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

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.