A stopped clock

Even the most profoundly unhip occasionally (as the winds of fashion change) hit the right note:

Critic Simon Reynolds writes in the Guardian:

Standing on a subway platform waiting for the L train, I saw a group of young men with that slightly scruffy, indeterminately hip look that screams "Williamsburg". I was struck by the fact that every one of them had a beard. Later that same week, walking down a single block in the East Village, I passed something like a dozen men, all in the 18 to 35 age range and all bearded. A few days after that, watching New York Noise, an alternative rock cable TV show, I saw several videos in a row in which most members of the group sported one form or other of facial foliage, climaxing with Fleet Foxes' hairier-than-thou He Doesn't Know Why.

It was then that it struck me: the beard has become one of the crucial, era-defining signifiers for non-mainstream rock in the noughties.