Column: Bedroom could define a whole genre

Ryan Meyer, Opinions Writer

I never know what to say when people ask me what type of music I like, because “indie rock” is such an outdated term, and “rock” doesn’t exactly do the bands I love justice.

There are buzzwords that help describe my taste, though. I love dreamy music, guitars drenched in reverb driven by motorik beats. The guitars are often sparse, lightly-plucked single-note melodies, or maybe they’re the strummed major seventh chords that never fail. The vocals aren’t always the most prominent part of the song and are often dripping with layers of reverb and delay themselves. There are plenty of market-friendly terms that have been coined to describe music like this, like dream pop or bedroom pop, or there are existing genres like shoegaze. All of these types of music are great, but they are usually missing something or have too much of something else.

I’ve finally found an artist who fits my taste almost too well. Bedroom is the musical project of Noah Kittinger, who makes dreamy, melancholic music that doesn’t really ascribe to any genre. And that is what’s so perfect about Bedroom. His music transcends genre in all the right ways, as there are too many acoustic guitars and not enough distortion for shoegaze or too much speed for the relaxed tempos of dream pop.

I read an article about Kittinger that describes this phenomenon in a great way, from an Interview Magazine piece by Colin Joyce from 2014. “There’s a sort of hazy, abstract strain of guitar pop that emanates from bedrooms all across the world. It’s lumped in with dream-pop and shoegaze, but it’s really neither of those things. It’s a polyglot sort of music, one that deals heavily in obfuscation to drive home its often ineffable points.” Essentially, Kittinger is making the type of music I wish I was making.

As someone who prefers the electric guitar over the acoustic, I find myself enjoying the perfect combination of the two that Bedroom utilizes. The lead melodies are sparse, such as the four-note riff in the song “Hurry, Get Up,” and the chords act as rhythmic as any percussion in the song.

I’ve known of Bedroom for a while through the song “Nothing Lasts,” but didn’t explore past that song until recently. It’s from the album “Grow,” which is as far as I’ve explored as of now.  Bedroom released a new album, “Stray,” in April of this year, which I’m sure I will get around to listening to in the near future.

I may just name my favorite type of music after the artist who embodies it most. Bedroom is an exciting new find for me, and I look forward to listening to more and more of Kittinger’s catalogue.

Ryan Meyer is a sophomore  journalism major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].