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British Trad Rock
During the '90s, shortly after Britpop became the sound of mainstream British rock, Trad Rock became one of the dominant subgenres of English music. As the name implies, trad rock is traditional rock & roll -- music that is unashamed of its debts to classic rock acts. In the case of British trad rock, the Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks, Small Faces, and Traffic provided the foundation. All of the trad rockers were obsessed with keeping the music gritty and real -- to capture the vibe of the classic '60s records, they used vintage instruments and didn't deviate from classicist song structures. Oasis and Paul Weller kickstarted the movement in the early '90s with their albums Definitely Maybe and Wildwood. While Oasis deviated from the trad rock formula, there were legions of bands that used their devotion to classic rock as reason to shamelessly replicate '60s rock. Ocean Colour Scene, Cast, Northern Uproar, Embrace, and Kula Shaker all followed the same basic pattern and were tagged by the British press as "Noelrock," in tribute to Oasis' leader, Noel Gallagher. Weller allied himself with Ocean Colour Scene and became the granddad of trad rock, and the sound persevered into the late '90s.
