I'm not good with the whole "genre" thing. I'm just not too up to speed on what different genres are. For the life of me I'm still not sure what constitutes "goth" for example. I was at a place getting a taco the other day and overheard a woman describing this goth band that she liked called, "New Order." -Hmm... okay. I guess I like rock and roll, but I'm particularly fond of rock bands with strong singer/songwriters at the helm. I dig Wilco, The Shins and Belle & Sebastian. Here are tracks from each that I particularly enjoy:
The thing with goth is that they never really had a defining genera, so they're often identified with various music from the 80's. Based on your like of a strong singer/songwriter have you tried looking into folk music? That's a hallmark of the genera, and I feel like the 3 bands you linked to, especially Belle & Sebastian are very folk inspired.
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of most "folk-music." I get pretty bored with that genre. It's either too heavy handed, sentimental, too political or just boring to me. That's a VERY broad generalization of the genre. Obviously there is some great folk music that I dig. I tend to like music that involves a band and not just a guitar and a voice. I realize that much of the music I adore is folk inspired. My OWN music is folk inspired, but I always add full instrumentation. Thanks for the comment. I still am no closer to understanding what is and is not goth though :)
One band you might like to check out is the Mountain Goats. Very great writing, very passionate, and they do stuff of all kinds. Some of it's happy and triumphant, other is sad and depressing, and a whole lot of it is angry. He seems to have a lot of metal/punk influence in terms of passion, but is softer in sound and low-fi in terms of instruments. My favorite albums include The Sunset Tree, Transcendental Youth, All Hail West Texas, and Zopilote Machine. Here's a Tiny Desk Concert performance.
I guess I was more trying to say goth is a fashion movement without a defining musicial genera. Kind of like hipsters now. There's a unifying fashion, but in general you can't point to an hipster bands that aren't also better defined by a different musical style like folk or rock or whatever. I'm not sure that really clears it up, but that's always how I've understood it. And then people kind of use it as a pejorative to describe music from that time period they don't like.