I’m not one to get upset when a beloved band makes it big; on the contrary, I want all of my favorite artists to play Madison Square Garden every night and bathe in claw-footed tubs full of diamonds. It makes me happy when hard work and talent pay off, but the privilege of success on a major label in the music industry is rare, and most musicians spend long years doing their best and sacrificing certain profit margins on indie labels to maintain creative control of their art. Especially since the advent of the Internet and the changes it has wrought on the music industry, it’s hard to make it as a musician, and the road to fame often has little to do with how special or genius a band is.

That’s why Cults has left a bittersweet taste in my mouth — in an interview with Spin Magazine last week, Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion, the band’s founders, took time to wholesale dismiss indie labels. Instead of the system in place, in which bands must “go to conferences, shake hands,” Oblivion expressed nostalgia for the days of payola, when bands simply paid for their music to be played on the radio. Oblivion continued to accuse indie labels of “robbing” their artists, and extolled the virtues of being on a major label: “We get more money up front, so we get to go into nice studios and futz around for months at a time.”

Thinking back to how I became familiar with Cults and their dreamy, accessible, girl-pop aesthetic, I see a narrative that’s almost too good to be true. They released a self titled LP featuring the single “Go Outside” to immediate acclaim in 2011, signed on to the monolithic Columbia Records soon after the single dropped and quickly garnering attention. I remember seeing Oblivion and Follin resting among daisies, fresh new faces in a distant issue of Nylon Magazine. I remember thinking when I looked up their record, “Yeah, okay. I can listen to this.” I even put “You Know What I Mean” on a mixtape once. And yet, when I read their interview, I couldn’t help but think, are Cults really special enough to excuse these remarks that insult the efforts of thousands of artists on indie labels? How could their view be so limited? I take Oblivion’s point — admittedly, many musicians get cheated out of what’s theirs by their labels, but it seems rather reductive to ignore the complexity of the issue and simply say that, hey, being on a major label is great! Everyone should do it!

Since I saw them play Boston in 2011, it’s obvious that Cults really grown into themselves as performers. Follin is confident and precise, her voice girlish and sweet and well-grounded by Oblivion’s occasional vocal contribution, and the band plays well together. This was the band’s first show after they released their new album, Static, last week, but Cults has been touring excessively for two years already, playing their first album over 300 times around the world. In their allotted 90 minutes under the red-and-blue glow of the Sinclair stage (this was also the band’s first-ever full set), they played their entire musical catalogue. The new album is moodier and more ambitious, playing with genre and producing a couple of really excellent tracks — “Keep Your Head Up” and “Always Forever” were the evening’s standout performances — but lacks the plucky, winsome appeal of the first album. Standing in the crowd, I realized, I am watching a pretty good band perform pretty well.

But if I’m being honest, it was the opening acts that grabbed me and who I’d much rather give the majority of my word count to. Mood Rings, from Atlanta, GA, play some shoegaze-y dream fodder that’s as lush and sexy as The Smiths without all that anxiety. Vocalist and guitarist William Fussell is a bona-fide crooner, and I was totally captivated by their set. SACCO, from New York City, followed Mood Rings with a drum-tight set of intriguing rock music marked by delightfully sudden stops and starts and commendable instrumentation. Mood Rings is on Kemado Records (who also represent Marissa Nadler and Grails), and SACCO, from what I can tell from their one-song Bandcamp page, aren’t represented by anybody. I wonder what Cults would have to say about that.

I feel certain that Cults had only the best intentions when they made their remarks. I’m sure that they want talented people like themselves to make a living off of their art, and I’m sure that they’ll find success with their new album. I’d like to chalk it up to a bad interview, a case of foot-in-mouth. What matters in the end, though, is the music — and I walked out with a copy of Mood Rings’ album, not a Cults shirt.

Not worth the hype.