Parsing The Pop: Are We Stuck In The Middle?

Of the 5,200 words that make up Michaelangelo Matos’ all-encapsulating Jackin’ Pop essay, this passage seems ripe for further debate/deconstruction/dissing:

Because what our critics did hear isn’t especially inspiring. A couple years ago, my pal JBR defended the previous 12 months with a phrase that’s stayed with me longer than most of the music she was describing: “It was a great year for middling indie.” That’s what this Jackin’ Pop feels like to me, and not just in terms of collegiate guitar music, either. Many of the finishers here feel like fallbacks rather than causes–not so much in the “I’m sick of ‘Crazy'” sense as in the “really? Jenny Lewis?” one. Obviously, it could have been worse; we could have had the scant six hip-hop albums featured in the Top 40 the weekend before Jackin’ Pop’s final deadline, rather than the less-scant eight that finished. Still, the tracks list is patterned way too familiarly. Inevitable smashes dotted with college-radio staples (“Wolf Like Me” at No. 5?!) in almost equal portions–throw in a death ballad, a 10-minute album track, and/or a random mixtape cut, and voila! Instant Pitchfork.

We’ve always had our own definition of “middling indie”–or “mindie,” as we’d like to rename it–and it usually applied to wistful invertebrates like Takka Takka and Oh No! Oh My!: They’re just the sort of groups that pick up half-hearted endorsements from over-excitable fans, but will eventually be relegated to one big flash-drive full of quickly out-of-favor MP3s.

But maybe we’re kidding ourselves, and the “good” bands that topped so many Jackin’ Pop lists (TVOTR, Arctic Monkeys, the Hold Steady) are benefiting from altruistic writers looking for something–anything–to champion. In ten years, maybe we’ll look back at our record collections and wonder, “M. Ward? What?”

So: Is the “middling indie” a fair judgment? And if so, which artists best fit that description ? And could we be any more overt in our attempt to post a tangentially related picture of Jenny Lewis?