Everyone uses the word ‘indie’ to describe a style of music. And Pulp and Wet Leg are two bands that fit squarely into that rubric. But remember what the word originally meant. An abbreviation of independent, ‘indie’ was music recorded, manufactured and distributed outside the major label system. It began as an economic necessity: the only way the music that the majors were not interested in could reach a public. But it quickly became a belief system: DIY at all costs to avoid the corruption of filthy lucre. And eventually it came to mean a certain kind of music.

Pulp’s show was part of a weekend of events at the Southbank Centre celebrating the 50th anniversary of Rough Trade, the label that began as a record shop. It was among the earliest sellers of the self-pressed records that came out of punk, and soon became the independent label that was the artistic, if not business, model for everyone else: the label of the Raincoats and Scritti Politti and the Smiths, of the Strokes and the Libertines and Alabama Shakes. Its current roster has a string of critical and commercial successes: Amyl and the Sniffers, Sleaford........

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