The Brit rock scene hasn't been on such a high since its dawn with The Sex Pistols and The Clash. This is the opinion in many quarters of the British music media. The current scene seems to be regarded even bigger than the one in the early 90s when Oasis continued the resurrection of Britpop that The Stone Roses had began. This pretentious claim is true in some respects but untrue in so many others. It is a fact that indie rock bands have never before been this popular in terms of record sales and publicity. During the last couple of years, indie rock has become the mainstream with bands like Franz Ferdinand becoming household names, spinning equally on the record players of the youths, mid-aged and pensioners and also in the supermarkets as well as in the elitist shoe staring indie clubs. This success is, of course, a great achievement for the bands and a positive turn in music consumerism, which has been on a grave low because of the unimaginative music industry and the effect of the internet. So, three cheers for them! However, sales figures do not guarantee that the music itself is of high quality. On the contrary, it seems as if the positive progress of the 21st century breed of the Brits has already reached its pinnacle and has now started its rapid decline from indie rock brilliance towards usual chart mediocrity.

Consequently, for every Bloc Party, Kasabian, Hard-Fi and Editors there are too many bands such as The Rakes, The Subways, Maximo Park, and The Bright Space whose meaningfulness can be condensed into a few catchy guitar riffs and some brief flashes of lyrical wittiness. Thus, instead of bona fied indie rock bands, Britain has become infested with up and coming dance floor rock acts that are increasing their numbers in masses succeeding the amount of tabloid copies with Pete Doherty's face on the cover accompanied by the scoop: "On Crack!". As a result, naturally, the quality of the music has deteriorated because of the pressure and demand of the music industry and the charts that have sucked the new bands dry of almost all inventiveness and freshness.

"Therefore, too often the new bands sound as if they have only one objective in mind when writing songs: that the consumer can bet they sound good on the dance floor."

However, the dance floor rock-scene is not really the cause of uninteresting music but as Monty Python so eloquently put it: the society is to blame. It isn't the case that Britain doesn't have great bands. On the contrary, it is packed with them. The problem is that they are not as popular as they should be or maybe more fittingly, many bands that should not be are. But hey, that's just the way of the modern world. Who needs something as complex as coherent albums that you actually need to listen to a few times (and waste your precious time), when an easy quick-fix is just a click of your thumb away, stored on your iPod. Because of the iPod-revolution, it seems that the song has become primary and the album secondary. This singleism has then created a situation resembling fast food's popularity as efficiency and end result have become virtues over patience and quality. Nowadays, bands do not have to write good albums anymore but just good songs, or in the worst case just one song, to become popular. This isn't of course what all bands strive to achieve but it is quite straightforward to understand that it is much simpler to write one catchy tune than a whole album with fine tracks, a balanced structure and a coherent whole.

So how do you make a good single then? Well, first you have to kick off with a catchy guitar riff. Secondly, you also need to have a catchy chorus that then makes the song catchy enough to catch people first time. Unfortunately, this is how so many new Brits sound like and not just their first singles but their whole albums. Therefore, it is quite common when listening to a new band that, at first, it seems as if they are the best thing since the realisation of drinking cold beer on a hot summer afternoon but then after a short while you just get bored with all the catchiness and start craving for the next big hit that's never far away.

"However, it is a complete fallacy to proclaim that the current British rock is nothing more than the recycling of the old and that all new bands sound the same."

This seems to be the opinion of so many know-it-all Finnish music reviewers who clearly have strong prejudice over the Brits. On the contrary, recycling is the way how music has always been made. No one has ever invented something completely new and, consequently, it is simply irrelevant to argue which came first: Noel Gallagher's talent to write great songs or his ability of stealing stuff from others. The real problem with the current Brit-scene is that the bands mushroom too fast. They do not just recycle the sound of the old bands but also the older new bands that already recycled the old. Thus, what was first fresh becomes overused and predictable very quickly. Hence, in less than two years, the mass production and inbreeding of bands have been so total that the quality of the new bands has dipped in the increasing competition.

These days, you cannot wait for two years for your second release because there are a gazillion bands queuing to take your place in the food chain.

Although, things aren't looking up at the moment, it isn't too late. It is now up for the innovative old timers of the new breed to seize the day again and continue where they left off with their brilliant first releases. Therefore, hopefully, with the to be released second releases Bloc Party, Hope of the States and Kasabian will show that they're the real shit by not recording albums swarmed with disposable dance floor hits but, instead, release proper albums that will evergreen far beyond the next issue of NME.

A fine example of an ideal sophomore release is Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have It So Much Better. They played it safe by writing the album with a why-fix-it-if-it-isn't-broken-mentality. But instead of recording another compilation of guaranteed dance floor smash hits (arguably, bloody brilliant and fresh sounding ones), they actually recorded a more than a decent album that has a great variation of songs but also, of course, includes a few sure smash hits as well.

So, a lesson learned from one of the true greats of the class of the 21st century: Do not sell your soul to the charts but instead follow your heart.

Teksti: Markus Kitunen