Lamestains: Grunge, Sub Pop, and the Music of the Loser

Attfield (Challenging the Modern), an associate professor of music at the University of Birmingham, traces in this scattershot study the genesis and growth of Seattle indie music label Sub Pop Records from the 1980s to the early ’90s. Since its fanzine origins, Sub Pop (officially founded as a label in 1988) was anchored in a “drop-out anti-corporate stance” of “losership” that promoted an implicitly white “rock-star masculinity,” according to Attfield, who goes on to describe the styles and strategies that hallmarked the company’s “Seattle Sound,” including live performances that doubled as “hyper-masculine rock spectacle[s]” (think Nirvana smashing their equipment at the end of concerts) and a “biting sarcasm” that conferred “hipster credibility” in marketing efforts. In later chapters, Attfield zooms in on three of the label’s early success stories—Mudhoney, Tad, and Nirvana, whose 1989 debut Bleach remains Sub Pop’s bestselling record. Despite an intriguing premise, Attfield often falters in the execution. Quotations from reviews, liner notes, and often-bizarre messages etched on the grooves of vinyl records (“Sharp knives make the butcher sing” on the B-side of a Tad single) are offered as evidence of the label’s subversive tendencies but don’t quite add up to proof of the “losership” described in the thesis. This half-baked exploration of a major era of American independent music is for completists only. (Nov.)