Hmmm this whole issue is interesting, not least because it’s broken in the same week that The Bravery, of all people, have graced the cover of the NME.

The first thing to note about these scenes is that they always fall to bits after about 18 months, due to lack of invention and a horde of hastily-assembled copycat bands.

Each time it happens I’m amazed by the collective amnesia. For God’s sake people, just think back to the garage rock scene that spawned the current post-punk one. From Easter 2000 to summer 2003 it was led by that reasonably dynamic trio of The Strokes, The White Stripes and The Hives. At its margins there were a host of more interesting bands following that sound, Ikara Colt, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs etc.

Eventually however MTV2 started to fill its schedule with identikit acts like The Star Spangles, The Raveonettes, Young Heart Attack and others I don’t even fucking remember. It was at that point that the DFA sound peddled by The Rapture and Radio 4 suddenly seemed pretty damn exciting, and it just took Franz Ferdinand to ride the crest of a wave.

Stalwarts of the old bandwagon meandered into obscurity, and I can’t help but smile whenever I see one or more of The Datsuns wandering without purpose outside The Astoria in Central London, the venue they must have been playing when the wind changed. I see them there a lot.

Rock ‘n roll movements always follow the law of diminishing returns. Oasis -> The Verve -> Embrace -> Keane. The Strokes -> Hot Hot Heat (who started out chasing the emo bandwagon) -> Jet. The Libertines -> The Ordinary Boys (originally an opportunistic nu-metal band) -> The Others.

Rock music is the Darwinian Antichrist.

What genuinely worries me though, is the trend that these scenes have taken on since the mid-90s. Yes, Britpop’s Great War Crime. Britpop was preceded by scenes like grunge, baggy and shoegaze which followed the traditional peak-then-trough and threw up just as many hopeless bands as the scenes that followed them. But – and this important – they were based on producing genuinely new ideas within rock music. Rock+Dance, punk+metal, that ol’ cliche "cathedrals of sounds". Often awful, yeah, but NEW. Britpop was mainly about imitating the late sixties, garage rock about imitating the late seventies and our current post-punk the early eighties.

The critic Paul Morley (a pretentious tosser, but sometimes an insightful one) has pointed out that bands like Franz Ferdinand are conservative in the purest sense of the word. They take on the hairstyles and sound of Gang of Four, but ellipt the political context that made the latter revolutionary. There’s never been a band as much about nothing as Franz Ferdinand. They simply ‘conserve’ (albeit in a very catchy manner).

I’m open to suggestions – has there been a band since My Bloody Valentine or Slint who have genuinely pushed guitar music in a new direction? That’s two bands who disappeared a couple of years before I was even into music, and that’s pretty depressing.

At this point, like the rest of you I’m sure, I reach for Nietzsche and his idea that humanity should entirely abandon past cultures before it can come up with anything vital and new.

So where’s the zeitgeist going next? This time last year it was clear from the MP3 blogos that the focus was going to be post-punk for a while yet. Right now I have absolutely no idea.

Hmm, on reflection I really can go on a bit sometimes…

Frank,

Apropos of nothing…

I just wanted to tell you that you’re in for a real treat this weekend when you see Centro-matic at SXSW. I’ve been seeing them since way back around Redo the Stacks. Anyhow, I can honestly say that they’re better than they’ve ever been. They are band that gives me chills. I mean that. They are a group of musicians that play together beautifully as an organic, exciting unit in the way that Wilco or Willie Nelson’s band does. I can’t wait to read your raves when you get back. On second thought, maybe I should try catching ’em down in Austin this weekend.

I was referring mainly to the pullquote that Largehearted Boy used: "Whatever you do, whether you’re an athlete, or an automobile repairman, or a musician, requires that you know a bit of the history of the profession — the mistakes that have been made, the accomplishments — to be a ‘student of the game.’ For my particular musical education, older texts are more valuable than being up to date on everyone who’s in Spin magazine." Maybe a bit of a stretch, but it seemed relevant at the time I was writing it.

Here’s my problem with everybody piling on the Bravery. The whole movement is a ripoff of something 20 years old. Are The Killers really any better just because they got signed one year earlier? Seems to me The Bravery pissed off somebody at Spin and have now become the new Jet. Not that The Bravery are that good, but they’re no worse than the Killers.

In a way the Killers ARE better just because they were signed a year earlier. Y’see, I was twelve months less bored of the post-punk scene back then.

I do like Bloc Party though, hypocrite that I am. But I can hear as much Radiohead and Mansun in that stuff as early Cure/GoF.