Playlists

Some musical fields are remarkably quick to embrace new genres. Electronic music and metal are almost legendary for how readily stylistic labels catch on, sometimes following and sometimes even preceding the establishment of aesthetics, signature rhythmic and sonic traits, and sub-communities. Indie rock listeners, by contrast, tend to be more cautious about codifying new stylistic groupings. For decades they've made do with a handful of prefixes and suffixes to describe their favourite artists: indie-, -rock, -pop, -punk, psych-, garage-, alt-, shoegaze-, post-, and — when a release really seems to break the mould — even avant- or art-.

This helps establish common points of reference and keeps us from going mad chasing a thousand pseudo-offshoots and passing trends. Sometimes, though, it also conceals meaningful convergences and limits listeners' ability to find their bearings, holding back the emergence of a niche awareness. Fans of one band or another, potentially interested in exploring similar sensibilities, remain limited in their discoveries and stay anchored to the "mainstream" promoted by the most high-profile outlets.

 

A relatively recent case, and one particularly dear to OndaRock's staff and readers, involves a cluster of British bands generally filed under art-pop, but united by a shared passion for mathematical interlocking parts and electronic textures, their gaze equally drawn to wave e progressive pop, the pursuit of the "Apollonian" and the kaleidoscopic set against the sound rawer than the far more talked-about (and umpteenth) wave post-post-punk.

A couple of key names will immediately trigger a "click" in the minds of fans of the bands involved, like the closing piece of a puzzle whose missing tile had always been sitting right there in plain sight. Everything Everything, Dutch Uncles, Alt-J, Wild Beasts, plus a string of lesser-known artists (in some cases directly inspired by the former) such as Outfit, Invisible, Another Sky, Caro.

Their intricate yet often playful sound, their attention to detail as well as to overall design, and the multifaceted nature of the feelings they evoke had inspired, a while back, a label that has rarely surfaced online but has appeared several times right here on OndaRock: jigsaw-pop. Pop built like a puzzle, somewhere between Zolo-style oddities and nu rave spin-cycles, between cerebral r'n'b and indietronic delicacy.

The central pieces

 

Elaborate songwriting and shifting reference points, in short, but that alone might not be quite enough to pin down a scene. And indeed there are tighter common threads at play, concerning voice, influences, and song architecture. What stands out for many of these artists are the unusual vocal colorings that mark the singers' personalities. Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, and David Sylvian seem to be the guiding spirits for vocalists who have no qualms about blending soulful touches with artifice, indulging heavily in falsetto and happily straying into androgyny.

Even when the palette is different (take the nasal timbre of Alt-J's Joe Newman), the almost caricature-like emphasis on vocal strangeness gives the sung parts a similarly alienating effect. In their pursuit of contorted styles, these frontmen seem to want to abandon the immediate expressiveness of the human voice, shifting their melodies onto a more abstract plane where emotional range is limited and their vocal cords can function as just another instrument alongside the rest of the band's arsenal.

When it comes to discussing sonic origins, it's harder to pin down direct precursors. Everything Everything and their less fortunate twins Tomahawks For Targets (the first, and pretty much the only act for which the international press actually used the term jigsaw-pop) have roots in math and post-hardcore, via the earlier bands Modern Bison and Yourcodenameis:Milo respectively. The tighter, more angular end of dance-punk was a starting point for the members of Outfit (through their shared background in Indica Ritual), and it's precisely at the crossroads between dance-punk and electronically-tinged wave that we find a band many of these key artists clearly recall: Bloc Party. Both through Kele Okereke's vocal presence and through the interlocking guitar-bass-drums rhythms, the band behind "Silent Alarm" (2005) and "A Weekend In The City" (2007) can be seen as a trait d'union between different jigsaw paths (possibly alongside their worthy fellow travelers Delphic, less acrobatic but pushed further into electronic construction).

One can also draw longer-range parallels, whether obvious or a bit of a stretch depending on one's leanings. There can be little doubt about Dutch Uncles' and Everything Everything's devotion to Xtc and King Crimson of the "Discipline" era (the latter band were even cited by current Crimson member Jakko Jaksyz as top contenders among "bands following in the Crimson King's footsteps"). Equally plausible, and almost unavoidable, are the echoes of Radiohead's intricacies (though without sharing their gloom). But one can also spot, without necessarily implying a direct connection, similarities with the deconstructivist pop of Dirty Projectors, the resynthesized funk of St. Vincent, or the freak-pop ruckus of Animal Collective (perhaps filtered through the pseudo-mathematical sound of Battles).

There's one final noteworthy circumstance: several of the leading bands have influenced one another. Dutch Uncles, Everything Everything, Outfit and Wild Beasts have repeatedly shared tour dates and bills, and voiced mutual admiration. This isn't a scene with a conscious identity of its own, then, but a network of connections between the artists can certainly be traced.

Along the Edge

The thirty-track playlist accompanying this piece doesn't feature only the musicians discussed so far. As with any cross-cutting trend that isn't purely a local phenomenon, it's also possible to identify borderline figures, who share some but not all of the traits that make the central artists so distinctive. Among these are acts already well-established with the indie audience, alongside lesser-known bands whose originality makes them hard to pin down (and therefore especially interesting). Including a selection of these acts isn't a matter of padding things out, but of widening the view and helping to bring into focus — through presences and absences alike — the crucial traits that define this strand's identity.

Bombay Bicycle Club, Django Django and Friendly Fires all brush, in different ways, against the poppier fringes of the jigsaw aesthetic. Compared to the clockwork constructions of Dutch Uncles and early Everything Everything, their approach is more overtly festive and geared toward melodic immediacy. The abstraction and otherworldliness of the formula fall away as a result (replaced, in Django Django's case, by a hugely enjoyable let's-get-weird space/western/Madchester streak), but the taste for jolts and interlocking parts remains, along with the frequent use of minimalist tricks and layered vocals, and an insistence on radiant atmospheres, the very opposite of the gloom typical of so much indie rock.

On the rougher, more mathematical side, two fairly well-known bands had strong points of contact with the emerging jigsaw-pop sound in the early phases of their careers. Foals and These New Puritans, who would later head off in diverging directions, were crafting an imaginative math-pop/dance-punk hybrid toward the end of the 2000s that fit comfortably within the same post-Bloc Party lineage that Everything Everything and co. drew from. In their subsequent evolution, however, both bands sanded down the rough edges: the former moved toward a less eccentric stadium rock, while the latter took an increasingly dark and intellectual path, with the urban/medieval eclecticism of "Hidden" serving as the bridge between their original geometric leanings and their later shift toward dark, modern classical territory.

Staying on decidedly rockier ground, the examples of the already-mentioned Yourcodenameis:Milo and Modern Bison show the closeness to the post-hardcore field, while also demonstrating how essential lightness is to a properly jigsaw formula. Whether in the vocals, the clean guitars or the electronic flourishes, an uplifting element is necessary for the game to work fully and for the atmospheres to break free of alternative rock's usual grey tones. A pairing of this kind can be found in the music of Mew, who clearly come from a distinct path compared to the other bands mentioned, but who, despite their own great originality, arrive at a surprisingly similar destination. The reference to Everything Everything is instead fairly explicit in the tracks by Foxing and Haken included here, which show how jigsaw-pop's grace can also exert its charm within emo and progressive metal.

One name that's impossible not to associate with the scene, yet too self-contained to fully belong to it, is Field Music. The Sunderland band has a sound so steeped in the '70s it borders on calligraphy, yet it's always personal in its songwriting and exemplary in seamlessly stitching together progressive rock and new wave, marrying Gentle Giant and Xtc, Supertramp and Talking Heads. Although their formula is extremely "classic" in its reference points, and lacks the dreamy, technological streaks found in the other bands, the results they achieve share the same mix of cerebral rigor and fizzy energy, nerdiness and surprise. More than most, Field Music highlight just how essential citationism, reinterpreted through a postmodern lens, is to the whole jigsaw-pop puzzle.

Other genres have made the revival of past elements a defining trait, sometimes blending opposing aesthetics and reinterpreting styles in a personal or even deviant way; the group of artists at the centre of this playlist — and Alt-J and early Everything Everything in particular — make the tendency to recombine ingredients a crucial part of the game. The new fittings are flawless and possess their own alien naturalness, but as in a real puzzle, the joints remain visible and a source of wonder.

Three bands, quite different from one another, carry the exploration into countries other than the UK. The Finns Rubik open the playlist for the sheer, blatant merit of their name alone (what could be more jigsaw than a band named after a wonderfully colourful puzzle?). Their music already recalls the aforementioned Mew and even Vampire Weekend, but with a particularly vivid and playful twist. The Norwegians Atlanterthe Americans Yeasayer and the Germans Lingua Nada don't share the influences of the British core band acts, but offer centrifugal syntheses that move in a similar territory. Yeasayer and Lingua Nada blend genres with a neo-psychedelic approach that might bring to mind Animal Collective (and, in the Germans' case, also Mars Volta), but pepper their tracks with jolts and zigzags that are much closer to the prog/wave of the bands making up the rest of the playlist. Their stylistic escapades, intricate yet at the same time light-hearted – and always with one foot firmly close to kitsch – lead to a comparison that may be bold, but is nonetheless quite effective.

Sudden shifts in mood, daring juxtapositions, structures built to challenge and always ready to spring a fresh "what the fuck?" moment: in today's pop music these are rare traits, but in cinema they're the order of the day. One of the most well-trodden paths of the new millennium is the mindfuck genre of shows and films like "Dark" and the widely garlanded "Everything Everywhere All At Once" (or, many years earlier, "Donnie Darko" and "Lost"). Christopher Nolan built an entire career on it.

The disorienting mash-ups of the artists on this playlist haven't enjoyed the same success, but they display an equally wide range of approaches: there are the nostalgists and the jokers, the arty types and the terminal nerds. The spectrum could be widened even further by including other kindred bands in the listening (Egyptian Hip Hop? Breton? Adult Jazz? Gesu No Kiwami Otome? Some might even suggest Ok Go, at least for the videos...). But the aim here is simply to point toward a way of reading things: it's up to whoever among the curious feels particularly drawn to the artifice that holds this selection together to interpret it according to their own inclinations.