Indie music gets a nostalgic revival

You never forget your first Glastonbury.

The artists you see there live in your memory forever, often providing nostalgic comfort in later life.

So it feels like a full circle moment when the bands that were breaking through at your first trip to Worthy Farm find themselves back on the line-up.

As a fresh faced teenager in 2014, I absolutely lapped up the plethora of indie music on offer at the festival.

My choices for the weekend were curated by what was hot in NME – Royal Blood, Arcade Fire and Haim.

In recent years, it feels like this genre of guitar music has lost popularity, with fewer new bands and artists breaking out like they did in decades gone by.

But 2024’s line-up has seen a revival for the genre. Not only have former headliners Kasabian made an appearance, but so have several of their contemporaries – including Two Door Cinema Club, The Vaccines and Bloc Party.

Bombay Bicycle Club, one of my festival highlights 10 years ago, returned to play a delightful sun-drenched Friday evening set on The Other Stage.

Guitarist Jamie McColl tells me “everything is cyclical”.

“Some years guitar music is in and some it isn’t – but I think, thanks to things like TikTok, there’s a new generation of fans discovering it.”

The North London group were playing Glastonbury the first time since 2014 and mixed hits including Lights Out, Words Gone and Always Like This with new material like Meditate and Heaven.

“I think streaming services definitely encourage [nostalgia],” frontman Jack Steadman tells the BBC.

“They use the algorithms to play you stuff from back in the day you love,” he adds.

Jamie agrees, saying: “Nostalgia is a very powerful emotion in culture generally, but in music, in particular, it informs a lot of the way we see music.”

One of my highlights this year was seeing Northern Irish rock band Two Door Cinema Club, who put together a near-flawless set on the Other Stage on Sunday evening.

Mostly playing hits from their 2010 debut album, Tourist History, it felt like being transported directly back to the noughties.

“Indie revival is something I’ve definitely noticed,” the band’s guitarist, Sam Halliday tells the BBC.

“We’ve been in America quite a lot this year and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like I did when I was there,” he says.

“After our show one night, one of the clubs was holding an indie disco [and] that’s never been a thing in America, so it’s weird to see this nostalgia thing.

The band, who first played Glastonbury in 2009, certainly owe some of their new-found success over the Atlantic to social media.

Sam says 18-year-olds are discovering their music on those platforms “because it gets to the point very quickly”.

“I think we’ve got lots of loopy, hooky melodies and its all pretty upbeat and energetic, which lends itself well [to TikTok],” he adds.

Another band who have been enjoying a new social media fanbase is Jungle.

The British duo of Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland also played their first Glastonbury in 2014, creating buzz from their breakthrough hit Busy Earnin’.

With their early music routed firmly in the Alternative genre, they have since moved on to incorporate more dance and soul grooves into their tracks.

The producers, who added singer Lydia Kitto to their group in 2021, saw their 2023 track Back On 74 get a new lease of life after it became a viral smash on TikTok earlier this year.

Now, the video-sharing platform is bringing them new fans and, more importantly, re-circulating their earlier tunes.

Tom tells The BBC “For better or worse, [TikTok] aids all of us now – but we’ve never tried to crack it online”.

Josh adds that “you can’t predict virality, as much as you try. It’s about finding an actual connection as opposed to a cool dance”.

The band say they won’t be trying to recreate Back On 74’s online success.

Josh adds: “The whole [music] industry is obsessed with the word ‘viral'”.

“You can’t predict it, because if anyone knew then we’d all be going viral,” he says.

For seasoned indie fans like myself, the story of how Justin Hayward-Young wrote The Vaccines’ breakthrough hit, If You Wanna, is music lore.

But last year, when told TikTok fans how the song was inspired by his first break-up, it created a whole new wave of enthusiasm.

When they took to the Woodsies stage, fans old and new were united in singing along to their hits.

“Social media has created a whole new audience that is, at any moment, on the cusp discovering you,” Justin tells the BBC. “It’s all there for them in just one click of a button.

“I always find it quite exciting when you see a random song from 10, 20 years ago suddenly blowing up online,” he adds.

Festivals still provide the most opportunities for The Vaccines to perform – and are a “great way to see the world and play to people that you wouldn’t ordinarily,” Justin says.

He says the group, who made their first Glastonbury appearance in 2011, can perform at anything between 20 and 40 events over the summer.

“It’s incredibly hard to find an audience as an artist – and I think the longer we’ve been doing this, the luckier I feel that we have one.”

He acknowledges that a lot of music fans’ budgets are tight in 2024, only allowing for one stadium or festival ticket a year.

“But I do still think there is a hunger amongst people to go out and see live music. To me it feels like people still want that kind of connection,” Justin says.

Jamie McColl from Bombay Bicycle Club says huge stadium shows are “a major problem for touring at the moment”.

“You can spend a few hundred pounds on Taylor Swift or Harry Styles, or you could go and see 10 or more [smaller] gigs for the same amount of money,” he says.

“And that is definitely eating into bands of our kind of range.”