Rock bands had a hard time breaking through in 2010, but our critics say new indie groups might be nirvana for the genre. By Gil Kaufman Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig Photo: Karl Walter/Getty Images There was a time not long ago when good-old fashioned meat-and-potatoes rockers like Nickelback , Hinder and Disturbed frequently landed albums in the top 10 and reeled off solid chart singles. Then came a new generation of bands like MGMT , Vampire Weekend and Arcade Fire who were heralded as the saviors of a limping-along genre that had been overtaken by pop cuties like Katy Perry, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. “In 2010, we just didn’t see the people like the MGMTs, who potentially could have taken over the top from being a great niche artist to being a pop sensation [take off],” said Noah Callahan-Bever, editor-in-chief of Complex magazine, addressing the psychedelic duo’s confounding, sometimes confusing second album, Congratulations. But maybe it was just an off year and, as Elliott Wilson, founder and CEO of Rap Radar suggested, we’re due for the kind of musical flushing of the pipes we experienced back in 1991 with the rise of Nirvana. Back then, music was emerging from an era of spandex and lipstick rule by a generation of hair-metal bands like Poison and M
