionate just the same. In this anthropological exploration of 21st century indie, Chris DeVille chronicles the genre’s ascension from blogs and bars to conquering pop’s stratosphere. Or wait—did pop conquer indie? The truth lies somewhere in between, with this book as your guide to every iconic album and preposterous crossover moment from Kid A to when Grizzly Bear captivated Jay-Z." —Chris Payne, author of Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo’s Mainstream Explosion, 1999-2008
"After its Nineties apex, alternative rock scattered in every imaginable direction. With Such Great Heights, Chris DeVille provides a detailed road map for music fans wanting to track its subsequent peregrinations. A sure-fire candidate for the rock-book canon." —Tom Beaujour, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Lollapalooza and Nöthin' But a Good Time
"Chris DeVille not only writes a super entertaining and detailed history of our favorite music, he manages to tell the story of our lives over the last three decades, as the monoculture splintered into a million microcultures. Best New Reading, 9.5, docking a half a point only for how many times I had to put it down and queue a song up." —Dave Holmes, former MTV VJ and author of Party of One