Steph (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} lastyearsyouth1) wrote in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} ohnotheydidnt,@ 2008-03-20 13:49:00 |
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Entertainment Weekly's "Indie Rock 25"
Why do we love indie rock? Because it shuns everything that is prefab, safe, typical. It's about freedom, expression, passion -- no rules, man! But in order to narrow down hundreds of hours of incredible musical output from the last two and a half decades, we had to apply some ... well, rules: 1. Only one album may represent each year (hence the inclusion, in some cases, of too-hard-to-dismiss runners-up, and a number of difficult compromises we had to make). 2. All the bands had to have been signed to an independent label for the given album (ergo, the absence of Nirvana and the Flaming Lips, whose true genius didn't manifest itself until they graduated to the big leagues, but the inclusion of My Bloody Valentine and the Pixies, who originally signed to small labels in the U.K.). 3. The term ''band'' must be taken literally (thus eliminating otherwise unimpeachable artists like Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens, and Cat Power).
1984: The Replacements Let It Be
One way to tell Let It Be was the Replacements' last true indie release: the very title. Would any corporate label's nervous-Nelly lawyers have let them get away with nicking the Beatles like that? Then again, there was something so unassumingly, charmingly careless about the band that you could almost — almost — imagine the rip-off was undeliberate. Audacity, or accident? This Minneapolis foursome often seemed to be treading that fine line, with shows that devolved from mosh-pit rave-ups to drunken looniness, anchored by the acclaimed songwriting of Paul Westerberg, who seemed eager to take the piss out of his own most sensitive efforts. This 1984 LP caught them at a great transitional moment: not yet having shed their early scrappiness, while Westerberg came into his own as a writer. They could do vicious (''Seen Your Video'' hardly needed any commercialism-indicting lyrics beyond its title) or go goofball (''Gary's Got a Boner,'' anyone?) and even turn out a pop classic or three — like the plaintive ''Answering Machine'' — in the midst of the glorious mess.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: I Will Dare
1985: The Smiths Meat Is Murder
Has rock music ever had a poet-prince more spectacularly emotive than one Mr. Stephen Patrick Morrissey? On the Smiths' second full-length, their only non-compilation release to hit No. 1 on the U.K. charts, Moz came into his own as a man of political principle, condemning carnivores, corporal punishment, and the Thatcher regime in the sweep of 10 gorgeously crafted pop songs. From its military album art to screeds like the title track and ''The Headmaster Ritual,'' Meat Is Murder at times seemed more like an ambitious civics lesson than a mere album, and many bemoaned its lack of cohesive musicality. Still, while the band would go on to create more polished and melodic works (1986's The Queen Is Dead is, track by track, a masterpiece) in their brief, brilliant career, this release remains a giant of its time. And for all his polemics, Morrissey still managed to strip himself bare with one immortal, shimmering refrain: ''I am human and I need to be loved/Just like everybody else does.''
ESSENTIAL TRACK: How Soon Is Now?
1986: R.E.M. Life's Rich Pageant
It was a great year for jangle across the pond: Swindon, England's XTC perfected a sunny retro-pop blend with Skylarking, while up in Manchester the Smiths reached a disarmingly catchy peak of their own on The Queen Is Dead. But 1986's jauntiest chords belonged to Athens, Georgia's own R.E.M. Already stars on the college circuit since 1983's murky Murmur, the quartet used their fourth LP as an opportunity to clarify and enrich their sound. Suddenly you could hear every word Michael Stipe was singing (oblique musings about environmentalism, mostly) over Mills, Buck, and Berry's delicately rocking backup. Life's Rich Pageant yielded a pair of sing-along hits (''Fall on Me,'' ''Superman'') and a clutch of darker fan favorites (''Begin the Begin,'' ''Swan Swan H''). Taken as a whole, it captured R.E.M. after they crawled out of the sonic swamp, but well before they conquered the world or, ultimately, lost their focus — a Rich moment indeed.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Fall on Me
1987: Dinosaur Jr. You're Living All Over Me
No, there weren't a lot of guitar solos playing on college radio stations in the '80s — at least, not until Northampton, Mass. basement dweller J Mascis updated Neil Young's barely leashed feedback squalls (and flannel, and creaky singing...) for kids raised on punk. Because Mascis and bassist Lou Barlow preferred playing with effects pedals to communicating, the original lineup soon split. The trio (rounded out by drummer Murph) successfully reunited, however, and made their network television debut playing You're Living All Over Me's ''The Lung'' — a scant 18 years after its release.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Little Fury Things
1988: Sonic Youth Daydream Nation
Equal parts gorgeous melody and blistering noise, the racket these NYC art-punkers kicked up on their fifth full-length has shown no signs of subsiding since then. Improbably enough, Daydream Nation actually took the Youth's singularly skewed sound mainstream; by the time their next album came out in 1990, they were signed to a major label and playing a crucial role in the nascent alt-rock movement by mentoring artists like Nirvana. (Arguably just as influential in those watershed years: the Pixies' debut LP, Surfer Rosa, also released in '88.)
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Teen Age Riot
1989: The Pixies Doolittle
The Pixies are such an influential act it is tempting to say that, had they not existed, someone would have been forced to invent them. But could even the maddest of scientists have come up with a band whose list of diverse interests merely begins with punk rock, surf music, UFOs, and incest? We're guessing not. The quartet's second album, Doolittle — which was distributed in the U.S. through Elektra (we know, a slight cheat!) — boasts a bright production lacking from their debut, 1988's Surfer Rosa. Yet this just casts the grunge-inspiring dynamics offered by such tracks as ''Fame'' and ''Monkey Gone to Heaven'' into even sharper relief. Indeed, a thousand bands would copy the band's neat trick of playing very softly and then VERY, VERY LOUDLY!!! Even fewer matched chief Pixie Frank Black's slyly pop-infused way with a tune. One that did was Nirvana, whose debut CD — and sole indie album — Bleach, also hit stores in '89.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Debaser
*love it*
1990: Fugazi Repeater
In the late '80s, Dischord Records was king of the D.C. hardcore scene, and Fugazi the (angry, straight-edge) jewel in their crown. The genealogy of the band's members — most significantly, coleaders Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto — was pretty much a six-degrees-of-the-scene marvel, what with all the former and future members of underground luminaries like Minor Threat and Rites of Spring it contained, but it was their incendiary sound — and righteous, fair-play principles — that made them legends on their own, and accidental heroes, too.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Blueprint
1991: My Bloody Valentine Loveless
Distortion was everywhere in 1991, smearing the edges of Teenage Fanclub's sugar-pop opus Bandwagonesque, and weaving a web of tension through the tick-tock precision of Slint's Spiderland. But it dominated the otherworldly soundscapes of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. The U.K. import was the emotional climax of mastermind Kevin Shields' studio explorations, a cacophony of shoegaze noise, droning guitars, and barely audible vocals. Meandering, haunting, and glorious, the album nearly bankrupted Creation Records (future home of Oasis), and never saw a follow-up, but its allure is undeniable. Just ask J Mascis.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Only Shallow
1992: Pavement Slanted and Enchanted
Indie-rock albums can sound every bit as polished and thought-out as any other kind, but the genre at its best often thrives on a certain spirit of disorder. No one understood that better than Stephen Malkmus and his gang of jaded West Coast pranksters. Their debut LP made a downright virtue out of messiness, spilling noodly riffs and free-form lyrics as if at random — and somehow it all cohered into something much greater than the sum of those parts. Pavement would tighten up its songcraft and boost its production values significantly on later efforts like 1994's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, but this was where the band made its defining mark. Beck and all the other artists who took the term ''slacker'' as a badge of honor throughout the rest of the '90s had Slanted and Enchanted to thank for, er, paving the way.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Summer Babe (Winter Version)
*my personal favorite!*
1993: Built To Spill Ultimate Alternative Wavers
Hailing from the not-so-vibrant indie-rock fiefdom of Boise, Idaho, Doug Martsch and Co. nevertheless went on to become one of the biggest indie bands of the '90s — so big, in fact, that Warner Bros. Records soon signed them, and released a number of their best albums. Ultimate Alternative Wavers's cover — the bandmates in a serenely goofy Sears-portrait-studio pose — was a fun punchline, but the music actually delivered. Martsch's signatures — dreamy guitar smog, meandering melodies, and mournful, intuitive lyrics — were already forming, and the early glimmer of a titanic talent emerged.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Three Years Ago Today
1994: Guided By Voices Bee Thousand
Defining ''lo-fi'' in the indie-rock lexicon is Dayton, Ohio's Guided by Voices, the brainchild of part-time teacher/full-time rock star Bob Pollard, who, by the mid-'90s, had already gained the devotion of a small few. But it was Bee Thousand, 36 minutes of skuzzy, twisty gems recorded on a simple four-track, that would cement the band's cult status. Two parts British Invasion worship, one part dadaist meanderings, with heart and soul poured into every chorus, the album remains a timeless treasure trove of undeniable melodies that prompted untold numbers to declare, God bless the good ship GBV and all who sail on her!
ESSENTIAL TRACK: I Am a Scientist
1995: Archers of Loaf Vee Vee
If Stephen Malkmus was the Gertrude Stein of indie rock, then Eric Bachmann's staccato gruffness made him its Ernest Hemingway (''There's something wrong...with my toast,'' he sings on ''Toast'' from 1993's Icky Mettle). But Papa never had a band like this: crackling drums, guitars tuned in odd ways to create perfect dissonance, and a knack for turning abrasive noise into chummy sing-alongs. One such track from Vee Vee, ''Greatest of All Time,'' thusly nailed the state of Lollapalooza Nation circa 1995: ''The underground is overcrowded.'' The Archers rose to the top anyway.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Harnessed in Slums
1996: Belle and Sebastian If You're Feeling Sinister
For anyone who assumed that ''indie'' automatically equals ''aggro,'' this Scottish collective's determinedly mild breakthrough album provided a captivating corrective. Frontman Stuart Murdoch's folky intonations made him sound about as threatening as Donovan, and the arrangements occasionally recalled Burt Bacharach — the gentler side of Burt Bacharach. But Murdoch could use that sophisticated, shy-sounding musical sheen to put across songs that were funny, prickly, elliptical, and, at the core of things, emotional. Sinister? Hardly — but sweetly sneaky, yes.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: The Stars of Track and Field
*also a personal favorite!*
1997: Modest Mouse Lonesome Crowded West
Years before ''Float On'' put them on regular rotation at frat parties and T.G.I. Friday's, these Issaquah, Wash., outsiders produced one of the most brilliant song-for-song albums of the decade — a weary and wonderful piece of Americana imbued with all the messy, soul-cracking angst of disenfranchised youth. From the loping guitar skronk of ''Polar Opposites'' (with its unforgettable lyrics ''I'm trying, I'm trying to/drink away the part of the day that I cannot sleep away'') and the stark, ugly-beautiful sorrow of near-ballads like ''Bankrupt on Selling'' to the furious dissonance of ''Teeth Like God's Shoeshine'' and ''S--- Luck,'' singer Isaac Brock took the postpunk aesthetic and made it astoundingly resonant and personal. Joined by drummer Jeremiah Green and bassist Eric Judy, he was like Frank Black leading the Pixies down a scrappy gutter-trash path — and it was glorious.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Doin' the Cockroach
1998: Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
A lo-fi concept album of sorts about sex and death and Anne Frank, the Georgia quartet's second LP was bound to be a tearjerker. Those cathartic, horn-filled arrangements — mood music for the world's most psychedelic funeral service — helped get the waterworks going too. But the most tragic thing of all about In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is the fact that this was the last music we'd ever hear from Neutral Milk Hotel. Almost immediately after its release, gifted songwriter Jeff Mangum retreated into reclusive silence, sadly unbroken a decade later.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
1999: Sleater-Kinney The Hot Rock
Calling them one of the best female bands of the decade is a disservice — SK was simply one of the best, period. But no matter how prominent Corin Tucker, Janet Weiss, and Carrie Brownstein became on the national scene, they remained surprisingly loyal to the Northwest, staying true to local labels Kill Rock Stars and Sub Pop till they took an ''indefinite hiatus'' in 2006. With The Hot Rock, Tucker and Brownstein's call-and-response vocals and Weiss' fierce percussion offered a signal blast of pop-punk fury coupled with an assured femininity that acknowledged their lady-outsider status but celebrated it, too.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Burn, Don't Freeze!
2000: Yo La Tengo And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
For a decade and a half, this Hoboken band wore hipsterish fandom on their sleeves — interpolating Sun Ra, the Kinks, and New Zealand bands you'd never heard of. But with Nothing Turned Itself..., indie rock finally embraced the big 4-0, as husband-wife team Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley turned their gaze inward for a 77-minute meditation on domesticity. Breaking up the confessional love songs? A cover of a soul-disco obscurity, George McCrae's ''You Can Have It All,'' and the signature YLT propulsion of ''Cherry Chapstick.''
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Cherry Chapstick
2001: The Shins Oh, Inverted World
If ever there were a gateway drug to indie rock, the Shins' shining breakthrough was it. Effortlessly melodic yet lyrically obtuse (singer James Mercer's curious couplets were basically the word-scramble equivalent of a Dalí painting), these New Mexico natives' underground sound eventually reached the masses, thanks in part to number-one fan Zach Braff; but really, they just had the chops all along. Oh, Inverted World wove a rich tapestry of sparkling pop filaments, creating songs both folksy and somehow transcendent. Seven years on, it still sounds timeless.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: New Slang
2002: Interpol Turn On The Bright Lights
Forget the tiresome comparisons that got bandied about when this debut LP dropped. (As if sounding like Joy Division were somehow a bad thing!) Interpol were working their own unique niche, and in a year full of strong contenders — Bright Eyes' Lifted or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground; Rilo Kiley's The Execution of All Things — Turn On the Bright Lights has still aged the best. Unlike many of their fellow scenesters, these impeccably styled Manhattanites were also fearsome musicians: Paul Banks singing ominous nonsense in his boozy basso profundo, Daniel Kessler going manic on guitar, and the killer rhythm section of Carlos Dengler (a.k.a. Carlos D.) and Sam Fogarino working furiously behind them both. Together they conjured an all-enveloping urban darkness, brightened by just the right amount of danceable rhythm. Even Interpol themselves haven't quite been able to live up to that hypnotic standard on their subsequent efforts.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Obstacle 1
2003: The White Stripes Elephant
The best fake siblings in the business could easily have taken the prize two years previously for their breakout White Blood Cells, were it not for four little south-of-the-kneecap dudes from Albuquerque, N.M. (see the Shins, 2001). And Death Cab for Cutie nearly beat them out here with an unimpeachable effort, Transatlanticism. Elephant, though, is no consolation prize. The bass-bonanza awesomeness of ''Seven Nation Army'' aside, their fourth album was a triumph of red, white, and blooze, from the Freddie Mercury-worthy kiss-off of ''There's No Home for You Here'' to their hypnotizing bare-bones riff on the Burt Bacharach classic ''I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself.'' Meg's drumming, charmingly rudimentary as ever, set the stage for Jack to shine, and he inhabited his howling Dee-troit charisma like a man who finally knew what he was capable of. Turns out it was a whole lot.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Seven Nation Army
2004: Arcade Fire Funeral
The title notwithstanding, Arcade Fire's first full-length album was ultimately anything but funereal. Singer Win Butler sounded preoccupied enough with mortality, but these songs were equally obsessed with the thrills and hazards of growing up. There's both toughness and grandiosity to their celebrated sound; they would grow even more symphonic on the next album, 2007's Neon Bible, maybe because that one was recorded in a church instead of the Canadian apartment where this one was partially made. But Funeral was one hell of a baptism.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
*fuckin love this album!*
2005: Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
Dylan, Schmylan. Even as the press twisted itself into semantic knots drawing parallels between the frail, mop-haired Omaha troubadour and the Great Bob, Conor Oberst proved himself to be, quite easily, a man apart. Perhaps because, at only 24, he'd already released five albums under the Bright Eyes umbrella, and was as sure-footed in his hushed bedroom-folk beauty as a man twice his age. Thankfully, he still had all the angsty issues of a Gen-Y icon, and showcased them beautifully on instant classics like ''Lua'' and (with the help of Emmylou Harris) ''Land Locked Blues.''
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Land Locked Blues
2006: The Hold Steady Boys and Girls in America
The remains of Minnesota's Lifter Puller broke out with their third album, Boys and Girls in America, as Craig Finn's tumbling stories of burnouts and breakups fused with suddenly arena-worthy licks to prove this joyous modern bar band has a lifespan beyond tomorrow morning's hangover. It's their legions of faithful (and evangelical) fans that vault the Hold Steady over their closest competition from this year, the Arctic Monkeys, who blew up like the Beatles, sure, but failed to demonstrate their staying power.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: MStuck Between Stations
2007: Spoon Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Spoon spent a good deal of the '90s musically genuflecting at the altar of the Pixies, and for a brief, unhappy period were signed to Elektra (an experience they would vent about on their 1999 single ''The Agony of Laffitte''). But the Britt Daniel-fronted act honed their own brand of poignant, angular pop-rock with such independently released collections as 2002's Kill the Moonlight and 2005's Gimme Fiction. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was a creative leap forward that, at its best, placed Daniel's vocals in a warm Motown-influenced frame. The message located on the inner artwork — "This Record Is a Hit" — turned out to be funny and true.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb
2008: Radiohead In Rainbows
Oxford's finest spent a full decade and a half disqualified from lists like this one due to a glaring technicality. Even as their music grew ever stranger, these defiantly independent artists remained signed to a major label; from The Bends (1995) to OK Computer (1997) to Kid A (2000) and beyond, EMI's gazillion-pound budgets underwrote the band's rejection of the rock world's expectations. So there's more than a little poetic justice in the fact that In Rainbows was, at long last, their first truly indie release — both via last fall's brilliant/infamous pay-what-you-want online scheme and as a physical CD put out by TBD/ATO Records this January. Of course, all those business concerns melt away once you listen to the thing. Full of newly warm instrumentation and emotionally open lyrics (plus, of course, a few left-field twiddles and inscrutable mutterings), it's an elegant summation of everything that's made Radiohead the most popular avant-gardists in a generation.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Reckoner
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EDIT: I added more from the EW site that had a little to say about each album and the best song from each album and shit
1984: The Replacements Let It Be
One way to tell Let It Be was the Replacements' last true indie release: the very title. Would any corporate label's nervous-Nelly lawyers have let them get away with nicking the Beatles like that? Then again, there was something so unassumingly, charmingly careless about the band that you could almost — almost — imagine the rip-off was undeliberate. Audacity, or accident? This Minneapolis foursome often seemed to be treading that fine line, with shows that devolved from mosh-pit rave-ups to drunken looniness, anchored by the acclaimed songwriting of Paul Westerberg, who seemed eager to take the piss out of his own most sensitive efforts. This 1984 LP caught them at a great transitional moment: not yet having shed their early scrappiness, while Westerberg came into his own as a writer. They could do vicious (''Seen Your Video'' hardly needed any commercialism-indicting lyrics beyond its title) or go goofball (''Gary's Got a Boner,'' anyone?) and even turn out a pop classic or three — like the plaintive ''Answering Machine'' — in the midst of the glorious mess.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: I Will Dare
1985: The Smiths Meat Is Murder
Has rock music ever had a poet-prince more spectacularly emotive than one Mr. Stephen Patrick Morrissey? On the Smiths' second full-length, their only non-compilation release to hit No. 1 on the U.K. charts, Moz came into his own as a man of political principle, condemning carnivores, corporal punishment, and the Thatcher regime in the sweep of 10 gorgeously crafted pop songs. From its military album art to screeds like the title track and ''The Headmaster Ritual,'' Meat Is Murder at times seemed more like an ambitious civics lesson than a mere album, and many bemoaned its lack of cohesive musicality. Still, while the band would go on to create more polished and melodic works (1986's The Queen Is Dead is, track by track, a masterpiece) in their brief, brilliant career, this release remains a giant of its time. And for all his polemics, Morrissey still managed to strip himself bare with one immortal, shimmering refrain: ''I am human and I need to be loved/Just like everybody else does.''
ESSENTIAL TRACK: How Soon Is Now?
1986: R.E.M. Life's Rich Pageant
It was a great year for jangle across the pond: Swindon, England's XTC perfected a sunny retro-pop blend with Skylarking, while up in Manchester the Smiths reached a disarmingly catchy peak of their own on The Queen Is Dead. But 1986's jauntiest chords belonged to Athens, Georgia's own R.E.M. Already stars on the college circuit since 1983's murky Murmur, the quartet used their fourth LP as an opportunity to clarify and enrich their sound. Suddenly you could hear every word Michael Stipe was singing (oblique musings about environmentalism, mostly) over Mills, Buck, and Berry's delicately rocking backup. Life's Rich Pageant yielded a pair of sing-along hits (''Fall on Me,'' ''Superman'') and a clutch of darker fan favorites (''Begin the Begin,'' ''Swan Swan H''). Taken as a whole, it captured R.E.M. after they crawled out of the sonic swamp, but well before they conquered the world or, ultimately, lost their focus — a Rich moment indeed.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Fall on Me
1987: Dinosaur Jr. You're Living All Over Me
No, there weren't a lot of guitar solos playing on college radio stations in the '80s — at least, not until Northampton, Mass. basement dweller J Mascis updated Neil Young's barely leashed feedback squalls (and flannel, and creaky singing...) for kids raised on punk. Because Mascis and bassist Lou Barlow preferred playing with effects pedals to communicating, the original lineup soon split. The trio (rounded out by drummer Murph) successfully reunited, however, and made their network television debut playing You're Living All Over Me's ''The Lung'' — a scant 18 years after its release.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Little Fury Things
1988: Sonic Youth Daydream Nation
Equal parts gorgeous melody and blistering noise, the racket these NYC art-punkers kicked up on their fifth full-length has shown no signs of subsiding since then. Improbably enough, Daydream Nation actually took the Youth's singularly skewed sound mainstream; by the time their next album came out in 1990, they were signed to a major label and playing a crucial role in the nascent alt-rock movement by mentoring artists like Nirvana. (Arguably just as influential in those watershed years: the Pixies' debut LP, Surfer Rosa, also released in '88.)
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Teen Age Riot
1989: The Pixies Doolittle
The Pixies are such an influential act it is tempting to say that, had they not existed, someone would have been forced to invent them. But could even the maddest of scientists have come up with a band whose list of diverse interests merely begins with punk rock, surf music, UFOs, and incest? We're guessing not. The quartet's second album, Doolittle — which was distributed in the U.S. through Elektra (we know, a slight cheat!) — boasts a bright production lacking from their debut, 1988's Surfer Rosa. Yet this just casts the grunge-inspiring dynamics offered by such tracks as ''Fame'' and ''Monkey Gone to Heaven'' into even sharper relief. Indeed, a thousand bands would copy the band's neat trick of playing very softly and then VERY, VERY LOUDLY!!! Even fewer matched chief Pixie Frank Black's slyly pop-infused way with a tune. One that did was Nirvana, whose debut CD — and sole indie album — Bleach, also hit stores in '89.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Debaser
*love it*
1990: Fugazi Repeater
In the late '80s, Dischord Records was king of the D.C. hardcore scene, and Fugazi the (angry, straight-edge) jewel in their crown. The genealogy of the band's members — most significantly, coleaders Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto — was pretty much a six-degrees-of-the-scene marvel, what with all the former and future members of underground luminaries like Minor Threat and Rites of Spring it contained, but it was their incendiary sound — and righteous, fair-play principles — that made them legends on their own, and accidental heroes, too.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Blueprint
1991: My Bloody Valentine Loveless
Distortion was everywhere in 1991, smearing the edges of Teenage Fanclub's sugar-pop opus Bandwagonesque, and weaving a web of tension through the tick-tock precision of Slint's Spiderland. But it dominated the otherworldly soundscapes of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. The U.K. import was the emotional climax of mastermind Kevin Shields' studio explorations, a cacophony of shoegaze noise, droning guitars, and barely audible vocals. Meandering, haunting, and glorious, the album nearly bankrupted Creation Records (future home of Oasis), and never saw a follow-up, but its allure is undeniable. Just ask J Mascis.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Only Shallow
1992: Pavement Slanted and Enchanted
Indie-rock albums can sound every bit as polished and thought-out as any other kind, but the genre at its best often thrives on a certain spirit of disorder. No one understood that better than Stephen Malkmus and his gang of jaded West Coast pranksters. Their debut LP made a downright virtue out of messiness, spilling noodly riffs and free-form lyrics as if at random — and somehow it all cohered into something much greater than the sum of those parts. Pavement would tighten up its songcraft and boost its production values significantly on later efforts like 1994's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, but this was where the band made its defining mark. Beck and all the other artists who took the term ''slacker'' as a badge of honor throughout the rest of the '90s had Slanted and Enchanted to thank for, er, paving the way.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Summer Babe (Winter Version)
*my personal favorite!*
1993: Built To Spill Ultimate Alternative Wavers
Hailing from the not-so-vibrant indie-rock fiefdom of Boise, Idaho, Doug Martsch and Co. nevertheless went on to become one of the biggest indie bands of the '90s — so big, in fact, that Warner Bros. Records soon signed them, and released a number of their best albums. Ultimate Alternative Wavers's cover — the bandmates in a serenely goofy Sears-portrait-studio pose — was a fun punchline, but the music actually delivered. Martsch's signatures — dreamy guitar smog, meandering melodies, and mournful, intuitive lyrics — were already forming, and the early glimmer of a titanic talent emerged.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Three Years Ago Today
1994: Guided By Voices Bee Thousand
Defining ''lo-fi'' in the indie-rock lexicon is Dayton, Ohio's Guided by Voices, the brainchild of part-time teacher/full-time rock star Bob Pollard, who, by the mid-'90s, had already gained the devotion of a small few. But it was Bee Thousand, 36 minutes of skuzzy, twisty gems recorded on a simple four-track, that would cement the band's cult status. Two parts British Invasion worship, one part dadaist meanderings, with heart and soul poured into every chorus, the album remains a timeless treasure trove of undeniable melodies that prompted untold numbers to declare, God bless the good ship GBV and all who sail on her!
ESSENTIAL TRACK: I Am a Scientist
1995: Archers of Loaf Vee Vee
If Stephen Malkmus was the Gertrude Stein of indie rock, then Eric Bachmann's staccato gruffness made him its Ernest Hemingway (''There's something wrong...with my toast,'' he sings on ''Toast'' from 1993's Icky Mettle). But Papa never had a band like this: crackling drums, guitars tuned in odd ways to create perfect dissonance, and a knack for turning abrasive noise into chummy sing-alongs. One such track from Vee Vee, ''Greatest of All Time,'' thusly nailed the state of Lollapalooza Nation circa 1995: ''The underground is overcrowded.'' The Archers rose to the top anyway.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Harnessed in Slums
1996: Belle and Sebastian If You're Feeling Sinister
For anyone who assumed that ''indie'' automatically equals ''aggro,'' this Scottish collective's determinedly mild breakthrough album provided a captivating corrective. Frontman Stuart Murdoch's folky intonations made him sound about as threatening as Donovan, and the arrangements occasionally recalled Burt Bacharach — the gentler side of Burt Bacharach. But Murdoch could use that sophisticated, shy-sounding musical sheen to put across songs that were funny, prickly, elliptical, and, at the core of things, emotional. Sinister? Hardly — but sweetly sneaky, yes.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: The Stars of Track and Field
*also a personal favorite!*
1997: Modest Mouse Lonesome Crowded West
Years before ''Float On'' put them on regular rotation at frat parties and T.G.I. Friday's, these Issaquah, Wash., outsiders produced one of the most brilliant song-for-song albums of the decade — a weary and wonderful piece of Americana imbued with all the messy, soul-cracking angst of disenfranchised youth. From the loping guitar skronk of ''Polar Opposites'' (with its unforgettable lyrics ''I'm trying, I'm trying to/drink away the part of the day that I cannot sleep away'') and the stark, ugly-beautiful sorrow of near-ballads like ''Bankrupt on Selling'' to the furious dissonance of ''Teeth Like God's Shoeshine'' and ''S--- Luck,'' singer Isaac Brock took the postpunk aesthetic and made it astoundingly resonant and personal. Joined by drummer Jeremiah Green and bassist Eric Judy, he was like Frank Black leading the Pixies down a scrappy gutter-trash path — and it was glorious.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Doin' the Cockroach
1998: Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
A lo-fi concept album of sorts about sex and death and Anne Frank, the Georgia quartet's second LP was bound to be a tearjerker. Those cathartic, horn-filled arrangements — mood music for the world's most psychedelic funeral service — helped get the waterworks going too. But the most tragic thing of all about In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is the fact that this was the last music we'd ever hear from Neutral Milk Hotel. Almost immediately after its release, gifted songwriter Jeff Mangum retreated into reclusive silence, sadly unbroken a decade later.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
1999: Sleater-Kinney The Hot Rock
Calling them one of the best female bands of the decade is a disservice — SK was simply one of the best, period. But no matter how prominent Corin Tucker, Janet Weiss, and Carrie Brownstein became on the national scene, they remained surprisingly loyal to the Northwest, staying true to local labels Kill Rock Stars and Sub Pop till they took an ''indefinite hiatus'' in 2006. With The Hot Rock, Tucker and Brownstein's call-and-response vocals and Weiss' fierce percussion offered a signal blast of pop-punk fury coupled with an assured femininity that acknowledged their lady-outsider status but celebrated it, too.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Burn, Don't Freeze!
2000: Yo La Tengo And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
For a decade and a half, this Hoboken band wore hipsterish fandom on their sleeves — interpolating Sun Ra, the Kinks, and New Zealand bands you'd never heard of. But with Nothing Turned Itself..., indie rock finally embraced the big 4-0, as husband-wife team Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley turned their gaze inward for a 77-minute meditation on domesticity. Breaking up the confessional love songs? A cover of a soul-disco obscurity, George McCrae's ''You Can Have It All,'' and the signature YLT propulsion of ''Cherry Chapstick.''
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Cherry Chapstick
2001: The Shins Oh, Inverted World
If ever there were a gateway drug to indie rock, the Shins' shining breakthrough was it. Effortlessly melodic yet lyrically obtuse (singer James Mercer's curious couplets were basically the word-scramble equivalent of a Dalí painting), these New Mexico natives' underground sound eventually reached the masses, thanks in part to number-one fan Zach Braff; but really, they just had the chops all along. Oh, Inverted World wove a rich tapestry of sparkling pop filaments, creating songs both folksy and somehow transcendent. Seven years on, it still sounds timeless.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: New Slang
2002: Interpol Turn On The Bright Lights
Forget the tiresome comparisons that got bandied about when this debut LP dropped. (As if sounding like Joy Division were somehow a bad thing!) Interpol were working their own unique niche, and in a year full of strong contenders — Bright Eyes' Lifted or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground; Rilo Kiley's The Execution of All Things — Turn On the Bright Lights has still aged the best. Unlike many of their fellow scenesters, these impeccably styled Manhattanites were also fearsome musicians: Paul Banks singing ominous nonsense in his boozy basso profundo, Daniel Kessler going manic on guitar, and the killer rhythm section of Carlos Dengler (a.k.a. Carlos D.) and Sam Fogarino working furiously behind them both. Together they conjured an all-enveloping urban darkness, brightened by just the right amount of danceable rhythm. Even Interpol themselves haven't quite been able to live up to that hypnotic standard on their subsequent efforts.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Obstacle 1
2003: The White Stripes Elephant
The best fake siblings in the business could easily have taken the prize two years previously for their breakout White Blood Cells, were it not for four little south-of-the-kneecap dudes from Albuquerque, N.M. (see the Shins, 2001). And Death Cab for Cutie nearly beat them out here with an unimpeachable effort, Transatlanticism. Elephant, though, is no consolation prize. The bass-bonanza awesomeness of ''Seven Nation Army'' aside, their fourth album was a triumph of red, white, and blooze, from the Freddie Mercury-worthy kiss-off of ''There's No Home for You Here'' to their hypnotizing bare-bones riff on the Burt Bacharach classic ''I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself.'' Meg's drumming, charmingly rudimentary as ever, set the stage for Jack to shine, and he inhabited his howling Dee-troit charisma like a man who finally knew what he was capable of. Turns out it was a whole lot.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Seven Nation Army
2004: Arcade Fire Funeral
The title notwithstanding, Arcade Fire's first full-length album was ultimately anything but funereal. Singer Win Butler sounded preoccupied enough with mortality, but these songs were equally obsessed with the thrills and hazards of growing up. There's both toughness and grandiosity to their celebrated sound; they would grow even more symphonic on the next album, 2007's Neon Bible, maybe because that one was recorded in a church instead of the Canadian apartment where this one was partially made. But Funeral was one hell of a baptism.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
*fuckin love this album!*
2005: Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
Dylan, Schmylan. Even as the press twisted itself into semantic knots drawing parallels between the frail, mop-haired Omaha troubadour and the Great Bob, Conor Oberst proved himself to be, quite easily, a man apart. Perhaps because, at only 24, he'd already released five albums under the Bright Eyes umbrella, and was as sure-footed in his hushed bedroom-folk beauty as a man twice his age. Thankfully, he still had all the angsty issues of a Gen-Y icon, and showcased them beautifully on instant classics like ''Lua'' and (with the help of Emmylou Harris) ''Land Locked Blues.''
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Land Locked Blues
2006: The Hold Steady Boys and Girls in America
The remains of Minnesota's Lifter Puller broke out with their third album, Boys and Girls in America, as Craig Finn's tumbling stories of burnouts and breakups fused with suddenly arena-worthy licks to prove this joyous modern bar band has a lifespan beyond tomorrow morning's hangover. It's their legions of faithful (and evangelical) fans that vault the Hold Steady over their closest competition from this year, the Arctic Monkeys, who blew up like the Beatles, sure, but failed to demonstrate their staying power.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: MStuck Between Stations
2007: Spoon Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Spoon spent a good deal of the '90s musically genuflecting at the altar of the Pixies, and for a brief, unhappy period were signed to Elektra (an experience they would vent about on their 1999 single ''The Agony of Laffitte''). But the Britt Daniel-fronted act honed their own brand of poignant, angular pop-rock with such independently released collections as 2002's Kill the Moonlight and 2005's Gimme Fiction. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was a creative leap forward that, at its best, placed Daniel's vocals in a warm Motown-influenced frame. The message located on the inner artwork — "This Record Is a Hit" — turned out to be funny and true.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb
2008: Radiohead In Rainbows
Oxford's finest spent a full decade and a half disqualified from lists like this one due to a glaring technicality. Even as their music grew ever stranger, these defiantly independent artists remained signed to a major label; from The Bends (1995) to OK Computer (1997) to Kid A (2000) and beyond, EMI's gazillion-pound budgets underwrote the band's rejection of the rock world's expectations. So there's more than a little poetic justice in the fact that In Rainbows was, at long last, their first truly indie release — both via last fall's brilliant/infamous pay-what-you-want online scheme and as a physical CD put out by TBD/ATO Records this January. Of course, all those business concerns melt away once you listen to the thing. Full of newly warm instrumentation and emotionally open lyrics (plus, of course, a few left-field twiddles and inscrutable mutterings), it's an elegant summation of everything that's made Radiohead the most popular avant-gardists in a generation.
ESSENTIAL TRACK: Reckoner
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EDIT: I added more from the EW site that had a little to say about each album and the best song from each album and shit
