The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time (2020)

these are all AI generated, you can't fool me

Are we voting for the one that makes us most depressed?

no, the best one, there are at least three good records here

11: “Boys Will Be Boys” – The Ordinary Boys

aside from Valerie and Chelsea Dagger this is the only one I can remember from the title alone - I quite like it. it sounds like if a two-tone band had got back together in the britpop era to do a reunion album, maybe without the original lead singer and one or two other key members - not great, but not bad.

Dirty Pretty Things

The biggest little landfill band

oh, I remember how Hounds Of Love goes as well, didn't notice that one. The Futureheads version is horrible. I remember being really disappointed the first time I heard the Futureheads because I'd read stuff in the NME saying they sounded like XTC. But most of these bands would probably not do well from being compared with Kate Bush and XTC

I don't know a single one of these.

“For Lovers” – Wolfman ft. Pete Doherty

ohhhhhoooohahahaha no thank you!

I was wondering why Little Man Tate chose to name themselves after the film Little Man Tate, wikipedia doesn't really answer the question

In an interview, Jon Windle revealed the name Little Man Tate came when he was on the telephone to bass player Ben Surtees, and was trying to think of a band name. He saw the film Little Man Tate advertised in the television listing, and they settled on that.

I think I was at this gig, I'd never heard of Bromheads Jacket, but I was visiting London and wanted to go to a gig and this was on. I think Vincent Vincent And The Villains played as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hHi1MhiwIg

I missed all of this as I was mainly out of the UK from 2002-2016, I do have two old friends in indie bands who had top 10 hits in the 2000s, but thankfully neither are in the list (no I won't tell who) - would like to say I'm coming to this with an open mind, but it would be a fib, I have already taken against 50% of these, would be interested to see someone who has never heard of these groups and which, if any, they think sound any good.

That Vaccines song is catchy, don’t know most of the rest.

I was all set to vote, but:

I don't know a single one of these.

(Honestly, I only recognize three of the artists' names.)

The true landfill ethos, skipping straight to the landfill

[Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong's] debut self-titled album was originally due to be released on 4 August 2008, however this release was scrapped 13 days before on 22 July 2008 as the album "didn't represent their current sound". Bizarrely, copies had already been sent to critics, with the NME giving it 8/10.[7] Despite the album planning to be re-released in a re-recorded form in early 2009, this never materialised.

Pete and the Pirates is the only band in this list I have any time for, Maximo Park aren't horrible. I've heard most of these and it isn't worth going through them. There's loads of decent to great obscure UK indie from these years that isn't getting talked about and I don't see why we have to discuss this mountain of shit instead purely by dint of it being 'landfill'. Why celebrate creative bankruptcy?

Pete and the Pirates ofc became Teleman who were great for 3 albums and then dropped some terrible, um, landfill this year after their keyboardist quit, but before that they were a example of an actually-good UK mainstream indie band

yeah, really like PatP and Teleman, but missed most of this, other than the Vaccines, the Doherty stuff and AM. still like the one Good Shoes record I have:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFmY_yDNp7Y

Bromheads Jacket were from Sheffield and emerged around the same time as the Artic Monkeys, these lyrics read kind of like a Rutles style parody to the Artic Monkey's Beatles, but I think they're probably just bad

Album version of Woolley Bridge by Bromheads Jacket from the 2006 album, Dits From the Commuter Belt

Lyrics -
Surrey girls like tight jeans
Right up tight against their skin
Take you home to the dark
And show you what's in

With glasses bigger than her face
She's off to get her whats-it waxed
Find out there's some bags she wanted
from Harvey Nicks

Cause she's only thinking about number one again
And she won't listen cause her Samsung is ringing, hold on!

Surrey girls like their boys
with lots of cash to buy them toys
A Porsche or a Merc will do
Turn heads with the noise

Sprayed on tan and new lip gloss
She is off to meet the boss
Three little kids he's got
But she just don't care

Cause she's only thinking about number one again
And she won't listen cause her Samsung is ringing, hold on!

Woolley Bridge, Woolley Bridge
Where it came clear to me
You need love, you need love
But you're wasting time
Over now Surrey girl
I can't really show you how
Give you love, give you love
And I'll waste your time

In her time she's learnt some tricks
Forty licks and bamboo sticks
She is queen here right now
Boy, you'll be numb

That figure ain't just by luck
Atkins Diet, nip and tuck
Hours on the treadmill
And yes she gives a good fuck

Cause she's only thinking about number one again
And she won't listen cause her Samsung is ringing, hold on!

Woolley Bridge, Woolley Bridge
Where it came clear to me
You need love, you need love
But you're wasting time
Over now Surrey girl
I can't really show you how
Give you love, give you love
And I'll waste your time

And now it seems that I have fallen for a Surrey girl
And she has promised she won't leave me for another girl
And now at night we lie and hold each other really tight
And then we promised there that we would be the only ones
We'd be the only ones...

Woolley Bridge, Woolley Bridge
Where it came clear to me
You need love, you need love
But you're wasting time
Over now Surrey girl
I can't really show you how
Give you love, give you love
And I'll waste your time

bants

The two Maximo Park singles, Guillemots and Mystery Jets are the only ones I'd save from this list.

Ok, here are the ones I want to slightly defend

“Munich” – Editors - The Editors are to Interpol as Interpol are to Joy Division, is how I'd sum it up, not much of a defense now I write it down.
“See You at the Lights” – 1990s - The Yummy Fur are one of my favourite bands of all times, this is their follow-up act from the 2000s. Not as good as TYF, not by any means the best 1990s single, but still quite enjoyable to listen to, if you ignore the horrible video.
“Two Doors Down” – Mystery Jets - Note-perfect mid-80s sophisti-pop pastiche, I still find this single to be a complete joy, can understand how it wouldn't be for everyone.
“22 Grand Job” – The Rakes - Just a fun two-minute post-punk-pop single, don't see how it qualifies as landfill. "Binary Love" is better.

There are about 20 I think I've never heard.

I don't think I actually remember how Chelsea Dagger goes aside from the nah-nah nah nah-nah nah nah-nah-nah-nah-nah nah bit

“Two Doors Down” – Mystery Jets - Note-perfect mid-80s sophisti-pop pastiche, I still find this single to be a complete joy, can understand how it wouldn't be for everyone.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

This and Young Love were brilliant singles. Nothing else I ever heard by them was on a similar level.

I think everyone here has already heard me defend the Futureheads - they are good and also good lads and served time on the DIY circuit. I don't like the Cribs but will give them props for continuing to support and highlight fully independent bands once big.

1990s particularly sucked because I loved the Yummy Fur but really couldn't find anything good in this new godforsaken lumpen musical form.

First 1990s album is pretty good imo. From the second one "59" is a good single.

I've knowingly heard about six of these. three of those aren't shit but those odds are just luck, doubtless the rest are garbage. I like hounds of love. valerie & chelsea dagger are worse than herpes.

That Fratellis song was a public nuisance for a while.

i've heard maybe half a dozen of these? quite like the hounds of love cover tho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

voted Futureheads because they are actually a good band

Lots to dislike about Mumm-Ra (the band name, think the singer called himself 'Noo' etc) but seem to remember She's Got You High was a pretty decent slice of melodic indie-pop

think I've only heard Maximo Park and The Rifles but can't imagine anything would beat "Apply Some Pressure"

Was quite interested to check out Les Incompétents because only in the 2000s would you name your band after a shit throwaway line in Home Alone.
And what the fuck is this? Just standard landfill, only with THREE vocalists whose voices are all weird and bad in different ways?!

some of the shittest music scum island has ever shat out, never give an inch

Yes but what's your favourite?

I'm worried nostalgia and distance is going to legitimate this stuff again and then we'll be trapped in a pub with these tossers for the rest of our lives while the ocean engulfs us

futureheads are the only band on the list that i care for, though i'm not nuts about that particular song

xp nah, this is the last gasp of a dying scene, nobody under the age of 30 has any interest in this shit, with the exception of a few freaks on the swagger of oasis thread, don't think even the people involved feel that nostalgic about it. it's dead and ready to be dissected.

I hope so but these people seemed to have a lot of power once

(not that I realised this at the time but) less the bands or their teenage fans than the veteran indie/britpop ideologues who helped build this monster as a weapon or shield against grime or r&b or whatever

I mean, I'm not really that interested in these songs, unlikely I'll bother to listen to them.

More like, can we generalise this landfill concept? Are there other genres which carried on moribund for a decade or so after they'd completely run out of any ideas? I've already talked about landfill opera cylinders on the other thread, but was there landfill jazz? Like dixieland/trad records in the late 60s maybe?

there's almost certainly landfill grunge from around the same time as landfill indie

idk about how much actual recording and production there was in the brit trad jazz scene but it certainly seems similarly superfluous - it did produce skiffle so in a way it's to blame for all this shit

there's almost certainly landfill grunge from around the same time as landfill indie

Yes I think that's nearest the American equivalent.

I'd say it's more like "grunge" devolved back into Landfill Hard Rock in the Creed/Nickelback era.

ok i listened to the #1 song, because i'd never heard of any of them, and oh my god this is just awful. the video, christ, those hats, the whole burlesque theme... on the whole i'd rather be listening to electro-swing! or humphrey lyttleton, for that matter.

as far as good trad records from the '60s, i'm not sure landfill indie ever produced anybody as good as cap'n john handy (not to be confused with the third stream john handy, different guy):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwiSaH4xfvE

that's the thing, a lot of the revival in the us at least was people who were doing it the first time around and had been forgotten and were still fucking great.

i missed the discussion about landfill opera cylinders! i'd be interested in seeing more about that. i think there were.... worse genres of music at the time than that vibrato-heavy opera stuff.

i'll admit that it amuses me to think of some band 40 years from now digging up the guy from the fratellis to lend some authentic landfill indie sounds to one of their songs the way radiohead did with humphrey lyttleton...

this is probably not the best thread in which to raise this question, but: kinda seems like (our ilx) englishes reflexively hate *anything* produced by their comrades? i mean even if no one hates the actual music, someone will eventually call said musicians tory cunts just on principle? idgi

"mardy bum" is easily the best early arctic monkeys song and really doesn't have any place on this list

Wow I don’t think I’ve actually heard any of these bands—and yes that includes Arctic Monkeys

ufo otm (i still voted for that one tho)

i don't even really like much arctic monkeys before their most recent album but it feels weird to lump them in with the term basically used to separate them from their even worse imitators? if you're including them then why not bloc party or whoever else actually made good british indie rock in the 00s

fuck those tall poppies

Voted for "Apply Some Pressure" (from the very small handful I've knowingly heard)

tipsy mothra otm: the Vaccines song rules, imo

The only ones I've heard from here are the Arctic Monkeys and Futureheads tracks, and the Futureheads is the only one I ever go back to.

OK I just went through the whole list like a fool, and, with the help of Google image search, can now give you a gendered breakdown of the landfill indie world (male/female only, anything else I couldn't tell you from looking).

Male band members - 179
Female band members - 4

oh, I remember how Hounds Of Love goes as well, didn't notice that one. The Futureheads version is horrible. I remember being really disappointed the first time I heard the Futureheads because I'd read stuff in the NME saying they sounded like XTC. But most of these bands would probably not do well from being compared with Kate Bush and XTC

― he thinks it's chinese money (soref), Saturday, May 20, 2023 3:03 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I haven't heard the debut in ages but I actually did think they compared somewhat to XTC, the songs had this effortless pop sense to them in a way that guys like Andy Partridge were really good at. the "Hounds of Love" cover isn't good though and not knowing the original when I heard this album I thought it was one of the worst songs on it

Futureheads got pretty bad after that though

Toss up between the Maximo Parks tracks and 22 Grand Job

I love plenty of 50s trad and skiffle, this is why I was specifying "late 60s" as it seems to have dried up creatively with the arrival of The Beatles, idk maybe Chris Barber was still putting out good records then.

i missed the discussion about landfill opera cylinders! i'd be interested in seeing more about that. i think there were.... worse genres of music at the time than that vibrato-heavy opera stuff.

xp nah, this is the last gasp of a dying scene, nobody under the age of 30 has any interest in this shit, with the exception of a few freaks on the swagger of oasis thread, don't think even the people involved feel that nostalgic about it. it's dead and ready to be dissected.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), sábado 20 de mayo de 2023 11:15 PM (yesterday)

Lol accurate. I’d say the only artist from this lot still relevant for anyone under 30 is Arctic Monkeys - which is weird considering their two last albums sound directed at people over 40.

Maybe indirectly the Zutons via Amy Winehouse covering that song.

yeah it's remarkable how arctic monkeys have both stayed relevant and significantly improved compared to pretty much every other big uk 00s indie 00s act which were mostly all out of good ideas by the second or third album

nobody under the age of 30 has any interest in this shit

unfortunately not true, a former roommate of mine saw the wombats live a few years ago

Is it possible to make any money before you hit a certain size and is it becoming progressively difficult to find a place to play. I remember seeing several articles over teh last 10 or 20 years complaining about how more and more venues were disappearing so is that still continuing?
Just wondering if this is likely to be something that would have a finite scope when fighting hurdles like that. Or would teh struggle be likely to make people strive to be something other than landfill. Or are bands fitting this category aware that that is what they are doing.
Might hope that the fear one is going to be seen as landfill might make players strive to avoid the category if they can. But that might be rose tinted lensed though.

this is probably not the best thread in which to raise this question, but: kinda seems like (our ilx) englishes reflexively hate *anything* produced by their comrades? i mean even if no one hates the actual music, someone will eventually call said musicians tory cunts just on principle? idgi

The Fratellis aren't English. Neither are a lot of British ILXors.

If you sub English for British (rookie mistake, mookie) then I'd say this is not limited to British music by any means, open disdain towards anyone in UK arts and culture is a defining trait. The fact that said sector is mostly controlled by about thirty posh Oxbridge cunts might give you some clues as to why. Still feels a bit exceptionalist at times mind.

Anyway I thought the point of the landfill tag was that it was a major marketing miscalculation - i.e. these bands got pushed hard but no one was buying, partially due to lack of interest in the music and partially because it coincided with the dying days of the CD format and no one was paying for music period - thus the landfill as a final fate. I don't think 00's post grunge can be cast in that light, Nickelback sold loads and afaict there was no big push in the US to promote similar bands that didn't take off.

Arctic Monkeys definitely don't belong on this list.

it's interesting that the two greatest influences for this genre - The Strokes and The White Stripes - are contemporary American acts.

Is that true though? I don't enough about how these bands to comment tbh. When I think of landfill indie I think instantly of Scouting For Girls, who are like an abysmal take on Supergrass and assume most of these bands are post-Britpop.

Scouting For Girls supporting Tom Jones on a concert poster I saw recently.

The Fratellis are basically a ham-fisted attempt at The White Stripes' sound xp

never knowingly heard a scouting for girls song and not much motivation to spend 3 minutes changing this state of affairs

surely you must have heard 'she's so lovely'? that was scouting for girls.

At the age of 15 Roy and Greg were playing together at small gigs in west London. It has been noted that the band was looking for a spirited way of removing themselves from the drudgery of their everyday lives, looking to the whimsy of childhood fantasy through playing a Moog organ.

ok, checked out 30 seconds of it, more than enough for me, never heard before and never want to hear again.

wikipedia has descriptions of all of scouting for girls' music videos

The music video for "She's So Lovely" is set in a bowling alley. Roy Stride is trying to attract the attentions of a pretty girl (Louise Glover), but she has a boyfriend (Liyo Cassini) already. While the boyfriend is there, Roy tells the girl she looks beautiful. The boyfriend gets angry, but gets called away for his throw. As he scores a strike, Roy and the girl walk off down the hall together (although only their legs are shown, the shoes and jeans are the same as Roy's).

The music video for "Elvis Ain't Dead" was recorded in a studio and involved the band members simply playing the song. There are shots of Roy Stride wandering around town and seeing people with Elvis haircuts and wearing the sorts of clothes he wore. At the end of the video he sees the girl that he is attracted to and the song fades with the words "Elvis has left the building. Thank you and goodnight!", a line made famous by Elvis.

In the music video the band is seen playing at a lovers ball in front of young couples. Those who have love (or lust) for others are shown to have beating CGI hearts.

This music video is set in a restaurant, where Roy asks a number of girls to a restaurant. They all seem uninterested with him, and he pulls out the same flowers for them all. They all leave him, and near the end, Roy is sitting alone at his table when the young waitress sits down with him. They both laugh as the scene fades to black.

The music video has the band playing in tuxedos on a white stage whilst there are men and women dancing to the side of the band.

The music video consists of various clips of the band on tour and in various places including a casino. It shows them playing the song on a stage at a concert or festival. It was released to their official YouTube on 9 February 2009.[3]

The video for "This Ain't a Love Song" was filmed at London City Airport and a technical college in Rainham, Essex, and was directed by Eric Liss. The idea for the video came from the lead singer, Roy Stride. The original video was dismissed as being too dark so the version that was released was filmed.[4][5] These shots included a girl waiting for her flight crew mother, two male friends and an old couple.[5] The video also involved several night shots.[3]

The official music video to accompany the single "Famous" was released on the band's website and YouTube on 23 April 2010,[6] 2 months prior to the release of the actual single. The video features the members of the band sat around in an apartment, as per described in the lyrics "Staying in again on a Saturday night". Stride is then seen reading the owner's manual to the various television screens positioned in the apartment, which refers to the lyric: "I've got 900 channels, but there's nothing to see". The band then perform the single, all the while recording themselves, before placing a video cassette in the video player, resulting in the performance being shown on the television sets. The celebrities named in the video, including Bette Davis and James Dean are all shown on the television screens at various points throughout the video.

The official music video to accompany the single "Don't Want To Leave You" was released on the band's website and YouTube on 3 September 2010.[4]

The official music video to accompany the single "Love How It Hurts" was released on the band's website and YouTube on 27 May 2011. The music video shows a young geeky boy falling in love with a pretty girl as they soon started to become friends a cool bad boy comes over and takes the girl away. The geeky boy tried to give her a tape holding 'Love How It Hurts' on it. Yet again the cool boy interrupts and breaks it apart. Next they have all grown up and he is still in love with her. The geeky boy runs to meet her, intercut with scenes of the girl and geeky boy. He tries to marry her and (yet again) the cool boy interrupts, throws the ring off a nearby cliff and tries to walk off with the girl again. The music video ends when the girl stops walking and looks back at him.[1]
The band do not feature in the video, a first for them. Roy Stride said this was due to them touring Germany and that: "The record label just decided to make it without us!". The band made two 'Alternative Endings' to the video, and fans were to pick their favourite. It features bassist Greg as the geeky boy and leader singer Roy as the bad boy fighting over the girl, played by drummer Pete. It was filmed at a service station on their way back from a gig and according to their Twitter, "Total Budget £9.36".[2]

I hated nu-metal and pop punk when I was a teenager in the early 2000s, but if I hear that stuff now I feel a certain nostalgic fondness. I hated landfill indie at the time as well and I thought that listening to the spotify playlist I might discover a similar grudging affection, but it was just depressing. I think this is partly because landfill indie sounds quite similar to music I actually like, but really bad.

I love plenty of 50s trad and skiffle, this is why I was specifying "late 60s" as it seems to have dried up creatively with the arrival of The Beatles, idk maybe Chris Barber was still putting out good records then.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

in 1973 he released an album called _Drat That Fratle Rat!_, which is at least suitable for that thread of extremely '70s album titles. i do also think there's a pretty big difference between the us trad jazz scene (consisting mostly of older folks who'd been playing that kind of music from the '70s) and the uk scene. i probably should finish reading billy bragg's book on skiffle to see what he says about it...

this is from back when centuries of sound was in the 1900s, I had this thing I called the "dragnet method" where I used a javascript crawler to download mp3s from online music archives like archive.org, ucsb, russian records, etc. - at that point there were ~1000 surviving records per year, but it wasn't such a problem to listen to them all as at least 50% were these absolutely terrible opera recordings which could be safely skipped / deleted after 20 seconds.

there were also some good or at least passable opera records, but they were few and far between.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

see, at some point one of the deep dives i went on was a compilation called "the record of singing" and the accompanying books by michael scott:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Record_of_Singing

i do strongly recommend scott's books, they are _marvelously_ bitchy. anyway my general impression is that these recordings... in the early years nobody really had any sense that how one sung on a record could be different than the way one sung in a cavernous hall. i found that once i adjusted to the quirks of the era that many of them were very good... i'm particularly fond of amelita galli-curci.

Galli-curci is good, as are many on that list, I can even appreciate Alessandro Moreschi. But the majority of the cylinders are of a much lower quality in terms of performance, technology and preservation.

My favourite discovery from early 1900s opera is Maria A Mikhailova, this is a great recording of a great performance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnmIlQIFdxU

it's very commonly said that the reason Caruso was such a phenomenon was that he was the first opera performer to successfully adapt his style to the new medium, but listening to this, no he wasn't the first.

Fuck Forever is the worst song of all time

I hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it

I have never heard a single one of these

Some scruffy comments

47: “Annie, Let’s Not Wait” – Guillemots - Anyone else remember Green Gartside being a Guillemots fan? Did I imagine it?
42: “Gone Up In Flames” – Morning Runner - The Inbetweeners theme
40: “Romantic Type” – The Pigeon Detectives - My dad liked them simply because they were from Leeds. A depressing state of affairs.
38: “Hounds Of Love” – The Futureheads - I knew this years before the original. I liked the video because of the dogs but the track doesn't hold up.
37: “Munich” – Editors - I think I even prefer White Lies to the Editors. Primeval credits music suppliers iirc.
36: “Killamangiro” – Babyshambles - I hate this band.
35: “Somewhere Else” – Razorlight - "I met a girl, she asked me my name, I told her what it was"
29: “Monster” – The Automatic - Much like the Hoosiers, I felt some peer pressure at the time (I was eight or nine) to like this, and like the Hoosiers, I never could.
22: “We’ll Live and Die in These Towns” – The Enemy - Dreadful band but perhaps unfairly their awful lyrics attracted far more scorn than the Kaisers or Monkeys' similarly hideous efforts.
21: “Apply Some Pressure” – Maximo Park - Along with the Futureheads they had more clout i.e. Pitchfork acclaim, were on Warp. Not bad.
15: “Sofa Song” – The Kooks - I hate this band
13: “If You Wanna” – The Vaccines - I hate this band
11: “Boys Will Be Boys” – The Ordinary Boys - Don't mind this, weedy blokey 2 Tone done good by having Ranking Junior emcee on the second version.
9: “22 Grand Job” – The Rakes - Also don't mind this, although I've never quite got what put this lot on a higher rung for many.
8: “Mardy Bum” – Arctic Monkeys - More insufferable memories of my dad's car CD player.
4: “Naïve” – The Kooks - I hate this band
3: “Don’t Go Back To Dalston” – Razorlight - I will say I like 'Golden Touch', 10:15 Saturday Night rip though it is. Nostalgia innit. But all their okay songs are a rip on something.
2: “Fuck Forever” – Babyshambles - I should probably remind you that I hate this.
1: “Chelsea Dagger” – The Fratellis - See my comments for Monster.

Fuck Forever is the worst song of all time

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Sunday, May 21, 2023 8:06 AM

i considered giving it a troll vote

I remember zines pushing Libertines/Babyshambles Doherty shit in the 00s as rock saviours. When I finally caved in and listened I was so confused I thought was getting trolled and I downloaded a fake album.

Nope turns out they really were that desperate.

Mostly NME

NME was a zine?

Editors had one truly great single in “An End Has a Start”, but everything else is completely forgettable

quite fond of 'bullets' by editors tbh

i got tix for glastonbury '05, and this stuff was a massive part of that mudfest weekend.
i saw the rakes, art brut, maximo park, babyshambles, the others, and heard morning runner from afar,
there were probably more of these bands on the line ups,
but i was too busy elsewhere.
i dare not look at the full line up now as i just know i probably wasted my weekend.
that said, art brut and the rakes were a lot of fun, and that first maximo park album still makes me grin.

the maximo park song is really good, i think i like “our velocity” more tho

Were Hard-Fi not good enough for this list or were they not really landfill indie?

I hate the angular choppy post punk side of this (figureheads, Maximo park etc) much prefer the stuff that rips of the strokes or has a romantic atmosphere.

“Munich” is the second or third best interpol song

I agree that “two doors down” is swell, I get a “come on Eileen” vibe from it.

re hard-fi : good call,
they totally should have been in the list.
i actually liked their thing for a while.
mainly the wrongtom dubbed up versions of course, but still ..

God what a nightmare. This is the reason poptimism exists.

"Two Doors Down" really sucks. At the time I really liked "Scarecrows In the Rain," and listening now I guess the hook isn't the worst I've ever heard. But I just don't have the patience for vocals or production that resemble this.

I blame ILM for convincing me to like the "Hounds Of Love" cover.

would be good to compile some of the actually good UK indie from the landfill years 2004-2008

I was about to say, "An Honest Mistake" might be the only track from this era that holds up, but turns out The Bravery are from NYC.

Xxxpost sorry not zines, magazines/blogs

my vote is for "apply some pressure" which is legitimately great!! the whole first maximo park album still really holds up, i revisited it not too long ago

let's listen to "the coast is always changing"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDczRUpruoI

"our velocity" is also great tho i won't go hard for much else they did

i do have a soft spot for some of those razorlight songs... "golden touch" isn't on here but is prob their best. "somewhere else" is pretty good tho

the rakes debut album is also pretty good imo. catchy little post punk record. "22 grand job" is a good mission statement but "work work work (pub club sleep)" is still awesome .... perhaps hits harder for me now than when i was 15 since i've been to a wetherspoons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXdO3ojPfTY

"strasbourg" is also a banger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yXRCxrT83k

i also may have been tempted to vote for the cribs - "mirror kissers" if it was on here. great song! you could actually sing about "the hipster type(s)" in 2005 with a straight face...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzqZborBWtA

i was working at tower records when all this stuff was in full swing (2003-2006), especially libertines/doherty shit talk. we stocked all the brit music papers and moka otm; they all went in full bore on this scene. fold out posters of the kooks, codes for arctic monkeys ring tone downloads, and i seem to recall a briefly ran serial column specifically for fan aacounts of pete doherty sightings.

i checked out babyshambles and just figured it was me that "didn't get it." most of the bands mentioned here passed me by. there was a local alternative station that really started to push razorlight for some reason. in hindsight, the whole thing strikes me as (and this might not be a very polite take, sry) the british press trying to "compete" with the american scene. like, "oh sure you have the strokes but we have (insert whatever hype band they were behind that month)."

is it unfair of me to laugh at most of this stuff now?

not unfair at all, it's one of the points of the thread.

Well I dunno, the Brit music press were also all in on the Strokes too and speaking of them in insanely hyperbolic terms, they were a better band than most of these chancers yes but Strokes, Libertines and subsequent bands were all viewed through the same "rock is BACK" filter.

xpost

Apply Some Pressure is the only legit answer here

It's funny how so many of these basically exist now as 240p Youtube videos from 16 years ago

re other genres I guess business techno would be an equivalent xps

every action having an equal and opposite reaction might explain the rise of the xx in 2009, ruining UK indie from the other direction

Galli-curci is good, as are many on that list, I can even appreciate Alessandro Moreschi. But the majority of the cylinders are of a much lower quality in terms of performance, technology and preservation.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

the phenomenon moreschi represents is, unsurprisingly, an interesting one to me... the whole thing was just super messed up. and the most messed up thing of all was that it was all just misogyny. as far as i'm aware prepubescent boys don't have any special vocal qualities girls don't. there was no reason for it.

I don't feel like Guillemots really count ITT. They were more like a less annoying UK(ISH) Arcade Fire than these swaggering schmindie blokes. I still have a big soft spot for 'Trains to Brazil'

I don't feel like Guillemots really count ITT. They were more like a less annoying UK(ISH) Arcade Fire than these swaggering schmindie blokes. I still have a big soft spot for 'Trains to Brazil'

― Do I look like I know what a jpeg is? (dog latin)

Trains To Brazil is such a great single. There's some good stuff on the debut album too. The second album was career suicide and they never recovered.

Oh not heard anything past the first album. How was it career suicide?

It was just a weird mix of styles, most of which didn't work. The hooks weren't as strong and it just seemed really unfocused and underwritten at times. The lead single, Get Over It gave them their biggest hit, but it's really jarring and miles away from Trains To Brazil and Made Up Love Song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJNe0AjNXrs

There's a handful of songs on there I'd save like the opener Kriss Kross and the second single, Falling Out Of Reach which was lovely.

the phenomenon moreschi represents is, unsurprisingly, an interesting one to me... the whole thing was just super messed up. and the most messed up thing of all was that it was all just misogyny. as far as i'm aware prepubescent boys don't have any special vocal qualities girls don't. there was no reason for it.

― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, May 21, 2023 8:14 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

fwiw I think his voice does have a different quality about it - though perhaps much of this is due to the head voice he uses (which was standard at the time for opera singers.) Undoubtedly a great motivator for the continued existence of castrati was the culture/traditions of the vatican, moreschi was the maestro pro tempore of the sistine chapel choir, and his only recordings were made in the vatican.

okay finally went to dive into the playlist and fucking lol--- some of these aren't even available on us spotify! oh boy.

anyway, here we go...

guillemots are terrible, but i appreciate them for their shameless coldplay aspirations.

les incompetents sounds like someone successfully making fun of these kinds of bands. dreadful.

had to go over to youtube for the paddingtons and i regret every second. jfc.

(i'm not making it all the way through most of these btw. getting the cliche out of the way: THEY ALL SOUND THE SAME)

okay, i get what ya'll mean re: maximo park. "our velocity" sounds like they had an actual producer working with them. still not all the way my thing, but it at least sticks out (in a good way).

lol the editors. "riyl interpol"

"hounds of love" cover is vile.

I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY I HATE PETE DOHERTY

may regret this but: two door cinema club isn't that bad - one of the better things on here so far!

bromheads jacket are fucking awful. that is all.

"we'll live and die in these towns" is downright hilarious. i like it. "so bad it's good"

this mystery jets is admittedly terrible, but i like how it goes full twee: twinkly synths, big stupid chorus, and hey even some sax. maybe it's just that it has some variety in the arrangement and that's why it sticks out, but i don't mind it.

lol the cribs - "dude, johnny marr's new band!" oh dear. on the better side of this stuff, but still. sigh of disappointment.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH THE SINGER IN BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB?? STOP THAT, FRIEND!!!

...sheesh, this stuff must be awful because "mardy bum" came on and i was like "oh that's not too bad!"

i remember reading a review of this kooks album (inside in / inside out) where the reviewer was really going to bat for them; "these lads are bringing something truly different to the scene and are surely the future of rock music" (paraphrasing). hoo boy, they sure do suck in retrospect.

aaahahahahahaha!! "fuck forever"!!! it's.... so, so terrible. still very tempted to vote for it. good times.

finally, the fratellis- meh, they suck. what's new?

really undecided on what to vote for. do i genuinely enjoy any of these songs? no. any enjoyment in this stuff always involves a bit of sardonic humor; even with the ones that aren't 'so bad it's good' i'm still enjoying it with a smirk.

Generator by the Holloways should have made the list. I remember Radio 1 calling it a song that it is impossible not to be lifted up by. Hehehe, one might say, but then it had the last laugh by semi-inventing Vampire Weekend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bIC4V_DIrg

Yoooo

I like the 5 songs here I'm able to remember

good god, that interview. was that supposed to be cheeky!?

"did you ever call her katie manure?" ffs, how do you interview the kooks and come off the cuntiest cunt of the lot??

voted two cinema club btw.

two door cinema club soz

fwiw I think his voice does have a different quality about it - though perhaps much of this is due to the head voice he uses (which was standard at the time for opera singers.) Undoubtedly a great motivator for the continued existence of castrati was the culture/traditions of the vatican, moreschi was the maestro pro tempore of the sistine chapel choir, and his only recordings were made in the vatican.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

that's the damnedest thing, it's so fucking DARVO. we get called groomers but it's always been christian authorities who are the actual groomers.

sorry, i know we're supposed to be talking about how shit babyshambles are.

it's true that moreschi's voice is unusual. i can't think of any _physiological_ reason why this should be the case, though. my suspicion is that nobody sounds like moreschi today because, well, nobody really wants to!

I liked “Dakota” by Stereophonics. That doesn’t count as landfill indie?

Some more discussion on this list from a couple years ago:

the landfill that time forgot: crap uk bands of 00s/10s

good god, that interview. was that supposed to be cheeky!?

Yeah that was the Popworld style. This one arguably still crosses a line when it gets to the Melua stuff but it's one of Simon's more famous ones.

Landfill indie is just not a genre though....it's a pejorative term meaning "shitty example of a genre in which much shitty music was produced"--50 Shittiest Landfill Indie Songs makes some sense; 50 Best is just completely incoherent.

I suppose maybe 50 Least Shitty Landfill Indie Songs was deemed a little too uninspiring?

Oh, and _Up the Bracket_ is better than anything by the Strokes.

Oh, and _Up the Bracket_ is better than anything by the Strokes.

― gucci meme (theStalePrince)

I don’t even like the strokes but this is not even worth the discussion.

co-sign. libertines were always terrible. they make the strokes sound good.

(and i f'kn hate the strokes)

We did a 1000-post thread on this two years ago? Fucking hell lol

Oh wait, most of it was not from two years ago

Wow, there's a Boaby G skit on that thread I'd completely forgotten about.

As others have said I think "Mardy Bum" is a little out of place here. I voted for that but I have reluctant affection for the Mystery Jets and Two Door Cinema Club songs.

I recall liking a Glasvegas song that sounded a bit like Mazzy Star, but it's not the one on this list. Shout out to Jack Peñate who's done some writing for SAULT recently and is a big part of why Jessie Ware started her own musical career.

Incomplete list of actually-good UK guitar indie bands who began in the 00's:

Clearlake, Late Of The Pier, The Chap, My Computer, Youthmovies, Working For A Nuclear Free City, Electrelane, British Sea Power, Electric Soft Parade (their new album that came out 3 days ago = they've still got it!), The Cooper Temple Clause, Engineers, The Display Team, iLiKETRAiNS, Silvery, Field Music...

It wasn't all landfill around 'ere!

McLusky & 80s Matchbox are the two others that spring to mind. I think of Clearlake and Electrelane as being very late 90s but this is probably just an artefact of abandoning the UK in 2002.

Wild Beasts, Dutch Uncles, Esben & The Witch

I thought of McLusky but decided they weren't indie so much as noise-rock, underground, punk etc. Splitting hairs I know

Clearlake and Electrelane both began in 2000/01 I think - yeah, Electrelane's first single released in January '00 haha

Ahhhh ofc NickB

it IS notable though that most of these good bands are from either London, Brighton or up north. Landfill is very Midlands/Home Counties, discuss etc

I'll reluctantly allow Los Campesinos! if we're extending the Welsh any favours

Also Long Blondes and Clor are very much non-landfill

Wales are in this if Scotland are (which they are)

oh fuck, you've reminded me - Lapsus Linguae!! aaargh how could I forget haha

it IS notable though that most of these good bands are from either London, Brighton or up north. Landfill is very Midlands/Home Counties, discuss etc

― imago, Monday, 22 May 2023 07:54 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this theory blown to bits by taking stock of just how very very many of these terrible bands are also from London, albeit like, certain parts of it (cough Shoreditch) i bet

It's also just generally bullshit. There were loads of great bands around here at that time, it's just none of them made it into the press. Plus most of your list I would say is bad and boring indie music! British Sea Power as a counter-example to landfill indie, really?

also early 2000s = sappy mawkish singer-songwriter stuff like Turin Brakes, there was plenty of that about.

Long Blondes were landfill-genre but far better than their contemporaries, love them

Babyshambles is fascinating to me only for being Shaggs-adjacent in their complete ineptitude, their rhythm section was always making the worst decisions and then executing these decisions poorly, it’s kind of amazing

I voted Larrikin Love because they somehow were proto- the next decade of landfill in a prescient way and I like their lyrics

Also obv I’m not going to listen to all these songs but I did listen to the Joe Lean song and it’s totally fine?

Is joe lean meant to be a reference to Jolene

It's also just generally bullshit. There were loads of great bands around here at that time, it's just none of them made it into the press. Plus most of your list I would say is bad and boring indie music! British Sea Power as a counter-example to landfill indie, really?

― emil.y, Monday, 22 May 2023 13:43 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

NAME NAMES

Landfill indie, btw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmRSuTjLKaU

;)

I mean, to me that just sounds like dreary uninspired guitar music, so yeah? It is indie that I would throw into a landfill. Full disclosure: I only listened to the first four minutes before giving up, maybe something incredible happens during the next ten minutes?

I fast forwarded and can report nothing happened.

There's literally an extended noise jam at the end! PROGGE

Anyway the other bands I suggested are better and more exciting honest. Except the ones I crossed out lol

At what stage did Landfill Indie because a catch-all term for almost the entire decade of British indue as opposed to merely the likes of Milburn etc

The Display Team fall into my 'I love Cardiacs but can't find a way into their descendants' category. Iirc they were good at ABC I guess.

My Computer excellent as hell but I file them in the Max Tundra/Cursor Miner part of my mind

Late of the Pier fantastic but I have a weakness for most of the more d̷o̷n̷'̷t̷s̷a̷y̷n̷e̷w̷r̷a̷v̷e̷a̷g̷a̷i̷n̷ dance-oriented such bands of this period. Intimacy is Bloc Party's best!

Turin Brakes (and earlier mention of Athlete) could initiate New Acoustic Movement/non-Coldplay/Travis/Keane "post-Britpop" names nuggets poll if one hasn't been done.

suspect that the only reason any of this stuff sounded exciting to anyone is *that* was the depressing sound of indie from approx 1998-2002. I even prefer the landfill, it's that shit and dull.

Starsailor, Alfie, Terris, Haven - one noun wonders, supplanted by plurialised noun wonders with definite articles*. I disagree though, I think this period was better than landfill. For one it's leading names were generally better (Doves, Badly Drawn Boy, that there the Cold Play). Would not be surprised if that was just me though.

*Really the other side to this (in the sense of bands they would share compilations with) was JJ72, Muse, Idlewild, Feeder, My Vitriol, the phoenix-risen Ash - bands that could get equal NME and Kerrang! coverage. And then lol there's Stereophonics who sort of fit into all these categories in some way.

early Elbow are defensible is my bedwetter indie challops

Tried and failed to get into early Elbow, surprisingly.

*Really the other side to this (in the sense of bands they would share compilations with) was JJ72, Muse, Idlewild, Feeder, My Vitriol, the phoenix-risen Ash - bands that could get equal NME and Kerrang! coverage.

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Monday, 22 May 2023 16:18 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the Oceansize/Aereogramme axis of this clearly its pinnacle, altho both bands began juuuust before 2000

I got the Display Team to play my local club in Hertfordshire back when they were called Mumrah. Had no idea they were known outside of the local gig circuit. Anyway, they were a lot of fun and lovely chaps

But yes, let's not call all British rock c2000-2010 "indie Landfill". It is a genre with a specific sound

So is 'landfill' defined as acts working in a genre that's already been creatively strip-mined therefore nothing worthwhile can ever happen in it again? Because every genre/style is around 90% derivative and somewhat pointless, with the possible exception of classical/orchestral music. Probably there too though.

It was said upthread, but it's also about the push that these acts got - majors & 'independent' subsidiaries pressing thousands of CDs for the Next Big Thing acts that will invariably end up in landfill sites. I would say imagine the musical equivalent of the ET game but that's much more fun than these bands.

xp really but my understanding of it has always been that it's that gut from around 2004-09 when a huge number of post-Libertines/Strokes/FF-sounding bands were all signed up to majors or indies big enough to be majors, get rapid Radio 1 play almost from the word go, prominently appear at all the big festivals and get on the right magazine covers, but were ultimately proven to be only useful for a few hits, if that. The idea that it is landfill has some similar conjurations to 'manufactured' here - the idea that a sound had grotesquely saturated: these groups formed, got major mainstream exposure, and then were then all dropped after their 'use' expired, 'landfill' in charity shops, but also landfill in that the majority of these bands' discographies is probably worthless. Which is incredibly cruel on some of these bands, but the name has stuck.

OTM and (xp) OTM.

So was this stuff ever dubbed ‘landfill’ before the print version of the NME started being given away for free back in 2016? Or did the demise of this stuff lead to the demise of the NME?

I'd never heard the term until the mid-2010s. But the NME did ultimately suffer from the bubble bursting. Those bands were recognisably 'NME bands' whereas the only new groups I can think of that came later with that term attached were like Temples, Swim Deep, Superfood - bands of varying success but whose media vehicles were uniformly subtler than the landfill groups (or so I'd say anyway).

ach, nae! young knives do not belong in the landfill

It appears that every non-significant band of the times has been retrospectively branded landfill

tbf only in retaliation for me being rude to the entire Midlands

My Vitriol had potential, but they vanished into the ether so quickly. I don’t recall them getting any kind of traction on modern rock or college radio in North America, but Q had an article on them every month for at least half a year (2002?)

My Vitriol are such a weird one to me. I seem to know several people who think they were amazing and still yearn for a second album. At a friend's stag do about ten years ago, I met another friend of his who said they were his favourite band. I don't remember them being that good at all.

I only remember them by name. Weren't they more of a Kerrang-style band?

I was thinking maybe slade were partial progenitors of the sound, but noddy has a voice, there's the violin, and they had some degree of idiosyncrasy that the landfill studiously avoids. i get the "hear my song" urge, but i don't get the "hear my enervated "1015 on a saturday night" half-ska plod with attempted motown horns borrowed from a madness record but that sound like grimethorpe colliery brass band on a rainy bank holiday monday" urge. pork pie hat. dick van dyke. guys with weller-cuts talking slightly racist, slightly homophobic, about "proper music". how do you shoehorn a dave gilmour guitar solo into "doing the lambeth walk"? avvin it laaarge. three lions on his shirt. makes my blood boil.

and any excuse to post this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClcwKgxu2wk

lol yes. that's more a Stone Roses zing, but ofc the Stone Roses underpin a lot of this (the mellower end of it at least)

i voted for the hounds of love cover

i like it

I've been thinking about this and it's like UK indie music with all the last vestiges of punk/post-punk removed so you're left with a bunch of incurious hacks who are fully onboard with the Beatles/Stones/Zep classic rock/ proper music canon.

all my pals at uni were massively into this stuff and we went out every other week to an indie disco for it. I liked my pals as people and I liked the ritual of getting ready with them in various flats but wow was this stuff hard to enjoy even when full of booze with likeable people. I took up smoking because it meant I had an excuse to go outside when the worst of it was happening.

that said, I can never truly hate "She's So Lovely" purely because it is featured in the greatest British movie of all time, which is Angus, Thongs & Perfect Snogging

I forgot how much landfill is in that film, bend it like beckham predates this shit so the sountrack is way better

I've been thinking about this and it's like UK indie music with all the last vestiges of punk/post-punk removed so you're left with a bunch of incurious hacks who are fully onboard with the Beatles/Stones/Zep classic rock/ proper music canon.

― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.), Tuesday, 23 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Judging from that British Sea Power thing at least the Stones and Zep loved the Blues and really wanted to get that sound right. Those guys show no desire to do even that.

It's like trying to make a sound that's nice to keep in the background as you revise for your exams.

Fascinating how bad it is.

There's a lot on this list I'm not really familiar with. I do like the Zutons a lot. But the one band that really stands out for me is Guillemots, who I find truly special and any chance to back them, I'll take. Frontman Fyfe Dangerfield released a series of broadcasts in 2018 on his Channels May Change website called Birdwatcher, which consists of amazing new songs embedded within soundscapes and strange character storytelling, which is one of my very favourite music/art things ever.

Yeah I think he's a true, underappreciated talent who I suspect was a bit too clever for the time or even for his own good. Lumping Guillemots in with the other cheeky chappie landfill droogs feels unfair

Landfill does not discriminate. Anyone can fall in. Anything.

Gaze into the landfill and the landfill gazes back...

I've been thinking about this and it's like UK indie music with all the last vestiges of punk/post-punk removed so you're left with a bunch of incurious hacks who are fully onboard with the Beatles/Stones/Zep classic rock/ proper music canon.

Libertines at least were I think v much into trying to emulate punk. It's just the version of '77 these bands suscribe to is a very decadent, rock mag revision of the moment, amounting to "every ten years a new batch of bands has to come along and play simple guitar music to remind ppl of the power of ROCK".

it's like UK indie music with all the last vestiges of punk/post-punk removed so you're left with a bunch of incurious hacks who are fully onboard with the Beatles/Stones/Zep classic rock/ proper music canon

that's definitely a fair bit of this stuff, but plenty of it (i'd even say probably most of it?) is just worse takes on the post-punk revival that was big at the time.

noisey have also cast the net so wide here that there isn't that much consistency in the list, it's just nearly all the less notable uk indie acts from the 00s + arctic monkeys thrown in for some reason

& yeah the less post-punk end of this stuff was still mostly at least vaguely into punk

Yeah I just cued up the first four tracks on this list and half of them are def trying for punk more than they are boomer rock.

I always thought that throughout the 2005-2015 period (probably starting earlier and perhaps ending later) the world was swamped with bands who mostly took (all the wrong) cues from the Clash and the Jam. Comparisons to either of those acts might be the quickest way to make me lose my interest in any band I don't know.

did not know abt the guillemot guy's birdwatcher things - listening now & enjoying - thank you valentjn.
clash/jam - yup no worse a turn off
"incurious" nails it

See, I became properly obsessed with 70s/80s new wave and post punk around that time by way of the SReynolds book, but I never heard the link between these bands and that stuff at all. Not even the Libertines or the Strokes - LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture, yes very much so, but not those mid-brand outfits.

To me it was just the long long tail of the Britpop era and the Gallagher brothers' proclamations about "rock-'n'-roll" endlessly recycling itself with diminishing returns.

90s Britpop was always accused of pastiching and romanticising the 60s and 70s, but landfill felt stultifyingly present-based, neither looking forward nor back, just staying in its own little spot with barely any room for experimentation or innovation. It was self-referential

Scouting for Girls weren't 'indie' enough but they were VILE

Comparisons to either of those acts might be the quickest way to make me lose my interest in any band I don't know.

A mix of the Clash and the Jam with the swagger of Oasis

Yeah I just cued up the first four tracks on this list and half of them are def trying for punk more than they are boomer rock.

Probably true but I'm sure they all doff their hats to the Beatles and shite canonical boomer rock in general.

... Clash, Pistols, Jam.

Does anyone know the name of the band, maybe five-six years ago, who did a video presentation saying that when they were growing up everyone was listening to shit like busted and mcfly whereas these special lads were listening to proper music like the arctic monkeys. Had me laughing in a depressed 'oh no we're at this stage' way but I've never been able to find it since.

Not even the Libertines or the Strokes - LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture, yes very much so, but not those mid-brand outfits.

the libertines are definitely the sort to not really draw on much past the clash/the jam, but the strokes were pretty obviously heavily influenced by television

could probably plot most of this stuff on a spectrum from garage rock revival to post-punk revival because most of it ended up somewhere in-between

I just don't hear the Television / Strokes connection beyond they are NY bands with guitars

i always heard the libertines specifically as like a third rate knockoff of the jam. like they played the songs that the jam ditched because they realized the material was drab. libertines had zero quality control, so why not toss out any old shit, as long as it was mildly reminiscent of something "cool" right?

also took personal offense when any of these bands were considered similar to/influenced by television. that's like saying the doors influenced x, on account of them both being la bands. just lazy.

(although i was amused by the marquee moon shoutout in the mystery jets song on this list)

Ray Manzarek did produce X’s first album (which included a Doors cover).

and mick jones produced the libertines. what's your point?

My point is that ppl didn't say that solely "on account of them both being L.A. bands"; there was more to it. (X also later covered another Doors song, again with Manzarek producing; and Robbie Krieger played on some of their reunion stuff. I think it's safe to conclude there's an affinity there!)

FWIW, I don't hear much Television in the Strokes... but if Richard Lloyd had produced their debut, and they had covered "Prove It" (which actually may have sounded cool!)...

apparently casablancas actually denied having even heard television before he wrote is this it, but the comparison is all about the guitars - the interplay, some of the tones, the solos. obviously all streamlined in comparison to television though - like if you got them to make a power-pop record

i don't really think the strokes sound that much like most of the other 'garage rock revival' bands at all, way too new wave compared to all those. not that any of these uk acts really picked up on that though

tbh i always thought the first strokes record -musically anyway- sounded a lot closer to three imaginary boys than any of the og nyc punk/new wave they were likened to.

The Libertines repeatedly, catastrophically failed at tunes. As boring as I find the Strokes I can appreciate what people hear in Hard to Explain or Last Nite, but any melodic warmth the Libertines may have had was snuffed out by the sloppy playing, indifferent production, the presence of Doherty's horrible singing. A few tracks - e.g. Can't Stand Me Now - might have become pop in someone else's hands but in the Libertines its all in lowercase and dirgey.

This is one of the many, many reasons there are to hate on Fuck Forever. The song is nothing but a title, and Doherty thinks that's enough to go on for an 'anthem'. Sadly, so did so many others. The lazy Beatles security cliches of All Around the World seem Olympian in comparison.

The Libertines repeatedly, catastrophically failed at tunes. As boring as I find the Strokes I can appreciate what people hear in Hard to Explain or Last Nite, but any melodic warmth the Libertines may have had was snuffed out by the sloppy playing, indifferent production, the presence of Doherty's horrible singing. A few tracks - e.g. Can't Stand Me Now - might have become pop in someone else's hands but in the Libertines its all in lowercase and dirgey.

― you can see me from westbury white horse

The only Libertines songs that sound listenable to me now are the few that Bernard Butler produced. Songs like What A Waster and Don't Look Back Into The Sun sound so polished and so much more competent than anything on the albums. Bernard admitted he ended up playing a bunch of the guitar parts on them. When they re-recorded I Get Along for the album, they seemed to deliberately sound much worse than the single/Bernard version just so it would fit with how bad the album sounded.

I still like the first Libertines album, I agree that it sounds like they were deliberately going for that shambolic sound, "might have become pop in someone else's hands" is what they were aiming for, the romance of indie groups where part of their appeal to people is that you have these songs that could be in the canon of universally acclaimed classic pop songs alongside but recorded in a self-sabotaging way where everything sounds like it's on the verge of falling apart. I think Doherty used to talk about Television Personalities in interviews, and I think they were maybe trying to sound like them but weren't really good enough?

Maybe a not entirely successful attempt to combine the ladishness, communal aspect of the Jam with the eeriness and frailty of the TVPs

"don't look back into the sun" is easily the best libertines song yeah. "can't stand me now" is also decent but pretty much just a rehash of that

Xposts yeah Bernard's productions I like, Mick Jones' less so.

I always found both these bands to sound very flimsy-sounding and uncreative. I've no problem with rock qua rock, but if you're going to shout about rock music then you've got to, you know, rock, right?

Whereas for the Strokes and the Libertines "rock" seemed to mean just sounding like some pretty okay local band.

There was very little about this music that was transportational or exceptional - it just felt very "tools of the trade" or something

And it's not like I don't get what soref is saying either - I'm a huge fan of new wave / post punk / slightly shambolic pop-rock in general - I even played in a band and wrote songs in that vein - but these guys just didn't really have that weirdness that made bands like Television Personalities so appealing.

What's quite amusing is that I really really like Ought/Cola - that is until my housemate heard me playing the Cola album and remarked on how much it sounded like the Strokes, which I guess it does, but there's something more poetic and anti-rockstar about those lads which I really like

Ok having said that I think there's a fair bit of Punk and Post Punk worship amongst these bands I will state categorically that none of them were trying to sound like Television Personalities (more's the pity).

it's still weird to me that the strokes were sold as like 'garage rock revival', 'a return to rock', etc. when they're so composed and streamlined - you can hardly imagine them rocking out or anything at all. i don't think that's a bad thing just a weird disconnect

the relatively lo-fi production on the first two albums does just kinda suck though, it sounds so small. i at least love the weird production tricks like the drums that sound like a drum machine, the guitars that sound like synths, etc.

they never really managed to do that early sound justice with the production on any of the later albums either. i love comedown machine but that just settles for doing something different.

I really liked that EP of covers by Diff'rent Strokes called "This Isn't It" which really played on that drum machiney sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0iwgwBPSX0

I'd actually pay money to hear a band like Plone or Pluxus cover a bunch of landfill indie hits

Strokes were good and garagey on The Modern Age single, and not since then.

by far the best garage rock revival act was the exploding hearts though

Ok having said that I think there's a fair bit of Punk and Post Punk worship amongst these bands I will state categorically that none of them were trying to sound like Television Personalities (more's the pity).

― Daniel_Rf

The Futureheads literally covered the TVPs (not sure if it ever made it to a record, but they did it live a lot).

I still like the first Libertines album, I agree that it sounds like they were deliberately going for that shambolic sound, "might have become pop in someone else's hands" is what they were aiming for, the romance of indie groups where part of their appeal to people is that you have these songs that could be in the canon of universally acclaimed classic pop songs alongside but recorded in a self-sabotaging way where everything sounds like it's on the verge of falling apart. I think Doherty used to talk about Television Personalities in interviews, and I think they were maybe trying to sound like them but weren't really good enough?

Yeah I think part of my problem is I don't think they were good at this either - aside from the few tracks I was thinking of (including the Butler stuff, tho DLBITTS gets on my wick) I don't think their songs are even up to that 'pop in someone else's hands' potential. They profiled a supposedly platonic 'Rock' which apparently is any old pub band playing any old music.

you can be a fully functioning american ILxor for 20 years, committed to paying attention to emerging developments in "rock music" or pop music at large, and go through those 20 years never having heard any of this music except for Arctic Monkeys. And what this tell me is that from 1963 until, what, the britpop late 90s?, there were always anglophiles, probly in most metropolitan areas, who foreswore american music in favor of, like Slade and the Move, to the class of 77, to Depeche Mode/Smiths/Cure, to Spacemen 3/Cocteaus/MBV to finally Oasis and Britpop. You guys should feel free to set me straight if the following is not so, but it seems to me that landfill indie does not have a significant american constituency along the lines of the previous 40 years of British imports. And I don't think certain americans liking Amy Winehouse/Adele or Stormzy/Dave is the same thing…

could it be that each of the english movements beloved to Anglophiles prior to britpop pushed music forward, and britpop was conservative, in ways reminiscent of the various interests that kept the american classic rock complex going for so long? which is to say that the conservative nature of britpop ended the anglophile tendency I've described above…

I interviewed the Razorlight guy 20 years ago, and man was he the dim, self-involved pretty boy you would imagine many post Oasis rock singers to be… on the other hand, I spent an afternoon with Carl Barat in and around South St Seaport around the time of Dirty Pretty Things debut, and I felt like the guys fucking therapist after a while… I was obliged to ask him about Pete Doherty, and I was prepared for him to not want to address the subject, being that english music journos wanted to talk about little else at the time, and then I would say "OK, just tell me a little bit about him and then we'll move on to other shit," but no no no, he was going on and on about him, PTSD-style… I really really liked the guy and enjoyed talking with him, obviously re: other subjects…I was told by a publicist once that English musicians tend to enjoy talking with american journos far far more than English writers, because the latter had fleet st in their blood, constantly needling the guys for dirt…

I remember ages ago on the noize board someone suggested that anglophilia was dying and the kind of american who would have gone for that in previous generations would now be an anime nerd

i liked the libertines, up the bracket title track freakin rocks

it’s a great album.

yes

is it though

no

No

no

it's not, no

^ wow, rare sighting of ilx quasi-consensus

Xp re: Anglophila dying out in the late 90’s / early 00’s. Oddly that coincides with the widespread uptake of the internet so you could see what we’re actually like.

It's been a while since I listened to Up The Bracket, but just looking at the track-listing now there's some really poor songs on there. Boys In The Band, The Boy Looked At Johnny, Begging and Radio America are filler. Nothing really came close to the quality of What A Waster which I was obsessed with when it came out.

no way the chorus of “the boy looked at Johnny” is the greatest thing ever

“New York city’s very pretty in the nighttime but oh don’t you miss soho where everybody goes lye lye lye, lye lye lye, lye lye lye”

this thread is not for me

Just had a go at listening to Up The Bracket and it's kind of confounding just how popular this band was.

Granted, I agree, the songs could possibly be great in other people's hands, but the production and just overall sonic choices are terrible. Drums (especially open hi hats) drowning almost everything out save for the gross buzzy cackhanded guitarwork, sloppy harmonies, inaudible bass. All the frequencies are upper mid-range fighting over each other, despite a very narrow sound palette. It confirms my suspicions at the time that I was better off boosting the bands playing at my local venue than these hacks

Xp re: Anglophila dying out in the late 90’s / early 00’s. Oddly that coincides with the widespread uptake of the internet so you could see what we’re actually like.

― Agnes, Agatha, Germaine and Jack (Willl)

i blame jk rowling personally

pvmic

The rockumentary moment I cringed at the most - in the sense of me wrinkling up my face and squinting in embarrassment - was in the final episode of BBC Four's indie documentary series where, after seeing the Libertines, one of the guys at Rough Trade recalled going off to Geoff and saying "The Beatles at Hamburg in 1961, I've just seen it. We have to sign this band now."

My main prior exposure to the Libertines was via the jukebox in my local pub which seemed to play them constantly. And I wonder if the album had been deliberately mixed to sound good on pub jukeboxes - to mingle with the sound of loud chatters and glasswashers.

I don't hear The Clash or The Jam in their music either. Those bands were nowhere near as formalist for a start, taking influence from Northern Soul, dub and things like surf rock etc. Libertines had more in common with pre-punk pub rock. I'd say their main heirs would have been The Stranglers or something like that

Agree generally, altho imo the Stranglers don't quite fit as they were strong musicians and also went on strange stylistic detours.

Kilburn and the High Roads then

Also good suggestion about it being top-heavy to suit jukeboxes. I think Oasis' albums were mastered so loud partly for similar reasons ?

It's more the general idea of pub rock really though isn't it. "Fuck this Coldplay nonsense, let's make a racket that sounds good in the pub"

Kilburn and the High Roads then

Not them either. More like Lew Lewis or something. Or John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett.

xp True I guess I just find fascinating the idea that this thinking being held as far as the mixing/mastering. Context-specific mixing as a thing beyond making sure things sound good on the radio always interests me (cf a few things in the early 80s being specifically mixed to sound great on walkman headphones etc)

It's strange that it was around this time that Warp started releasing this kind of music. I don't mind Maximo Park. Born Ruffians I have no recollection of. I know Warp release all sorts but these two bands were a weird choice and I never quite understood what made them so different that a label like Warp would sign them

It connects in my mind to the rhetoric of a 'dance' group being applied more liberally at the time, i.e. the revival of the term 'dance-punk' in the wake of LCD/Rapture but also Franz Ferdinand describing themselves as making dance music with guitars, also the other month I re-read P4k's Silent Alarm Remixed review which contains a minor detour about how this reclamation of the term 'dance music' that now comes over quite sweet and dated. The equivalent would be like 1991 Warp signing idk The Hollow Men (ignoring that 1991 Warp was far smaller ergo more single-minded than the immediately pre-MP Warp).

That's Maximo Park anyway. Born Ruffians' Hummingbird was on an omnipresent Orange Mobile advert in the late 00s but I know nothing of them beyond that.

Libertines sounded like bad Buzzcocks more than anything, without of course any of the wit or innovation

bloc party were one of the worst bands of this era.

that is all.

someone played me their favourite bloc party song once and it was the damnedest thing, not only could i not pick out a single note, sound, noise riff or phrase from it now, i distinctly remember at the time feeling the exact same thing *as i listened*

no other piece of music has ever to my recollection had this effect, in many ways a triumph of whatever the opposite of synergy is, an entire music production effort blended into a polite mud

Wasn’t the whole buzz with the Libertines that they had a scene going on where they were playing squat parties etc? And in that context compared to any of the other dreck the NME were supposed to be covering in that era at least they had an angle / were ‘living it’ whatever ‘it’ entails in the early 00’s.

Also re: bands with the swagger of Oasis etc, here’s Pete queueing to buy Be Here Now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quba72Xli8o

ok i won't stand for trashing bloc party here, they were actually great. i also respect that they just completely went off the rails making bizarre terrible creative decisions instead of fading into mediocrity like most of their peers

Franz Ferdinand describing themselves as making dance music with guitars

i wish they actually did this more, or had just gone fully pop following on from "do you want to". i remember they tried to work with xenomania but it didn't work out

Bloc party were great and i'm in the minority that thinks they got better over the remainder of the 2000s, before throwing it all away again in the 2010s. The only other band to get their (relative) weird on with album number three was...

Franz Ferdinand who were also great - really these are the two uk indie bands from this era i care about.

Voted “Mardy Bum” – Arctic Monkeys because it was literally the only song I knew.
I knew a couple other bands but couldn't even fake knowing the songs listed by them.
Maybe if I heard them I'd be like "oh, right," but I own the Arctic Monkeys debut and still play it so why bother?

re: those Libertines lyrics, was Soho still capable of sustaining a scene when the Libertines hit? were there a lot of squats there? I think even with this kind of cringey guitar music now they'd be shouting out Camden instead.

There were never squats in Soho afaik, I thought they were totally a Camden band? And welcome to it tbh.

a killing a young man by throwing him off a balcony in Whitechapel band iirc

i only heard (didnt hear) the one bloc party song blame the woman who selected it as indicative tbh

the best thing to come out of the libertines (who have at least two good songs that are far better than described above tbh) is the crackfox

thinking about julian casablancas as a comparison point to bloc party, in that he also went wildly off the rails creatively (at least with his solo material) but a lot of that worked out somehow

re: those Libertines lyrics, was Soho still capable of sustaining a scene when the Libertines hit? were there a lot of squats there? I think even with this kind of cringey guitar music now they'd be shouting out Camden instead.

or goofy or whatever

just weird bleary eyed moments of drunken jollity

https://video-images.vice.com/articles/5b7d316c37c9df00079e7d7e/lede/1534934921283-39887038_490371108096206_2701426011324547072_n.jpeg

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Oo it's tense...

if you're gonna do that then i think its only fitting we read it in russell brand voice

Fair enough, but.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Who are the 2 utter cloth eared cunts who voted for Chelsea Dagger?

Decent top three, six even.

Loads with one, seems like every landfill has a punter that still loves them

“Can’t Stand Me Now” by the Libertines is better than any of these.

it is, and Up the Bracket is a great album, as various of us have insisted upthread

also, "landfill indie" is not a genre.

in conclusion, blood sausage is disgusting

Is it though

Who calls their band Pete and the Pirates? I mean really

still by my reckoning not in the top 5 worst band names here.

Is it though

No it isn't.

Indeed, it isn't

Might be an idea for a poll - best 50 UK indie singles from 2002-2010 (UK definition of indie only)

Does that include independent electronic labels like DMZ etc or are we talking guitar nonsense only?

guitar nonsense only, I'm afraid

Loads with one, seems like every landfill has a punter that still loves them

― Mark G, Sunday, 28 May 2023 11:30 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is the ilx/landfill paradox, every poster on the site will distain landfill indie and yet every specific landfill track or band will have at least one poster willing to defend them, argue that they don't really count as landfill indie etc (maybe not the Pidgeon Detectives)

by far the best garage rock revival act was the exploding hearts though

I think they demonstrate how much better this era could have been if it leaned more heavily on '70s/80s power-pop influence.

Landfill indie is not a genre, nor is it specific to garage punk or the 2000s. It's just the nature of indie - there's no shortage of current non-garage indie bands that are landfill. It refers to the neverending garbage pile inherent in any indie subgenre.

Of course there were a few good songs from this era. The tracks that hold up don't really define landfill. The Strokes aren't landfill.

Might be an idea for a poll - best 50 UK indie singles from 2002-2010 (UK definition of indie only)

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length),

sponsored by Carling

The Strokes are landfill. I'm pretty sure it's a genre now

lol no they're not

The Strokes are the backhoe loaders of indie rock, cascading soil onto the heads of the landfill bands in a manner both functional and unsightly.

You can't say the prime exponent of a genre isn't in the genre because it transcends it. And you can't say a genre isn't a genre because the label degrades the music - this has been going on since the Impressionist movement

Saying the Strokes aren't landfill is like saying Sisters of Mercy aren't goth and that goth is not even a real thing

it's not really like that though

landfill indie bands are British, that's one of their defining features.

In a way - and this is obv an insanely flattering comparison for both the Strokes and Landfill Indie - this is like saying Buddy Holly is an example of the British Invasion.

I've heard German Britpop bands

Strokes and Libertines get mentioned in the same breath all the time, and it's those two bands that really birthed this thing.

Sure the majority of the list upthread are pale imitators of something that was already pretty pale and imitatey, but I struggle to see why Strokes wouldn't be included in this genre, even if they weren't from the UK.

It's not as though it was a scene like Grunge where all the bands knew each other and shared rhythm guitarists.

whatever that picture upthread is, it's the worst transition timeline i've ever seen

Fuck it, I'm gonna throw in The White Stripes, the Vines and the Hives under this bus too, suck it

You haven't heard any German Britpop bands, because like landfill indie, Britpop is not a distinct genre of music.

whatever that picture upthread is, it's the worst transition timeline i've ever seen

― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, May 29, 2023 10:55 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's Pete Doherty of The Libertines / Babyshambles, having a bit breakfast.

Is there such a thing as a distinct genre of music though?

if you're going to call the strokes landfill then there's no point in calling anything landfill

strokes aren't landfill, they just dug the hole

Okay I'm happy with that

I think we've got to get over this idea that "landfill" as a word should be taken literally though. Plenty of legit genre terms come out of critically dismissive coinages

much like with goth, you know a band is definitely landfill when their fans vehemently deny that they're landfill.

whatever that picture upthread is, it's the worst transition timeline i've ever seen

― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, May 29, 2023 2:55 PM

lmao

I think we've got to get over this idea that "landfill" as a word should be taken literally though. Plenty of legit genre terms come out of critically dismissive coinages

It's way more interesting if taken literally though! The phenomenon of a group of bands being heavily pushed and no one biting over a relatively large period of time is interesting in what it says about the UK music industry of the time. Extending it to bands that were successful and not British means you've just got another term for 00's guitar music and that's not needed or interesting in any way.

tbf a lot of these bands were relatively successful at the time but they've been clogging up CD racks in charity shops ever since.

It's way more interesting if taken literally though! The phenomenon of a group of bands being heavily pushed and no one biting over a relatively large period of time is interesting in what it says about the UK music industry of the time. Extending it to bands that were successful and not British means you've just got another term for 00's guitar music and that's not needed or interesting in any way.

― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, May 30, 2023 9:31 AM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think it is interesting, and clearly proven, that people understand what's meant by "landfill", as a generally well-defined style of music from a particular era, rather than just a pejorative descriptor of "shit UK guitar music", especially when boosters (I think probably Steve Lamacq) tried to reclaim the term somewhat.

It wasn't too different from the post-grunge boom in the mid-late 90s - a glut of often sub-rate bands, maybe one or two diamonds in the rough (like Arctic Monkeys, Maximo Park etc), being signed and hyped-up beyond what they could deliver.

The NME tried to call this the New Rock Revolution or something daft. No one calls it that. But it's not as if "no one bited" - this stuff was hugely popular and there were definitely people I knew who listened to this kind of thing almost exclusively. Tune in to (popular commercial UK rock station) Radio X and it's like being transported to an alternative universe where Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds are one of the most important things to ever happen to music.

From a UK perspective, the Strokes were often mentioned in the same breath as the Libertines, the Hives etc. For a long time I assumed they were all British bands. They all had that similar "back-to-basics" rock sound, dressed similarly. And it's easier to lump The Strokes in with bands like The Libertines than other New York bands of the era like Animal Collective, or even the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Anyway, here's Wonderwall...

Well I've looked up the top5 results for landfill indie and every time the Strokes are mentioned it is as an influence - "landfill indie is British guitar bands trying to sound like the Strokes" (which, again, is closer to the Beatles trying to sound like Buddy Holly) and in one example "British guitar bands trying to sound like the Libertines who in turn were trying to sound like the Strokes". The moment you described I lived through as well and just feels completely separate from landfill indie - not because I think the bands of the garage rock revival were particularly great, but they were internationally successful on a commercial and critical basis, while no one outside the UK has ever heard of most of this landfill shit. Libertines at the time seemed like the tail end of that thing.

and clearly proven

yet to be proven on ILX I think

Not my perspective, so we can agree to disagree. Strokes/Libertines kicked it all off c2001 (they toured together), and that set the stage for the rest of it. Whether the following bands were objectively any good or how successful they were doesn't really matter to me because I never liked any of those kinds of bands

"Good Enough" is a single released by English Britpop band Dodgy. The single was released on 29 July 1996 and was the band's highest-charting single, reaching number four in the United Kingdom. In 1997, the song charted in Canada, peaking at number 20 on the RPM Top Singles chart.

As I remember it "landfill" came about as a term to describe the avalanche of quite faceless bands who picked up guitars in 2005-6, inspired by The Strokes previously but probably more so Franz Ferdinand, Libertines, Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, that first wave who somehow had hits in 2002-4 and started causing a bit of excitement.

The landfill acts would have maybe one or two singles that did well or a quick writeup in the NME and disappear again. Your Pigeon Detectives, your Courteeners, your Paddingtons etc. A bit like the Dodgy / Northern Uproar / Menswear era of Britpop, direct copyists rather than similar acts being caught in a net.

The term has since lurched backwards to cover people who were also around in 02-04 who couldn't outlast their first brush with the charts, like Futureheads, Maximo Park, Mystery Jets, caught up in that vortex of Paul Epworth production/remixes, #9 hits, now horribly dated cutout graphic design. Maybe a bit more idiosyncratic, hence why they've run away with this poll. And outwards to include anybody else who was small-time and getting in the NME then, Pipettes etc.

Landfill is a fun shorthand but unless you want to dismiss literally anything any UK guitar bands did post-Strokes with a smirk (tempting I know, I've just had an interview with Hard-Fi land in my email inbox, what fresh hell etc etc) it isn't useful as the only term. Some of these would've surely been slogging away without hearing the Strokes/Libertines and immediately rushing out to buy a guitar, and they'd have constituted whatever UK indie became next without the hype, which means they can tell us something about where it was going anyway.

Even if where it was going was a bit shite.

I asked on facebook the guy who created the 'Indie Landfill' term and he says the strokes are definitely not Indie Landfill.

wtf of course they're not ffs

this fuckin thread

i don't think the strokes have anything to do with it. not even as an influence.
primary influences being: beatles without the fannying around, oasis, small faces, oasis, chas n dave, oasis, madness, oasis, the jam, oasis, the who. british suburban claustrophobia & lack of ambition writ large in conservative "proper guitar music" overweight guys with quadrophenia parkas & union jack guitars.
strokes were an entirely disconnected phenomenon from another continent with a louche retro NY iggy/television/pretenders vibe which pretty much none of the british bands were going for or were capable of plying. "landfill" as i always understood it extends further back into the charity shop bins and encompasses garbage like ocean colour scene, feeder, and the farm.

Okay, fine, maybe the Strokes were just shite then

they are for different folks.

i mean, the landfill bands sound more like the Strokes than Garbage, come on

^one of the better reading comprehension fails of recent ilx

To me, The Strokes don't sound anything like Television, and just because they were from NYC and wore leather jackets. If they'd been from the UK and made exactly that sound, we wouldn't be making the comparison

And the only thing "landfill" about Garbage was the name

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100048520886600

Just remembered that the best-selling rock album full stop during the landfill period was Kings of Leon's Only by the Night. At 10x Platinum. I don't think any rock album has sold nearly as much since.

Dreadful band

Kings of Leon are absolutely the non-UK band who most feel like they belong in this list.

Kings Of Leon were landfill

when i say the strokes kinda sound like television, what i mean is that the strokes love to do stuff like that sounds like the intro to "venus", especially the last bit of that (although i guess they really only leaned into that sound from room on fire onwards) and generally love guitar syncopation. television of course were way looser, jammier, less pop etc., it's not that close overall

when i first encountered the 1975 i thought they were yet another shit british band in the vein of two door cinema club, the more pop later end of this stuff etc. - very glad to have been wrong there in the end

Kings of Leon don't count at all. the whole point of the term is it signifies loads of disposable copies of other recent stuff. not just music that people think is shit now. like it or not when the Kings of Leon came out they were distinctive, annoyingly so

were they though

oh sure they don't count, but they match the sound of late 2000s uk indie rock more than the other bands suggested.

You could argue that every band in that list above had something "distinctive" going on.

I'm listening to Room On Fire album for the first time and it really does sound like it could have been made by any of these UK indie bands. Even matey's singing voice slips into a sort of Manc yowl

No Americans allowed in the pit. And if you were around before 2005 you're not allowed in the pit.

I brought KoL up not as an example of landfill but as a reminder of how one record - similar enough in sound and barely heard now outside two songs - towered over it all and everything else since, sales-wise.

that people understand what's meant by "landfill", as a generally well-defined style of music from a particular era

well which sound is that exactly because with that vice list the net's already been cast so wide as to be useless by any metric - what are guillemots doing there for instance, they have more in common with like, arcade fire than anything else much in this whole area.

do you just mean the dominant sound of 00s uk indie being 'garage rock revival' and 'post-punk revival', which obviously had a whole lot of overlap but there's acts which are pretty clearly just drawing on one or the other. but if you're going to call that whole thing 'landfill', even non-uk bands, where are you drawing the line? early yeah yeah yeahs were definitely lumped in with garage rock revival. the white stripes & the black keys of course. the killers weirdly outlasted all the other post-punk revival bands and finally made a very good album over a decade later. kings of leon are what happens if you give one of the lesser of these acts real arena rock ambitions.

but then like, are the rapture landfill by that whole metric? it's not too far from them to bloc party etc. really lol

the whole point of the term 'landfill' seemed to be about the lesser bands that just got briefly hyped by nme before being quickly abandoned, or were too shit even for nme to like much, or even just the bands that didn't quite make it to the same level of popularity as the bigger names. i think daniel_rf is pretty otm but an important point is that even though some of acts termed landfill did have a fair bit of success, they weren't hip at all.

well which sound is that exactly because with that vice list the net's already been cast so wide as to be useless by any metric - what are guillemots doing there for instance, they have more in common with like, arcade fire than anything else much in this whole area.

I agree Guillemots have less to do with this than KoL and the Strokes.

The Strokes are the backhoe loaders of indie rock, cascading soil onto the heads of the landfill bands in a manner both functional and unsightly.

― like the vengaboys with music degrees (Matt #2), Monday, 29 May 2023 20:25 (yesterday) link

you can pretty much extend this sound to any 00s/early 10s indie act that was primarily part of the garage rock and/or post-punk revivals, while excluding anyone who got too far away from the guitars to keep out the wrong sort of dance-punk acts i guess (like i don't think anyone would argue for lcd soundsystem regardless of opinions on their quality)? but idk what the point of lumping all that together as landfill would be - then what do we call the shit end of it?

anyway want to hear some australian landfill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukNOaKeUEQY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n4gdGRM_iY

the san cisco song is still distinctly one of the worst songs i have ever heard

yeah this is what I was trying to say before. if you call the whole genre and anyone lumped in with it the nickname used to describe its dregs and shit imitators, you've got nowhere to go.

to use a Britpop adjacent analogy it'd be a bit like calling somebody like Super Furry Animals "Noelrock"

But... like, what other name are we going to call it? I'm not calling it New Rock Revolution

Isn't there a rich history of genres and art styles in general originally being coined as pejorative that eventually turned into the defacto term?

Can we please have a name for early-mid 2010s NME Next Big Thing comic strip characters like Spector, Temples, the Strypes, Superfood, Swim Deep, Palma Violets and Drenge. None of these bands are necessarily alike other than they all live in the same part of my brain and only in that part. I want a less unwieldly name for them than the 'early-mid 2010s NME Next Big Thing' bands.

the farm built the pit, tho
despite peter hooton's "all together now" encouragements,all that dodgy did was stand around in hi-vis vests smerkin tabs & drinking warm cans of tetley's

i think the early 10s nme next big things are just the very tail-end of landfill? never even heard of most of those though

what other name are we going to call it

post-punk revival and/or garage rock revival? 00s uk indie?

should i run a strokes poll soon y/n

they don't have enough material for a ballot poll

Can we please have a name for early-mid 2010s NME Next Big Thing comic strip characters like Spector, Temples, the Strypes, Superfood, Swim Deep, Palma Violets and Drenge. None of these bands are necessarily alike other than they all live in the same part of my brain and only in that part. I want a less unwieldly name for them than the 'early-mid 2010s NME Next Big Thing' bands.

― you can see me from westbury white horse,

Viva Brother were probably the low point from this era/scene.

Viva Brother are now quite possibly the worst band to have been mentioned in this entire thread which is saying something.

post-punk revival and/or garage rock revival? 00s uk indie?

― ufo, Tuesday, May 30, 2023 3:00 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

There was very little post-punk about the majority of these bands. I'd attribute "post-punk revival" more to bands like Savages, Ought, Algiers and that recetn spate of "talkie" bands. Garage Rock Revival, maybe but pfff... that could be anyone really. That could be, I dunno, Guitar Wolf or whatever. 00s UK indie is fine, if a bit broad, and hardly rolls off the tongue.

Thing about pejorative terms becoming de facto terms is the examples of it that exist are descriptive - impressionism was meant as a diss sure but it also does evoke quite well what those paintings are like, bollywood while mostly quite bad term does at least vaguely suggest "Indian cinema". In those terms "landfill indie" doesn't really give you anything except "indie music that record execs thought would sell loads, but didn't".

Anyway the fact that no one ever came up with a good name for that Strokes/White Stripes/Hives/Vines moment is one of the funniest things about it (in addition to New Rock Revolution the NME also once tried to float "no name"), and a very apt end of history kind of situation, where the cycles of retro recycling had churned on for so long that there wasn't even the energy to come up with a name (only the Hives truly fit in as pure garage rock revival, from those four I've cited). Why would you want to ruin that by slapping on some unrelated brand.

This music sounds like a bunch of plant machines and seagulls squawking, so it's apt in more ways than one

Just remembered that the best-selling rock album full stop during the landfill period was Kings of Leon's Only by the Night. At 10x Platinum. I don't think any rock album has sold nearly as much since.

― you can see me from westbury white horse

Kings Of Leon were one of the few band from that era who seemed to have a good 2008/9. I remember there was this period where all the bands who had done well with their first and second albums suddenly had albums out that under-performed compared to their previous ones. Kaiser Chiefs, The Kooks, The Zutons, The Fratellis, Razorlight, Automatic, The Enemy, Bloc Party, Maximo Park, Keane and The View all had a major decline in album sales despite a couple of those bands still managing to plop out one last hit (The Kooks had a top three single but a second album that sold a quarter of the first one). It even seemed like Arctic Monkeys were faltering too with Humbug. It was quite entertaining seeing all these bands drop off one by one.

bloc party & franz ferdinand were very into post-punk and they're pretty central 00s uk indie acts. a fair few of the acts on the landfill list had the bass-driven sound with angular guitar lines - editors, maximo park, the cribs, futureheads, and so on, and they certainly didn't get that from oasis. maybe you can argue some of them got it from the strokes, but then where did the strokes get it from?

the strokes have six albums and half of them are great, that's enough to poll if people are interested.

even the weaker strokes albums have some worthwhile stuff going on & there's solo casablancas too who's probably better on average, somehow

xp kitchen person. That was the final act of landfilldom settling in.

I do remember thinking it odd at the time that the Kaisers' and Bloc Party's third albums arrived so quickly. In hindsight it was probably wise as the moment was fleeting. I was a keen album chart watcher at the time and expected Razorlight's to do well after the huge predecessor but it didn't even make the top three. But I remember even then the mid-2008 returns of the Kooks, Zutons and Fratellis seemed to accompany the writing on the wall (also the Feeling - not indie but promoted similarly).

The Feeling is another good example for sure. Along with Kaiser Chiefs, Kooks and Razorlight they were one of the few bands where the first single indicated there wasn't a problem. It was only when they all had second singles that did nothing that it was clear things were turning for them. Razorlight's drop off was so quick. That second album was bigger than the first and the lead single (which I still remember someone accurately describing as The Boomtown Rats covering Horse With No Name) did quite well. That album chart position was a disaster in comparison and they never recovered.

I'm alarmed that my brain remembers all these things without having to look them up. Why do I remember chart positions for Kooks singles when I can barely remember what I did at the weekend?

I'm alarmed that my brain remembers all these things without having to look them up. Why do I remember chart positions for Kooks singles when I can barely remember what I did at the weekend?

You and me both, on both accounts.

I seem to remember quite liking Wire to Wire in theory - perhaps because less obviously built on Cure or U2 interpolations - but my distaste for JB typically got in the way. Never Miss a Beat, Take Back the City, (especially) I Thought It Was Over and (especially especially) Spiralling were all better. The only time I ever heard the Feeling's major flop follow-up to ITIWO was on Now 70, on which it was inexplicably included.

If there's an American band that belongs in this category, it's probably the Bravery.

There is the potential here to do a UK 2008 equivalent to the commercially disappointing major label rock/alternative albums of 1996 poll except the amount of actually good albums would be much lower still.

Interesting that in the hinterland between landfill dying and the unsuccessful NME Next Big Things era, White Lies emerged and bested the near-identical Interpol/Bravery/Editors in getting a UK No. 1 album. I'm not quite sure how they fit into the picture.

(Actually Editors did end up with a few No. 1s, I should have said a UK No. 1 debut)

getting the feeling my idea of what comprises "landfill" is wildly different from what others consider it to be

one man's trash...

i seem to be labouring under the illusion that it's incurious mod revivalist plod pop with loud guitars. everyone else seems to be understanding it as retro post-punk rapture / franz ferdinand etc

Why do the young whippersnapper kids talk about the good old days of Indie Sleaze when no such thing existed?

Interesting that in the hinterland between landfill dying and the unsuccessful NME Next Big Things era, White Lies emerged and bested the near-identical Interpol/Bravery/Editors in getting a UK No. 1 album. I'm not quite sure how they fit into the picture.

― you can see me from westbury white horse

I seem to remember White Lies releasing their first album right at the beginning of the year when album sales were really low. I can't imagine they had much competition. The Departure were another band who did that whole Interpol/Editors thing and had a couple of hits.

xp Here’s a thinkpiece on that…

Can someone from the UK describe for me the Venn Diagram of "landfill indie" vs. "student disco"? (As musical selections, but also as like, concepts)

cf. NME's Student Disco Anthems Of All Time Poll

My experience of student discos is that they did not play Joy Division and I presume this NME poll was of people who read the NME at the time

Can we please have a name for early-mid 2010s NME Next Big Thing comic strip characters like Spector, Temples, the Strypes, Superfood, Swim Deep, Palma Violets and Drenge.

i like that Double Dutch song actually. admittedly i forgot that it exists, but i like it.

This thread is having real-world repercussions:

Arctic Monkeys Perform “Mardy Bum” Live For First Time In 10 Years

the san cisco song is still distinctly one of the worst songs i have ever heard

I just backtracked to listen to this… holy moly

i seem to be labouring under the illusion that it's incurious mod revivalist plod pop with loud guitars. everyone else seems to be understanding it as retro post-punk rapture / franz ferdinand etc

i don't think franz ferdinand or the rapture are landfill but dog latin was arguing for a definition of it unrelated to quality or britishness that seemed broader than just mod revivalist plod pop (the strokes certainly aren't that, maximo park are definitely post-punk influenced) and i was trying to figure out where he was drawing the line

even the wombats had a clear post-punk influence, as dire as they were, and they're surely as landfill as it gets? personally i would just argue for landfill being the shit end of 00s uk indie on the garage rock/post-punk spectrum - the core of the 00s uk indie sound. i don't really know if a bunch of the acts we've talked about like maximo park, the cribs, futureheads etc. are shit enough for me to really count them even if i don't really care for them

all you need is two chords and a bit of confidence eh

(xp)

Nothing wrong with two chord songs.

anyway, the elephant in this particular thread is that, a year and a half ago, ILM voted a landfill indie song its favourite track of 2021. no notes

It’s curious how the Noisey piece cites two absolutely terrific songs as near contenders, but for their American-ness:

We’re focusing on British bands only – so, while Black Kids’ “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You” and We Are Scientists’ “This Scene Is Dead” may be worthy soldiers for the cause, they are American and therefore too unique to be included in this homogenous group of Isle of Wight Festival fodder.

I actually think of those two bands (plus the Blood Arm, whom most here probably won’t know, but we saw them play a ton in L.A. back in the day) as constituting a “literate, slightly melancholy party music for overthinkers” mid-2000s micro-genre.

For some reason I think of Los Campesinos when those bands are mentioned. They were fun

There you go - late 00's UK guitar band who probably didn't sell a lot of records but definitely weren't part of the "landfill" thing.

yeah lc! were definitely not landfill, they had a completely different set of influences and were backed much more by the american press than the uk press

the noisey piece was not really concerned with quality as the dividing line, black kids don't really sound like most of this stuff anyway but i guess were a hyped up act that was quickly abandoned by the press, so there's a parallel there at least

i think we are scientists definitely fit sonically though?

Yeah I don't think of Black Kids as landfill at all

I do, or rather I didn't disambiguate between them and UK bands at the time nor feel the need to now.

That first Black Kids EP is really fantastic and still stands up. The album was a disappointment though for sure. Underwritten songs and the production was way too slick.

This thread reminds me that Bernard Butler produced his fair share of crap bands. 2008 was Duffy year for him though - in a parallel universe he is a Mark Ronson.

Where would Scottish band Sons and Daughters fall within all of this? The Repulsion Box (2005) was wild Celt-punk rowdiness; This Gift (2008, which was produced by Bernard Butler) was a bit more radio-friendly while still maintaining that spirit.
I don't think they did anything after 2011's Mirror Mirror, which traded the folky stylings for darker, Goth-leaning vibes. "Rose Red" was the apotheosis, just a glorious track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXaRTb6CMec

I guess I don't know what I'm talking about, and the definition of landfill indie actually isn't what I stated upthread, but in fact it's "when 3 people on ILM say a band sucks." You cleared it up, thank you.

That seems to be it yes

whatever people say landfill is, that's what it's not

It's the Goth principle