Labels in Review: Dear Loser

Sub Pop has carried the musical torch for troubled youths over decades, evolving from the Seattle grunge sound of the 90s to a broader base of genres including indie folk and ambient dream-pop, all while staying just as sad and just as relevant.

Written by Matt Iannelli

Labels in Review is a series that looks at various record labels and how they’ve each carved out their own niche in the music industry.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably experienced, at some point, the general angst and malaise associated with being a misunderstood teenager. It’s just, like, nobody gets you, least of all the Hollywood hot pink love anthems that plague the airwaves. Then you found out that, hey, wait, somebody does get it. That somebody — or rather, something — was and is the Seattle sound of the late 80s and 90s, brought to you in large part by Sub Pop Records and the efforts of Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman.

Sub Pop Records came to existence due to Pavitt’s efforts to start a fanzine called Subterranean Pop in order to get college credit. The fanzine focused on independent record labels in the U.S. and came along with compilation tapes of lesser-known, underground bands. Eventually, the name was shortened to Sub Pop, and Jonathan Poneman entered the project to provide funding and deal with all business and legal affairs, leaving Pavitt to focus on the artistry and label image.

With a roster including Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Sonic Youth, Sub Pop Records helped pave

the way for troubled youths everywhere to find catharsis in a world where Ross and Rachel couldn’t keep it together and hammer pants were high fashion. Now, twenty-something years later, they’ve continued to curate a brand as the big indie label for folks a bit far from center. As grunge came and went, occasionally resurging as a commercial gimmick, acts still joined their lineup that, while different in sound, carried the same weight and anxiety as In Utero or Screaming Life.

The music industry was a market typically laden with dull and out-of-touch research analysts and executives with a good ear for artists to be taken advantage of. It was only natural then, that these indie titans would embody the very alternative, subversive ethos that the label’s music provided. Tired of hearing constant attempts of the self-proclaimed next-Nirvanas of the world, Sub Pop made their stance perfectly clear in the rejection letters they sent out to aspiring musicians:

You have to applaud the honesty here. If a company’s culture is spread from the top of the chain downwards, then it has to be a positive sign when even the important people in suits shut you down so blatantly. It’s like a team of John Cusack’s from “High Fidelity” went to business school and decided to start a record label.

We all know that grunge came and went with a sudden spark and a quick fade, but that didn’t keep Sub Pop Records down. The losers of the 90s, with their own style of lyrical pain and three-chord choruses, became the losers of the 2000s, with bands like The Shins, The Postal Service and Mudhoney guiding listeners through the Blockbuster era with their indie rock tunes.

This change was accompanied by a change in leadership. Poneman, wanting to grow exponentially and make more money, couldn’t reconcile interests with Pavitt, leading the latter to leave the label in 1996 when a 49 percent stake in the label was sold to Warner Music Group.

Despite having entered further into the music business mainstream, Sub Pop has managed to keep their identity intact and find new sounds to accompany the attitude they’ve carried.

Now you can find Joshua Tillman, now known as Father John Misty, singing: “Everything is doomed/ And nothing will be spared/ But I love you honeybear.” In similar lyrics, he juxtaposes symbols of the approaching biblical end times with eccentric, romantically decadent escapades across Los Angeles and finds meaning in his relationships when there’s nothing else to grab onto.

In a similar vein, indie folk band Fleet Foxes opts for vocal harmonies in lieu of a distortion pedal and somehow manages to carry on the same Sub Pop tradition of making melancholy and heartbreak sound so profoundly idyllic. Frontman Robin Pecknold sings in “Montezuma”: “Oh, how could I dream of such a selfless and true love?/ Could I wash my hands of just looking out for me?” Suddenly, the throes of a turbulent youth and an even more anxiety-inducing adulthood are, like, pretty cool.

Taking a detour from lyrically dense folk rock, you can listen to Beach House’s ambient, dream-pop instrumentals and reverberated vocals and feel like you’ve fallen into an alternate plane of existence where lush, lo-fi landscapes have taken the reigns. The list of artists continues, and the music will continue to evolve, but the sad boys and girls across the world will always be listening.

We all have Sub Pop to thank for our most self-indulgent, moody states, and we shouldn’t want it any other way.