Alternative Rock Bands

In the late 1980s, a musical movement was brewing in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom. Bands in both of these countries were starting to rebel against the conventional wisdom of rock music and beginning to experiment with different and edgier sounds. The result was the genre of alternative music, an umbrella term that was used to encompass all of the bands that were producing music that did not fit neatly into the mainstream pop radio format. These bands were largely recording and producing their own music with little influence from record label executives who wanted a specific sound. With this artistic freedom, many different sounds emerged as alternative rock.

At one end of the spectrum were several bands that pushed the boundaries of what could be considered to be rock music. At the head of this group of bands was Sonic Youth, based in New York and existing as much as a performance art project as a rock band. These groups often played with sonic textures, warping the sound and purposely reducing the clarity of the music with long songs that could last over twenty minutes. Sonic Youth has remained one of the few bands that has constantly evolved their sound and continue to produce new and exciting music in modern times.

On the other side of the country, the subset of alternative music that was starting to grow was known as grunge, with a central base in the city of Seattle. Bands like the Screaming Trees and Nirvana were embracing a grittier sound that was heavy on feedback and usually featured a standard line up of a bass, drums, and one or two guitars. The sound caught on quickly in the early 1990s, with Pearl Jam and Nirvana achieving great critical success. This explosion paved the way for many other styles of alternative music to become more accepted in the mainstream.