Deep Cuts

by Holly Brickley

Years later, the scene I had inhabited that night, and so many of my nights on the job, was christened “indie sleaze” by the internet. Entire Instagram accounts were devoted to remembering the era; I showed up in the flash-heavy photos occasionally, usually in the background with my giant backpack. Indie sleaze is remembered as an attitude—a fuck-it-all embrace of grimy fun—as well as a musical moment defined by the party-friendly indie acts of the aughts: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, M.I.A., CSS. This is accurate but incomplete, omitting the massive amounts of ’80s and ’90s Britpop those kids consumed every night like so many cans of caffeinated malt liquor. History always forgets that it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. New Order was everywhere; “Age of Consent” seemed to play automatically upon entering a bar, and the Unknown Pleasures T-shirt was ubiquitous. There was Erasure on sunnier days. Orange Juice and Echobelly for the more informed. And above all, if you ask me, there was Pulp.