The ability to discover and assemble together edges of young talents has always characterized the compilations of Deep Elm. Their second chapter of the project “This Is Indie Rock” is not an exception, selection of rock in different stimulating shapes which, if we want, has got as goal the one to give a possible meaning to the indie term in the 21st century. To succeed, they call some new names of the american scene (but for the Austrian Cameran and the Japanese Nature Living) with the choice of a song for each one to express at the best their typical artistic sensibility. They start with the folk stained electronic of Maxel Toft from Chicago, to continue with the most usual emo hardcore of Jena Berlin. Meredith Bragg, nerd glasses and talent to spread, could be appreciated by all those who like the irish Damien Rice and his intimate acoustic ballads, while The New Lows get tied to the tradition of the stars and stripes emo rock without particular flashes. Cameran offer a “Crash Course About Diamonds” which is clashy, noisy and crossover-like, where Sedona take back the woody old fashioned blues and offer it without a single fresh paint brush stroke. Another couple of emo core bands (The Forecast, The Silent Press) and someone more Californian in the set up (The Call Up) break the seventies country of Death Ships, the statue-like sad rock of Nature Living and the piano-like cerebral post-something of Bernard which, though very referential to Sigur Ros and Mogwai (at least in the first part), closes in the best way the collection. Then the roster seems truly excellent, so much to deserve all of your attention, so exciting to make us forget some little slow down, and leaving us with the hope to see all these names expressing all of their potentialities with a whole full length album.

Flavio Ignelzi