Indie is a strange musical term. Originally describing the sort of sound made by bands signed to an independent label rather than the conformist and fashion-driven commercial labels, it later came to encapsulate a guitar-driven sound that sat somewhere between pop and rock.
So, as a term, it is very broad and pretty vague, so much so as to be almost meaningless, but for me, there has always been a style within that genre, an indie subset, if you like, a sound within a sound that I have always warmed to, and it is a sound that is summed up by “Midnight Deep End,” the latest single from Sons of Martha.
It is that ability to take the infectiousness of pop and merge it with just enough rock energy and drive, that lightness of touch that rock isn’t so great at, meshed with the more ornate, honest and authentic musical threads that are rarely found in the pop world. No gimmicks, no overselling, no distractions, no showboating, just the sound of the middle ground being walked and walked to perfection.
And it is Sons of Matha’s ability to take the required elements from either camp, not to mention build a bridge between the singer-songwriter sound and the full band sonic drive, that makes this nighttime sonic soliloquy so damned great. The fact that the song makes me want to give all my old Go-Betweens albums a spin doesn’t exactly hurt the cause either.
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