In the past 15 years, who has released a better pair of consecutive, full-length studio albums than Modest Mouse's The Lonesome Crowded West -> The Moon & Antarctica?

Super æ -> Vision Creation Newsun

Mclusky

Mclusky do Dallas -> the difference between you and me is that I'm not on fire

This is not an arguable point fyi

i actually really like The Moon & Antarctica, but I'm not that into The Lonesome Crowded West. Granted, I didn't hear the latter until years later.

For me:

Dots & Loops -> Cobra & Phases Group
Sonic Nurse -> Rather Ripped
Last Exit -> So This Is Goodbye
He Poos Clouds -> Heartland
Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives -> One-Word Extinguisher

Kim Zolciak's "Don't Be Tardy For The Party" -> "Google Me" is a worthy contender for the OP.

In my case

Bjork: Vespertine ==> Medulla
Joe Henry: Tiny Voices ==> Civillians
Deerhoof: Deerhoof Vs Evil ==> Breakup Song
Ben Allison: Riding the Nuclear Tiger ==> Peace Pipe
Amir ElSaffar: Two Rivers ==> Inana
Cunninlynguists: A Piece of Strange ==> Dirty Acres
UA: Golden Green ==> ATTA

Also this:

Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives -> One-Word Extinguisher

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - A Ghost Is Born

Brad Nelson otm

My unpopular opinion would be Is This It -> Room On Fire

jjj otm

Each One Teach One > Secret Wars

The Art of Self Defense > Surrounded by Thieves

Polar Bear
Held On The Tips Of Fingers - Polar Bear

Any two in a row of LCD Soundsystem's albums

Caribou
Andorra - Swim

Electrelane
The Power Out - Axes

Grizzly Bear
Veckatimest - Shields

Lamchop
Nixon - Is A Woman

Wild Beasts
Two Dancers - Smother

Four Tet
Ringer - There Is Love In You
Pause - Rounds

The Beta Band
Hot Shots II - Heroes to Zeroes

Plus cosign on many of the other pairs suggested.

The Necks
Drive By - Chemist

Cotton Jones
Paranoid Cocoon - Tall Hours in the Glowstream

Beach House
Teen Dream - Bloom

Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter
Like Love Lust and the Open Halls of the Soul - Marble Son

Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

Neko Case
Fox Confessor Brings The Flood - Middle Cyclone

The first time I became aware of the existence of a band called 'Modest Mouse' was probably the first time the inherent gentrified pointlessness of a lot of American indie really hit me. And STILL I'm not sure that most of the suggestions on this thread are actually right.

Mass Romantic > Electric Version

― ARE YOU HIRING A NANNY OR A SHAMAN (Phil D.), Wednesday, February 27, 2013 1:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Electric Version -> Twin Cinema

― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, February 27, 2013 8:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Actually Mass Romantic > Electric Version > Twin Cinema > Challengers is a pretty un-fuck-withable four album run. For some bands, that's a whole career right there. Even Together has its heights.

The first time I became aware of the existence of a band called 'Modest Mouse' was probably the first time the inherent gentrified pointlessness of a lot of American indie really hit me. And STILL I'm not sure that most of the suggestions on this thread are actually right.

― Matt DC, Thursday, February 28, 2013 3:16 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would agree about gentrified pointlessness for a lot of american indie going on now, but I fail to see how it would apply to an album like TLCW. Care to explain?

ugh sorry, forgot the put the italics on.

Lonesome Crowded West still kicks after all these years, I just checked

if you can't count:

Silent Shout -> Fever Ray

then my answer is :

Satanic Panic in the Attic -> The Sunlandic Twins -> Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

I don't know Modest Mouse, but...

Ys -> Have One on Me

thread would be harder to argue with if it remembered/counted building nothing out of something

generic cutesy twee indie accusations not rly the right ones for this band i think; they're scuzzy and restless and bleak especially in the 90s, also pretty bluecollar iirc (songs mostly about working and drinking and cars breaking down). never listen to them anymore but if i put on LCW right now i know i wouldn't regret it

anyway brand new eyes --> paramore

Modest Mouse is just an awful band name.

generic cutesy twee indie accusations not rly the right ones for this band i think; they're scuzzy and restless and bleak especially in the 90s, also pretty bluecollar iirc (songs mostly about working and drinking and cars breaking down). never listen to them anymore but if i put on LCW right now i know i wouldn't regret it

anyway brand new eyes --> paramore

― i want to say one word to you, just one word:buzzfeed (difficult listening hour), Thursday, November 21, 2013 1:28 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yah totally otm they are like real indie dead-end type vibe (or at least were)...i remember isaac showing up to some in-store in mpls and pissing off the store ppl cuz he was wasted and drinking beer in the store in the middle of their set and being an asshole

overall i dunno it's weird i feel like between brits and their weird-ass definition of "indie" and all this nu-indie ipod commercial casio & glockenspiel kiddie shit the idea of what indie rock really was has gotten really twisted on ilm and elsehwere, not actually like i dunno a bunch of drunk shambly dudes rocking out to polvo and grifters and shit

yea but there was always twee glockenspiel indie shit, right? i feel like there's a thread somewhere talking about this whole other indie universe that was not SST, black flag, butthole surfers, big black, etc but still was part of the underground. some alternate indie universe to azerrad's book. i might be thinking of something nitsuh abebe wrote, either on that thread or some column. at some point though "indie" become twee npr fleet foxes bon iver etc etc.

also i am kind of amazed this thread didn't get ripped apart and turn into some photo-bombing chaos in 5 posts? how did that not happen?

It seems like US twee indie had an undercurrent of creepy psychosexual edge that UK twee indie didn't but I'm prob just talking out of my ass.

OTM people are using "indie" as synonymous with lame/meek/wishy-washy/twee. I feel like maybe indie used to signify a wide variety of "outside the mainstream" acts, with varying levels of aggression in their sound (Pavement, Jesus Lizard, Belle and Sebastian all as indie). Now I think it signifies the spectrum between B&S and Death Cab For Cutie.

I may be way off here, though, it's possible people always referred to Jesus Lizard as post-hardcore and not as an indie rock band.

Azzerad does kind of allude to this underground in the Beat Happening chapter, iirc.

xxxxpost on the last one

also i am kind of amazed this thread didn't get ripped apart and turn into some photo-bombing chaos in 5 posts? how did that not happen?

― marcos, Friday, November 22, 2013 9:12 AM (11 minutes ago)

haha welcome to nu-ILX

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RN09zYiQAc

I don't know really, just an idea, but is it possible that in recent years, as "indie" as a term has been increasingly muddled, coopted etc, the concept of (at least American) "post-punk" has been expanded to include at least the more noisy side of what would have been deemed "indie" 15 years ago? I.e. the stuff Azerrad covers, pigfuck, Amphetamine Reptile, even Pavement, Silkworm et. al?

I might be a bit too broad here, but still..

also i am kind of amazed this thread didn't get ripped apart and turn into some photo-bombing chaos in 5 posts? how did that not happen?

― marcos, Friday, November 22, 2013 9:12 AM (11 minutes ago)

haha welcome to nu-ILX

― sleeve, Friday, November 22, 2013 9:24 AM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pretty nu since this thread was started this february...

well, it also seems like a lot of that "post-punk" stuff doesn't exist anymore? Or maybe I'm just unaware of it?

Where is the "Waiting Room" where is the "Kerosene," where is the "Mouth Breather" of today?

Well, not sure if I agree. I mean in the last few years you've had bands such as Pissed Jeans, Metz, Cloud Nothings, Parquet Courts, just to name a few. IMO, all these bands would have been "indie" in a late 80s/early 90s context.

You'll never hear "People Person" in an Apple commercial, that's for fucking sure.

Pissed Jeans are def carrying the Jesus Lizard torch

see "Rolling non-indie underground" threads

Ha, well, most of those bands just sound like re-treads of 90s stuff to me (even if I like some of them), so I guess the problem is that I am lol old.

But a few years back you wouldn't have to call this "non-indie", right? "Indie" was what it was. Today this music is no longer considered "indie", which is pretty much what intheblanks says a few posts up, and I wonder if even the noiser indie-rock of the 80s and 90s have been retroctively labeled post-punk, or something else. Not saying this is a big problem, though, the indie-term has always been relatively impenetrable. However, that "indie" seems to be reserved exclusively for all this twee shit (not all shit, I guess) is somewhat annoying.

I assume this has been debated to death in a hundred threads, though.

Yeah, though the term "indie" was kind of ridiculously voluminous in the 90s, so maybe it's a good thing that it's gotten narrowed down some.

Yeah, I guess. Though the term still sort of signifies some "alternative" or "underground" element, which seems increasingly ridiculous considering the type of band presently being its figureheads..

overall i dunno it's weird i feel like between brits and their weird-ass definition of "indie" and all this nu-indie ipod commercial casio & glockenspiel kiddie shit the idea of what indie rock really was has gotten really twisted on ilm and elsehwere, not actually like i dunno a bunch of drunk shambly dudes rocking out to polvo and grifters and shit

― lorde willin' (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

yeah when i got into indie, i was listening to the grifters/those bastard souls, loads of grim lo-fi K records stuff, GVSB, palace bros, etc. make up, nation of ulysses, feelies, early rem, w/e. my wife was more of an indie head than me, she was into a lot of the sarah records stuff and UK twee.

a lot of indie scene now has become this sort of neither here nor there day-glo coachella party music like metric or latter day flaming lips or arcade fire, if it's not that glockenspiel pomplamoose ipod crap. i think the original "awkwardness" and amateurishness of the indie scene has become an affected put-on (and maybe it was partially in the first place but i don't think it was done so in this particular way.) which is kind of a bummer.

thread would be harder to argue with if it remembered/counted building nothing out of something

― i want to say one word to you, just one word:buzzfeed (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, November 20, 2013 11:16 PM

I remember it and love it. Doesn't count though. It's a comp.

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

the guitar outro

Oneida about four times over

yeah the thread title was obviously just someone itching for a fight. nevertheless, the lonesome crowded west is incredible