Perishing Alt Rock Voice

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Or Perishing Indie Voice for British (and European) audiences.

Big thing in The Nineties, though with a few precursors in the late Eighties, and still more in the Sixties and onwards, this is singing in the voice of somebody who 1) sounds as if they're wasting away and can hardly find the energy to vocalize, with 2) attendant flattening of the emotional tone. Comes in a number of flavours, from ennui and snark to sexed-out bliss to severe burnout. Sonically ranges from wispy to droney, though a fair number of Perishing Singers occupy less easily defined in-between territory, e.g. Lou Reed, Jarvis Cocker, and (depending [even] more on the song) Thom Yorke.

The Perishing Alt Rock Voice may be interspersed with Metal Screams and Stuttering Wailing; it also frequently leads to Mondegreens and Indecipherable Lyrics, as well as Something Something Leonard Bernstein. A staple of Grunge and Shoegazing, as well as the bread and butter of Dream Pop, with a tendency to make surprise appearances in Industrial. May overlap in use with Emo Whispering and Nose Yodeling: while it's easy to sound perishing if you're singing nasally (engage pedant mode: because you're actually blocking the nose and thereby getting less air — /pedant mode off), a lot of perishing singers (like My Bloody Valentine, or Thom from Radiohead) aren't nasal at all, and (as per above) they're usually far from emoting overtly. Not infrequently crosses over into Creepy Monotone or Dissonant Serenity. Related to Three Chords and the Truth, in that the more fanatical ones regard polished, full-bodied singing as fake and scratchy singing as authentic.

Basically, this trope is the difference between e.g.Ciccone Youth's version "Into the groove" and Madonna's original.

While this trope is definitely a case of Your Mileage May Vary, it is not necessarily a bad thing and this vocal style has provided quite a few crowning moments of awesome.

Examples of Perishing Alt Rock Voice include:

• Probably the most perished example of this trope is Mark Kozelek from Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon. The complete lifelessness in his voice in every song he sings just makes the music all the more depressing.
• Beck
• Most of the indie/AlternativeRock side of Britpop sounded like this at times.
• John Mcrea of CAKE, cf. "The Distance"
  • "The Distance" is actually not typical of John McCrea's vocal style. He doesn't normally deliver the lyrics like a robot. Normally he sounds more like this, using a vocal style called sprechgesang.
• For Can, both their first vocalists sound like this at times, with a tendency to Stuttering Wailing on the part of both, and (primarily) to Emo Whispering on the part of Damo.
• Courtney Taylor-Taylor from The Dandy Warhols.
• Chino Moreno of Deftones alternates between this style and Metal Scream.
• Matthew Good
• Imogen Heap seems like a strong female example.
• The Jesus and Mary Chain
• Ed Kowalczyk of Live
• David Usher from Moist. They even have a song called "Pleasing Falsetto" which is sung in this style.
• My Bloody Valentine, collectively.
• New Order, especially through The Eighties.
• Trent Reznor sounds like this a lot of the time.
• Stephen Malkmus from Pavement
• Black Francis, some of the time (mostly when he's not screaming. Kim Deal, most of the time.
• Thom Yorke from Radiohead.
• Chris Martin from Coldplay.
• Jarvis Cocker of Pulp.
• Michael Stipe from R.E.M.
• Brian Aubert from the Silversun Pickups.
• Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins.
• Oh, and both Kim and Thurston from Sonic Youth.
• Jason Pierce from Spiritualized.
• The as-yet-unnamed main singer from Homestar Runner's Fake Band, "sloshy".
• For the Velvet Underground, there's Lou's dry version (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcwt9mSbYE ) and Nico's Euro-dirge one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KiU5P4ihIQ ). John Cale also definitely qualifies, as does his replacement, Doug Yule. The Velvet Underground may well be the Trope Makers.
• Starflyer 59 started off like this, as Jason tried to sing falsetto to imitate the shoegaze bands he liked, but wasn't able to put much volume behind it. Since switching to indie-pop, Jason's switched to a vocal range he's more comfortable with, so his volume has gradually increased, though he's still pretty monotone.
• Ditto Ronnie Martin of Joy Electric. Perhaps he doesn't want to sound out of place among all those synthesizers.
• Sometimes, but not always, Julian Casablancas of The Strokes - "Is This It" is a good example.
• Mazzy Star.
• Charlie Simpson from Fight Star fits all the criteria listed above.
• Anders Friden from In Flames, when he's not growling, uses a vocal style that is very reminiscent of this trope despite In Flames being a Melodic Death Metal band. (although their later work incorporates greater levels of Alternative Metal.
• Both singers of the xx have this, always.
• Lisa Germano.
• Windmill, windmill, for the land, turn forever hand-in-hand.
• Lena Kowski of Jabberwock, when she's not busy inducing Careful with That Axe.
• Julie Christmas, when she's not screaming.
• Used to great effect by current indie darlings Warpaint
• Brian Molko of Placebo, moreso in earlier songs.
• The Wygal sisters of Splendora were queens of the alt-rock monotone, which is almost certainly why they got to do the theme song for Daria.
  • Speaking of Daria, love interest Trent Lane tries to pull this sound off, but ends up sounding totally stoned (and probably is).
• OK Go tends towards this, but the level of "perishing" varies between songs. The most evident example is probably their cover of The Cure's "The Lovecats," which is fairly obviously of the "sexed-out bliss" variety.
• Black Moth Super Rainbow later became known for running all of their lead vocals through vocoder, but their first album, Falling Through A Field, more often featured vocalist Tobacco singing in a hoarse, monotone whisper through some light distortion instead. Arguably, he sounded more like he was from the Uncanny Valley before he started using a vocoder.
• Alice Glass of Crystal Castles does this on "Celestica" and "Tell Me What To Swallow", the latter used to Tear Jerker effect once the meaning of the lyrics becomes clear.
• Jonas Renske from Katatonia sings like he's permanently on the verge of having an emotional breakdown after being traumatized for years.
• Nick Drake may not be the Trope Maker (Lou Reed and John Cale probably have a heavier claim) but he could certainly qualify as one of the Trope Codifiers.
• A recurring but not chronic habit of Natalie Merchant's during her tenure with Ten Thousand Maniacs.
• Remarkably early example in Bedazzled (1967) - Stanley (Dudley Moore) wishes to be a pop star and is instantly in a Ready, Steady, Go style show, passionately singing his heart out. His thunder is immediately stolen when the Devil (Peter Cook) does a droning number, dismissing his backup singers' praises in a robotic monotone [1].