Long after their 90s heyday, bands such as Codeine and Duster are finding new audiences in thrall to their slow, sad vision of guitar music. Veterans explain the scene’s angst and idealism
‘We were not trying to make people dance, we were not trying to ‘rock’ – we were trying to make things that were beautiful,” says Dean Wareham, who formed Galaxie 500 in Boston in 1987 with Naomi Yang and Damon Krukowski. Their music, Wareham explains, was “slower, more introspective” than most underground rock in America during the late 80s, a scene defined by distortion, volume and velocity, dominated by hardcore punks, proto-grungers and the nihilistic fans of the caustic subgenre entitled pigfuck. To stand apart was to invite pushback: Wareham recalls one pigfuck aficionado giving the band the finger and screaming “Faggot!” throughout their first Chicago gig until he was ejected.
But Galaxie 500 held their nerve. Tracks like 1988 debut single Tugboat are masterpieces of longing, and won a cult following on both sides of the Atlantic before internal frictions ran the band aground in 1991. “After working in a somewhat restrictive format, it was time to try something else,” says Wareham (who went on to form urbane indie-rockers Luna).
