Indie Sleaze vs. Emo Nite: A Tale of Two Nostalgias

And the very narrow ways we remember things.

Congratulations, you are reading ZERO CRED, the only music newsletter ever to exist. Subscribe and get new posts sent to you for free. You can also support this independent publication by upgrading to a paid subscription which gets you a personalized membership card that provides you with irrefutable proof that you are not a poser.

“The society we live in has basically killed its culture and all that’s left now is to rummage through the past.” — Mark McCoy

Prologue at the Dawn of Culture (a.k.a. the Early 2000s)

On any random night in 2004, it would not have been uncommon for me to catch any of the following acts somewhere in New York: the Blood Brothers, Death Cab for Cutie, the Locust, of Montreal, the Streets, Jimmy Eat World, Lightning Bolt, Les Savy Fav, Converge, the Weakerthans, Glassjaw, Cursive, Jeffrey Lewis, Rilo Kiley. All of this music was, generally speaking, extremely my shit.¹

I didn’t think too much back then about differentiating them. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely had an acute understanding of the small but important genre distinctions in order to sound smarter and more cultured. If a cute college classmate inquired about my way-too-tight Dillinger Escape Plan shirt, for example², I needed to have my answer³ ready. But otherwise I didn’t think too rigidly about how I liked what I liked. There were differences between audiences, sure. Maybe a tighter cut of Diesel jean or shorter trim of bangs, but it all fell under the umbrella of popular indie culture, individual pieces of a larger youth movement. All of these bands’ promo posters lived in harmony on the walls of record stores⁴ and their sets overlapped during CMJ. There was a cultural exchange happening that was producing ideas and trends that were new and exciting.

Then Came the Boxes

Boxes are what I use to describe the flattening of nuance in order to cram larger cultural movements into the little content squares of social media. The monthly photo dump on the Instagram grid goes in the boxes. The prompt on Twitter that asks “What’s happening?” is a box. Facebook, TikTok, Youtube.⁵ All run on boxes. Boxes are dictated by the algorithm, and the algorithm favors things people already recognize. It’s why memes are the most popular vehicle for conveying information. Try to get a political point across and it’ll get lost in the deluge, but slap it on top of a screengrab of Spongebob or a photo of Tony Soprano⁶, and people’s thumbs are more likely to stop scrolling. 

Nostalgia is one of the most reliably popular ways to fill the boxes. It’s also one of the laziest. Essentially, the only real goal is to instill in someone a single, reflexive thought: “I remember this.” That person then shares it with a friend and asks, “Hey remember this?” The friends says, “Wow I do remember this yeah” and shares it with their other friend who might also remember it and so on. Everyone gets a hit of dopamine and no one has to learn any new information. No major revelations, no personal reflection, just pure, uncut remembering.

All of this helps explain the rise in popularity of two segmented types of Y2K nostalgia over the last few years: Indie Sleaze and Emo Revival. The two nostalgias have some similarities but also have their own distinct trajectories. Before digging into that, let’s broadly define each using the respective tropes they’re commonly ascribed. I doubt anyone reading this needs these explainers as it’s sort of a know-it-when-you-see-it for those familiar. But for the benefit of whatever foreign superpower⁷ digs our cultural artifacts out of the rubble after our rotting empire collapses, here’s what they are/were…

Indie Sleaze, Loosely Defined

Indie Sleaze happened in the early 2000s. I’d argue that it was kicked off by the release of the Strokes’ Is This It in 2001 and was killed by the release of Kreayshawn’s “Gucci Gucci” in 2011. Indie Sleaze had its musical lynchpins—LCD Soundsystem, Bloc Party, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and a deep catalog of lower-tier bloghouse wonders.⁸ But it wasn’t strictly tied to music. Indie Sleaze was a Misshapes party at Don Hill’s. It was American Apparel running shorts. It was giant headbands and neon shutter shades. It was mustache finger tattoos. It was Tumblr. It was a Girl Talk mashup. It was 15 pounds underweight. It was a Terry Richardson photoshoot. It was cocaine. It was walks of shame in white boots and silver spandex. It was Hipster Runoff.

Emo Revival, Loosely Defined

Emo Revival also happened in the early 2000s. I’d argue that it was kicked off by the release of Thursday’s Full Collapse in 2001 and was killed sometime around 2010 when Skrillex veered people into EDM.⁹ It was bright pink spraypainted fonts. It was an Invader Zim hoodie. It was the mall. It was strands of jet black hair. It was fishnets and way too many fucking bracelets. It was, for some reason, pop punk. It was your Myspace Top 8. It was duckface. It was a backwards studded belt. It was rawr. 

But even though both of these scenes existed roughly around the same time period, the current nostalgias for them are playing out differently. The main divergence is that Indie Sleaze nostalgia is static. It is a funeral party, a document of a bygone era that is decidedly over. In fact, much of the scene’s appeal is that it caught the tail-end of a time that could never happen today since the omnipresence of smartphones and social media has killed privacy in public spaces. It was the end of dance like no one’s watching. The end of sloppy bathroom hookups. Never again will Ashton Kutcher and Lindsay Lohan drop by some coked out birthday party in SoHo. Indie Sleaze is the embodiment of “Hey remember this?” culture.

It’s easy to see why people romanticize this scene. For those who lived through it, it represents the last time they felt young and free. Most people involved have since moved on with their lives and begrudgingly entered adulthood. Maybe they met their special someone at the Turkey’s Nest after McCarren Park kickball and bought a condo in Jersey City before relocating to the suburbs and popping out a kid or two.¹⁰ And for people too young to have experienced it firsthand, instead being born into this technocentric nightmare world where everyone is never not online, there is a wistful longing for that sort of freedom. “Not a cell phone in sight, just people living in the moment,” as they say.

Emo Revival, on the other hand, is very much currently active. In fact, it’s probably¹¹ more lucrative now than it was in its original state. The nucleus of the amorphous Emo Revival phenomenon is Emo Nite, a traveling nostalgia party that caters to aging millennials.¹² Organized and attended by adults cosplaying as Myspace teens well into their thirties, Emo Nite offers the chance to relive the freedom of youth for $29 + service fees. It captures the excitement of waiting in line for the Porta Potties at Warped Tour and funnels it through the energy of a Las Vegas bachelorette party. It has taken emo music, once considered maudlin and overly vulnerable, and turned it into a full-on rave.

So, why the disparity between the two nostalgias? Lots of reasons, I’m sure, but my best guess¹³ is that the divide is mainly created by the age gap. Early aughts Indie Sleaze was young—mostly populated by fresh-out-of-college 20-somethings. But the emo scene was even younger—largely populated by teenagers who lived with their parents. That age gap may only be a few years, but it makes a huge difference in how it’s celebrated today. The Indie Sleazers got the party out of their system and can now look back at it with fondness, if not some wincing and/or lingering STDs. The Emo Kids, on the other hand, were too young to party or even drive. Much of their social world existed online—in the messages of Myspace and Livejournal and Makeoutclub. It wasn’t the constant real-life rager that Indie Sleaze was. For many emo teens, Warped Tour was often the only time each year they were granted parental permission to congregate IRL. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that every photo from the Indie Sleaze era is a group of sweaty hot people with their arms draped around each other and every photo from the Emo era is a solitary teenager’s bedroom webcam selfie showing off how much time they spent flat-ironing their bangs.

But now, the emo kids are old enough to party and they’re making up for lost time. Promoters have caught on to the demand for drunken emo nostalgia and have been catering directly to it. In addition to Emo Nite, there is When We Were Young, a Las Vegas festival launched by entertainment giant Live Nation in 2022. The festival’s lineup not only almost exclusively comprises bands whose origins predate 2010¹⁴ but also boasts over 50 of them performing select popular albums from that time front-to-back, assuring that no one in attendance risks creating any new memories. There is also the Emo’s Not Dead cruise to the Bahamas and All Your Friends Fest in Canada¹⁵, as well as smaller regional Emo Nights¹⁶, various emo brunches, and whatever other emo-themed nostalgia events are being concocted as I write this. Emo escape rooms or whatever.¹⁷

---

Side Note

Just as a quick aside here: there is also a type of infantilizing marketing specific to Emo Nite that doesn’t really apply to Indie Sleaze. Whereas Indie Sleaze touts a sense of I-was-there pride, Emo Nite takes large doses of shame and arrested development with its nostalgia. Merch has proliferated at stores like Hot Topic and Zumiez, and is emblazoned with phrases like SAD AS FUCK or IT’S NOT A PHASE!

---

Emo is a few years ahead of Indie Sleaze in being mined for its nostalgia dollars. It’s hard to believe, but we’re at least a decade into it already. I recently received a press release for the ten-year anniversary of Emo Nite. “The iconic monthly party and brand Emo Nite have announced the Emo Nite 10 Year Anniversary Weekend, a two day long celebration this December 7-8 across Los Angeles, proving that Emo is ‘not a phase’ but a lifestyle and cultural movement,” the press release reads.¹⁸ We have reached the point of being nostalgic for nostalgia, a snake eating its own tail. Over that time, emo has drifted so far from its starting point that the current state of it shares more DNA with a corny streetwear brand than what it’s meant to be nostalgizing.

Indie Sleaze has been catching up, though. In 2019, the other entertainment giant Goldenvoice launched Just Like Heaven, a Los Angeles festival showcasing acts like MGMT, Phoenix, and Passion Pit. Indie Sleaze club nights have also been popping up with more frequency. And hints of Indie Sleaze nostalgia have been seeping into pop culture here and there, whether it be something as simple as Charli XCX having her birthday party photographed by Indie Sleaze’s preeminent paparazzi The Cobrasnake, or the resurgence in popularity among Gen Zers of Justice, a French electroclash duo whose music—and I say this with no disrespect—has never been less relevant.

So What?/Who Cares?

So, what is the end game of all this nostalgia?¹⁹ Will we ever run out of things to remember? And then what? What does the future hold for a society that has spent so long living in the past?²⁰

Looking around at modern subcultures, it’s hard to imagine anything currently popular will make enough of an impression to be worth remembering in 20 years. Art is at its most disposable and trend cycles happen faster than ever. Everyone’s “15 minutes of fame” has been reduced to 30 seconds, max. Then again, maybe trends only reveal themselves in past tense. Maybe we’ll only be able to parse out our current culture when looking back from the future.

Or maybe one day, not long from now, we will all collectively wake up from this nostalgia haze and realize that we spent so many years obsessed with reliving the glory days that we failed to create a present to look back on. All that will be left to do then will be to rummage through our artifacts from better times, hold them up, and say, “Hey remember this?”

1. And most of it, I should mention, still is extremely my shit, although I can’t say I’ve listened to a Glassjaw album in a while.

2. A strictly hypothetical example because no one ever inquired.

3. “Sorta like mathy hardcore and really heavy but not beatdown hardcore oh and also their singer breathes fire on stage if you ever wanna go see them ah ok you’re walking away see you later then.”

4. Shoutout to Vintage Vinyl. RIP.

5. And Substack is a box too, which means you are currently reading about boxes in a box. Hello!

6

7

Здравствуйте, русские повелители. Будут ли вашему новому режиму нужны музыкальные журналисты?

8. Your Art Bruts, your Tom Veks, your Does It Offend You, Yeah?s, your Architecture in Helsinkis (or is the plural Architectures in Helsinki?), etc.

9. Before I am publicly filleted by the purists for neglecting to mention this, I should note that emo, as a genre, has been incredibly prolific over the last decade and has evolved immensely since the early aughts boom which is forever preserved in amber. There was something of a renaissance for the genre around 2014 during which a long list of emerging bands like the Hotelier, The World Is…, and Foxing all put their own spin on the traditional emo sound. For more information about emo, consult your local library.

10.

11. definitely*

12. Sorry but I simply refuse to type, and thereby give credence to, the phrase “eld*r emos.”

13. And keep in mind this is just one man’s opinion here.

14. The loophole here seems to be that a band miiiight have a slim chance of sneaking onto the undercard if at least one of its members also plays or played in an iconic pre-2010 band.

15. Billy Talent’s gotta headline somewhere!

16. Which I’m required by law to mention are similar to, but not affiliated with, Emo Nite™!

17. Patent pending.

18. I am scheduled to have my head surgically removed from my body on those dates and will be unable to attend, unfortunately.

19. As far as comparable creative paths go, it’s maybe worth looking at the film industry, which has been favoring remakes and sequels of already successful franchises over original ideas for years now. Why take a chance on an unproven filmmaker when a 15th Ghostbusters movie will reliably put asses in the seats? (Also, whoever green-lit that Road House remake should have to go on TV every day and publicly apologize.)

20. Doom loop scenario: The year is 2044. Thirty-somethings go to Emo Nite Nite dressed up like the way they dressed in 2024, which was a throwback to how people dressed in 2004. Live Nation-Goldenvoice-Raytheon announces When We Were At When We Were Young festival featuring 2024’s hottest acts of 2004.