Love As Laughter

Does anyone truly know what indie rock sounds like? While the term is as ubiquitious as alt-rock was over a decade ago, it can also be extremely nebulous. Even so, there's one musician whose music embodies the designation: Sam Jayne, one of the primary architects of the aesthetic. In the early '90s, Jayne was the driving force of the semi-legendary Lync. Known for his odd tunings, he wrote charming, if distorted, off-kilter indie-pop songs. In the mid-'90s, he went on to form Love As Laughter, which pioneered the type of literate, somewhat frayed rock music made more popular by groups like the Shins. In contrast to many of their indie-rock counterparts, Jayne and company put more emphasis on the rock rather than attempting to be hipper than thou, yet they retained a certain swagger. If the Rolling Stones had emerged from Haight-Ashbury instead of London, they might have sounded like Love As Laughter.