Musical style itself can signal authenticity through declared exclusions rather than content

Evidence

Downtown New York hungered for something rawer and more authentic. Salvation arrived in the form of a rock band called the Strokes. This five-piece rejected grunge’s dirges and teenpop’s polish, opting instead for a stripped-down rock sound with no synthesizers, samplers, or turntables. The band eschewed mosh-pit angst for bouncy bops where the instruments all worked in service of the beat. And the lyrics never dove deeper than the ennui of cryptic girlfriends and Friday morning hangovers. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 54

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows the Strokes defining themselves negatively (no synths, no angst) — style as repertoire of exclusions, useful for defining aesthetic blankness.
• XREF: connects to: Contradictory critical dismissal signals genuinely novel music — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1328