Maybe one thing for young
@sunvalleylaw to think about is which other branches of the post-1965 Beatles/Byrds jangle pop family tree is he interested in.
There’s the whole hyper-embellished sunshine pop thing that moves the 12-string jingle jangle into the high end of bells and woodwinds and other orchestral-suggesting flourishes. Have you ever wondered why there’s so much fucking glockenspiel on Bruce Springsteen records? It’s because dude is a total nerd for 1960s (over)production and that’s why Born to Run sounds like a high school marching band’s rendition of a pop opera concept album based on a shelved Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley motorcycle buddy road movie set during the waning years of the Truman administration.
And then there’s the power pop thing. Which basically takes its cues from The Who and The Kinks and similar and drags along whatever sonic trappings were available in 1965-1966 before acid and hippies ruined rock and roll by distracting it from boy/girl matters and amphetamines. For example, this is a very copy of a copy of a copy until you reach theoretical perfection version of how jangle pop becomes part of uncontroversial, no arguments power pop (which is a genre that people love to fucking argue about because all the fans are trainspotting anorak otaku dweebs with no lives or friends and they #donotfuq).
Eventually this gets codified as skinny tie and striped shirt music and bands like the dBs or REM aren’t exactly not not doing stuff in this vein—because Big Star and the Velvets have a hand in this sensibility, and a lot of the ‘70s/‘80s US underground college rock shit is from that line. Same thing with the Smiths and their UK progeny. Basically you’ve got bands going back to “the source” after punk fizzled and the EVERYTHING NEW utopian/dystopian post-punk moment played out—it kinda happens all across the board with post-punk or post-punk adjacent music. There’s kind of a retreat to old ways—the Mekons discovering country music and doing cow punk. The Cure and The Banshees tempering their post-punk gothic gloom with candy psychedelia. Bowie becoming a Reagan-/Thatcher-age avatar of neo-50s pop nostalgia. Various other smarter observations that I’ll need more coffee to think of.
And then there’s the other main tangent of jangle moving forward which is based on a couple songs on the Velvet’s first record and the general vibes of their third and fourth albums. Basically the “pretty VU” stuff. Entire bands existed to mine this vein (Galaxy 500/Luna anyone?) and this often gets bundled up with the Ramones’ commitment to girl group melodies and with various levels of noise and sophistication/lack thereof and runs through “cool table” rock forever and ever amen. I mean, that’s what the Jesus and Mary Chain and Love and Rockets were working with. It’s in the Pixies. It’s in the margins of REM and GBV records. You can squint and hear it in MBV and shoegaze. And then, of course, all the bands that ripped those bands off. This is the stuff that is the least jingle-jangle sounding but the parts and melodic/harmonic sensibilities are there, just kind of fucked up and off kilter. You can hear it happening in bands like Real Estate or Mac DeMarco or any of those other stoner dad hat handsome grandson millenial indie rockers running their shit through a million chorus pedals.
