Noise Pop

If Shoegazing can be called "what My Bloody Valentine sound like", Noise Pop is "what The Jesus and Mary Chain sound like".

Noise pop's name probably gives away what it is: a genre that's placed right in the middle between Punk Rock/Noise Rock and Pop music, combining pop's catchy melodies with the Sensory Abuse balls-out aggression of Punk Rock and Noise Rock, plus vocals that sound like the lead singer's about to fall asleep at any moment. Thanks to this "best of both worlds" combination it became very popular in the indie scene when it emerged, presumably because it was catchy enough while retaining the sonic terrorism of Noise Rock to allow indie kids to listen to it without shame.

Noise pop's antecedents are largely the same as Noise Rock: the Velvet Underground, MC5, The Stooges, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. The first actual Trope Codifier band for noise pop was The Jesus and Mary Chain back in The Eighties - their debut Psychocandy is considered a landmark for the genre.

Noise pop's simple formula proved to be highly influential on Alternative Rock as a whole. Unfortunately, this frequently led to bands which aren't noise pop at all to be associated with the genre due to their use of catchy melodies and aggression. Common victims of this fallacy include The Pixies (actually surf-punk-Grunge), Sonic Youth (which started as noise rock, not pop), almost all Shoegazing bands and Dinosaur Jr. (which are just general Alternative Rock with extra distortion).


 * The Jesus and Mary Chain
 * Pavement (with a dash of indie rock)
 * Archers of Loaf
 * Seely
 * Medicine
 * Velocity Girl
 * Magic Hour
 * Yo La Tengo (mostly in the 90s)
 * Flaming Lips (in the late 80s/early 90s, anyways, and with a psychedelic streak.)
 * Mercury Rev (also crossed with Psychedelic Rock)
 * Urusei Yatsura
 * Japandroids
 * The Raveonettes
 * Vivian Girls
 * Dum Dum Girls
 * Best Coast
 * Wavves