ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the causes, effects and remedies of melancholia in indie guitar rock and its association with various indie masculine personae. It provides a dialectical relation between indie masculinities and melancholia – while neither can be reduced to the other, each may incite it. The chapter argues that representations of hegemonic white masculinity in popular culture can be described in terms of melancholic model. It also looks at broad social trends and indie masculinities, focusing on examples of indie male melancholy, specifically Morrissey and Kurt Cobain. The chapter discusses the way in which musicians have created sound 'worlds' that clearly compensated them to some degree for their social ineptitude. The reality of male depression as a social problem and the extent to which the association of mental illness and the discourse of the artist act to legitimise and reify certain types of suffering – misery is not just a psychic state, but also a form of cultural capital.
