All Of It (WNYC) — "The Age of Indie Music in Brooklyn"
Host: Alison Stewart
Guest: Ronan Gavoni, author of Us Versus Them: The Age of Indie Music and A Decade in New York
Air date: March 5, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode dives into the rise, cultural impact, and eventual transformation of Brooklyn’s indie music scene from 2004 to 2014. Alison Stewart interviews Ronan Gavoni about his new book documenting this vibrant era, highlighting pivotal albums, iconic venues, gentrification’s effects, race and representation, and the DIY ethos that defined a decade. Listeners also call in with personal memories and reflections.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Setting the Stage: Indie’s Brooklyn Shift

• Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Beyond:
  The episode opens by distinguishing the Brooklyn indie wave from the earlier Manhattan scene anchored by bands like The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
  • Ronan Gavoni (02:51): “For me, the venues and the artists that were most exciting were really based in Williamsburg and Greenpoint...A lot of those bands had kind of happened already.”
• DIY Culture and Space:
  Brooklyn’s indie scene thrived in converted industrial buildings offering cheap rents, unlicensed venues, and communal energy.
  • Gavoni (03:36): “It was really contingent on cheap rents and kind of old industrial buildings that had been converted and a lot of, you know, frankly, it being the right time at the right place.”

2009: The Scene’s High Water Mark

• Breakthrough Albums and Mainstream Penetration:
  Albums from Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, and The xx marked nature of 2009.
  • Gavoni (04:24): “That was the year of really big albums...when indie music as a whole was really kind of penetrating the mainstream.”
• Cultural Milestones:
  • Chuck Schumer introducing Grizzly Bear at the Williamsburg waterfront; Jay-Z and Beyoncé attended the show.
  • Gavoni (04:50): “It was kind of this coronation...both the pinnacle and the beginning of the end.”

Geography & Venues

• Williamsburg as the Nucleus:
  Kent Avenue, especially venues inside a former Domino Sugar Company building: Glasslands, Death by Audio, and 285 Kent were key.
  • Gavoni (05:47): “The nucleus...was certainly in Williamsburg...but it was really, you know, I would say borough wide that this was happening.”
• Other Neighborhoods:
  Greenpoint, Bushwick, Gowanus, Red Hook also played important roles.

Label Collapse & Corporate Brands

• Industry Upheaval:
  The decline of major record labels post-Napster, pre-Spotify opened up space for alternative support structures.
  • Gavoni (06:37): “Major labels were essentially staring down the barrel...this role was filled in by corporate brands such as Red Bull and Scion...giving millions of dollars to legitimately underground countercultural music at the time.”
• Ambivalence:
  Seen both as salvation and as a problematic development.
  • Gavoni (07:06): “It was something that was looked at a little bit askance, I think rightly so. And now I think a lot of people are feeling its absence.”

Scene Atmosphere: Read-Aloud from the Book

• Vivid Depiction of the Nightlife:
  Gavoni reads a passage bringing the sweaty, lawless, anarchic beauty of Brooklyn venues to life.
  • Quote (07:23):
    “The last place I'd expected to find a counterculture was Michael Bloomberg's Cronut Craze New York...On a Tuesday night in Williamsburg, you could choose from six or seven shows within a quarter mile radius...Compared to Manhattan, the scene in Brooklyn felt more unsupervised and lawless, like the adults had left the kids and gone on vacation.”

Listener Memories

• World Inferno Friendship Society:
  Multiple callers referenced deep memories of specific bands and their role in the scene.
  • Caller Joe (09:48): “World Inferno Friendship Society. They were crushing it in Brooklyn at the time.”
• Scene’s Breadth:
  • Gavoni (10:10): “In Brooklyn...you'll probably get between 30 or 40 different bands just because there was such an amazing wealth of stuff going on.”

Racial Representation and Blind Spots

• Scene’s Lack of Diversity:
  Gavoni and Stewart candidly discuss the scene’s whiteness and efforts in the book to portray a broader picture.
  • Stewart (11:03): “Then why was the age of Indy, the Shins...so white?”
  • Gavoni (11:34): “I specifically chose not to [focus exclusively on white indie bands] because I felt that the scene was something different and just tried to frame it that way.”
  • On Diversity’s Absence (12:07): “There was a lot less diversity. There was a lot less artists of color. And I really pointedly ended the book with an artist who represented something different from that strain.”
• Blind Spots and Exclusion:
  • Gavoni (12:07): “You could very easily make the case that a first-time person would go to Death By Audio or 285 Kent and maybe not see a ton of people that look like them.”

Politics and the Scene

• Context of 9/11 and Iraq War:
  The era was shaped by contemporary politics, reflected in the music’s mood.
  • Gavoni (13:22): “You can’t really think about this era...without talking about what was going on at the government level...All of that was expressed in different ways in music during the next 10 years.”
  • Parts and Labor’s Relevance:
    Mapmaker as an album at the Iraq War’s nadir: “The songs are just a little too relevant at the moment.” (13:44)

Personal Anecdotes & Scene Style

• Grizzly Bear and Celebrity Sightings:
  A listener recalls seeing Beyoncé at a Grizzly Bear concert, highlighting Brooklyn’s crossover appeal.
  • Gabriella (14:29): “I remember those Grizzly Bear haircuts...that all the men had, the Caesar sort of, like, thing...”
• Rezoning and Gentrification’s Impact:
  A long-time resident laments Williamsburg’s transformation post-rezoning, connecting city policy with cultural displacement.
  • Sue (15:36): “...Bloomberg ripped the guts out of that neighborhood...Williamsburg is nothing now. It's a shell. And what he did so transformed culture in New York.”

Why the Scene Ended

• Rezoning as Turning Point:
  • Gavoni (16:40): “...in 2005 when Bloomberg and the city rezoned Williamsburg and Greenpoint...all these glass condos went up and everybody being priced out. That, I think is kind of the perception of the Bloomberg era now...It was absolutely a before and after thing.”

Notable Quotes & Moments

• Gavoni on Brooklyn’s scene:
  • “It was both a party and an experiment in self governance every single night.” (From Book Reading, 09:00)
• Callers’ nostalgia:
  • “Rest in peace to him. But I also wanted to mention Japan and that time he played the Jeffrey Deitch projects at that swoon opening in the back of a U Haul truck was phenomenal.” (Listener Brian, 11:03)
• On the scene’s diversity problem:
  • “There was a kind of liberal provincialism...those people may not have thought they were excluding anybody.” (Gavoni, 12:07)
• On Gentrification:
  • “Williamsburg is nothing now. It's a shell...part of that was about Williamsburg for the 20 years that we lived there and people who moved in before us, and that's all just been so destroyed.” (Sue, 15:36)

Key Timestamps

• 01:29: Introduction to the topic and guest
• 02:51: How Brooklyn’s scene differed from Manhattan’s
• 03:36: The “last analog era” and importance of physical scene
• 04:24: Why 2009 mattered
• 05:47: Map of neighborhoods and venues
• 06:37: Industry collapse, post-Napster era, rise of brand sponsorship
• 07:23: Book excerpt capturing the nightlife’s atmosphere
• 09:48: Listener calls; World Inferno Friendship Society shoutout
• 11:03: Race, representation, and the scene’s whiteness
• 13:22: Political context and its music influence
• 14:29: Listener memories, generational differences, celebrity sightings
• 15:36-16:40: The impact of rezoning and end of an era
• 17:54: Book event and closing remarks

Overall Tone

The conversation is nostalgic, deeply reflective, and honest—open about the scene’s exhilarating highs, diversity failures, and ultimate transformation by economic and political forces. Listener calls inject personal stories, humor, and raw sentimentality.

For those who missed the episode, this is a thorough look at not just what happened in Brooklyn’s indie scene, but why it mattered—and why it inevitably changed.