Orange Juice’s indie jangle was a British analogue of Springsteen authenticity

Evidence

Ironic in some ways that Rip it Up should be named after an Orange Juice song, since Orange Juice and Postcard were responsible for what was in many ways a British equivalent of Springsteen’s US return-to-roots. If the comparison seems strained, think about the way in which both Springsteen and Orange Juice self-consciously advocated a kind of locally-rooted authenticity defined by its rejection of artificiality. For Springsteen’s reich and roll uniform of denim, substitute OJ’s Brideshead Revisited sweaters. Like the Smiths, the Postcard-era Orange Juice retrospectively imagined a British pop-that-never-was. The Brit equivalent of American open-throated stridency was a kind of floppy-fringed, tongue-tied dithering that was just as much of a self-conscious reclaiming of signifiers of national identity as Springsteen’s passional working stiff poses were. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1016

Categorization

• XREF: Extends ch34’s nostalgia-mode frame: Orange Juice ‘retrospectively imagined a British pop-that-never-was’ exactly as the Shining/oedipal nostalgia reads the past through inherited forms.