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

if the UK music industry churned out 90 aspirational kate bush / tori amos imitators every year then Florence would qualify as landfill. as it is she was perfectly acceptable 2nd-tier high-school drama kid music, with two very good remixes

england must have at least one barefoot mystic posh person nagging the charts at all times

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rz65JbHUSdY/T0U4td2vYeI/AAAAAAAAAIo/u5zWHExgHy0/s1600/Kula+Shaker+ks4.jpg

Who is the current one? Taylor Swift?

Florence is both way too popular and with too much personality to be landfill. There's a distinct moment of commercial bubble bursting to the landfill moment.

Ummm yeah, these songs all pretty much suck. They’re not out-and-out bad, just really mediocre. “For Lovers” would be a decent song if it didn’t have that goddamn “This is for lovers. Runnin’ away.” chorus repeated over and over and over again. They couldn’t change it up a little bit? Fucking heroin addicts. But as far as bad landfill indie songs go, none of these are as bad as “Fever” by Starsailor.

This is just incredible

A brief history. In the wake of The Strokes and the New York invasion of 2001, Britain’s moribund post-Britpop guitar scene came alive with brilliant, inventive new music. Geysers of originality and vitality burst from every corner of our slanty-fringed isles.

In Glasgow Franz Ferdinand strutted out the suave art pop of the New Scottish Gentry. In Leicester Kasabian concocted unstable new formulas of electro-ladrock. In the North East The Futureheads and Maxïmo Park battled for pseud-rock supremacy. In Yorkshire The Cribs were revitalising garage punk, The Long Blondes were reinventing retro chic and Kaiser Chiefs’ Britpop revivalism led to Leeds being officially announced 2005’s UK City Of Brilliant.

I did like the long blondes

(It's not that much crazier than The Killers getting adoring write-ups in Rolling Stone in 2020, though.)(and ILM)

"Suddenly, nobody noticed"

“Take Me Out” winning single of the year in the Pazz and Jop poll was kind of a big deal at the time.

This is just incredible

A brief history. In the wake of The Strokes and the New York invasion of 2001, Britain’s moribund post-Britpop guitar scene came alive with brilliant, inventive new music. Geysers of originality and vitality burst from every corner of our slanty-fringed isles.
In Glasgow Franz Ferdinand strutted out the suave art pop of the New Scottish Gentry. In Leicester Kasabian concocted unstable new formulas of electro-ladrock. In the North East The Futureheads and Maxïmo Park battled for pseud-rock supremacy. In Yorkshire The Cribs were revitalising garage punk, The Long Blondes were reinventing retro chic and Kaiser Chiefs’ Britpop revivalism led to Leeds being officially announced 2005’s UK City Of Brilliant.

― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 7 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

In 2016 the UK voted to leave the European Union and in 2019 it's voters handed the Conservative and Unionist Party an 80 seat majority in the House of Commons on the back of the slogan "Get Brexit Done".

this is a well-turned phrase for a poorly wrought activity: "unstable new formulas of electro-ladrock"

It's interesting looking at the results of the recent ILM 00s album poll and the distinct lack of UK guitar bands who originated in the 00s (so no Radiohead, Portishead, PJ or SFA), with three notable exceptions:

Broadcast (3 albums), The xx (1) and Life Without Buildings (1).

I doubt any of these would have been written about extensively in the NME, and obviously shared nothing in common with the likes of Kasabian/Kaiser Chiefs etc.

If we take ILM as the bastion of good musical taste (which I believe it is), it suggests a real nadir in the 00s for UK guitar music, relying on one band to make 60% of the noteworthy guitar albums of the decade from new acts (and The xx's album came out 4.5 months shy of the decade ending.).

Or maybe, more interestingly, there was an enormous divergence between albums that got rave magazine reviews and those that were of strong artistic merit. In previous decades these two categories would have been much more in line with each other.

Looking beyond the top 100, The Clientele have two albums in the 101-149 range, and there is Frightened Rabbit at 141. Hilariously, the only two "NME bands" in ILM's top 149 are Bloc Party at #146 and Franz Ferdinand at #149, one spot behind Broadcast's 4th best album of the decade.

Needless to say, I find this stuff fascinating.

fwiw Broadcast also formed in the 90s, although their 1st album came out in 2000, they'd already released a compilation LP of singles in 1997

tbf to the NME they did write about Broadcast at that time, it's almost certainly where I first heard of them, I can't say whether they did during the 00s/landfill era because I'd stopped reading it by then

I think all you can extrapolate from that is that ILM doesn't skew towards indie rock at all. My personal ballot for the 00's poll contained several new UK guitar-based albums, such as by Clearlake, Late Of The Pier, The Chap, My Computer, Youthmovies and Working For A Nuclear Free City, but all of these bands were fairly unfashionable both on ILX and in the UK music press. I'd argue it wasn't a dark time for UK guitar music but it was perhaps a dark time for UK music journalism, or at least, mainstream UK music journalism.

me = landfill indieprog

Clearlake's Cedars definitely a glum classic

That's fascinating, see I've never heard of any of those bands but I bet they're much better (obviously) than the NME/XFM rubbish that was shoved down our ears during the 00s.

It's interesting to me as to why journalists turned away from actively promoting interesting/boundary-breaking groups during that decade, when previously they would have extolled MBV and Radiohead (for example) in the 90s or The Chameleons/Orange Juice in the 80s.

Perhaps those media outlets were becoming more corporatised and needed to sell an "image" of what UK music was to survive, rather than promoting weird/risky stuff?

And interesting point re ILM's non-indie rock-skewing, but then I'd point to the fact there are more albums by veteran UK guitar groups (ie PJ, SFA, Radiohead) in the poll than there are by new artists in the same vein. I doubt you would get that sort of result in any other decade.

What was this universe where Late of the Pier were not fashionable? They were hyped so hard, they had their first NME cover before their album even came out! There was a huge amount of hype around the whole ~Nu Rave~ thing, as the NME was trying to fashion it - but I think that the NME had lost cultural relevance in terms of driving (or even documenting) youth movements by that point.

What was the other big band from that scene? Ach, my senile brain cannot remember. They had a single called Golden Skans or something like that. The teenagers I knew around that time loved them.

LOL, The Klaxons, now that is a name I haven't heard in yonks.

https://www.nme.com/reviews/reviews-klaxons-9347-335522

Those bands were really quite shonky but there was something endearing about them after six years of good-hair-good-shoes hegemony. No one tries to lump the Klaxons in with the landfill.

LOTP weren't hyped enough! Should have been given the keys to the kingdom tbh.

Matt DC is a known Chap hater and cannot be trusted on this topic lol

Never took to Klaxons. Wonder why

Clearlake's Cedars definitely a glum classic

― unpaid intern at the darvo institute (Simon H.), Monday, 7 September 2020 12:54 (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's really good but Lido is The One for me.

Electrelane fit into this metric somewhere too, as do British Sea Power

I was specifically talking about the nu-rave era fwiw. I had forgotten The Chap existed but they were clearly something entirely different.

I too loved LOTP. gone too soon :(

...well, if they'd bothered to do a second album!

adept sez: "Perhaps those media outlets were becoming more corporatised and needed to sell an "image" of what UK music was to survive, rather than promoting weird/risky stuff?"

i'm not sure that "more corporatised" is the right framework exactly -- to me it's as much abt specific actors in earlier taste-wars (= former writers)* now having the more senior decsion-making role of "publisher" (= further up the corporate ladder, largely off-page but still hands-on) -- except rather than think clearly abt how the music-papers needed to be responding to a changing and multifarious world in front of them**, these specific actors simply preferred still to prosecute the ancient taste wars through biddable younger writers. in a sense this is LESS corporate (the corporate shd be coldly caring abt profit margins not whether the cheesy rock-cliche stance of someone's embittered youth is being manoeuvred towards triumph at last)

*(i have someone quite specific in mind but i'm not writing his name in clear on a public message-board lol)
**(inc.not just weird music but most black music and really a fvckton of "non-rock" non-retro music)

Perhaps a poll of this "sub-genre" could prove illuminating? ie, UK guitar bands that would have been raved about and critically feted had they not had the misfortune of originating in the era of the corporate indie press?

From my own limited knowledge, I would add Brakes to the bands listed already, along with Mclusky, whom I'm staggered didn't even get a mention in the 00s album poll thread.

And side-note, I agree the "nu rave" era is a different beast entirely, perhaps centring on Cut Copy's In Ghost Colours (though it's arguable if that fits the nu-rave criteria and they're Aussie rather than UK) which placed high in the 00s poll.

i'm not sure that "more corporatised" is the right framework exactly -- to me it's as much abt specific actors in earlier taste-wars (= former writers)* now having the more senior decsion-making role of "publisher" (= further up the corporate ladder, largely off-page but still hands-on) -- except rather than think clearly abt how the music-papers needed to be responding to a changing and multifarious world in front of them**, these specific actors simply preferred still to prosecute the ancient taste wars through biddable younger writers. in a sense this is LESS corporate (the corporate shd be coldly caring abt profit margins not whether the cheesy rock-cliche stance of someone's embittered youth is being manoeuvred towards triumph at last)

*(i have someone quite specific in mind but i'm not writing his name in clear on a public message-board lol)
**(inc.not just weird music but most black music and really a fvckton of "non-rock" non-retro music)

― mark s, Monday, 7 September 2020 14:32 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes that's an interesting point. I do wonder if it's the result of 80s/90s "indie kids" becoming middle-aged publishers/owners and looking nostalgically back to music that brings to mind those eras, rather than anything challenging?

Like the generational evolution of baby-boomer Rolling Stone eds trashing Husker Du or whoever in the 80s because they're looking for the next Grateful Dead.

this but with even more spiteful score-settling

Looking beyond the top 100, The Clientele have two albums in the 101-149 range, and there is Frightened Rabbit at 141. Hilariously, the only two "NME bands" in ILM's top 149 are Bloc Party at #146 and Franz Ferdinand at #149, one spot behind Broadcast's 4th best album of the decade.

Needless to say, I find this stuff fascinating.

― Uncle Boomer Who Can Recall His Past Wives (Adept)

They did seem fairly excited about Broadcast around The Noise Made By People. The album and Come On Let's Go got respectable positions in their end of year list. By the time Haha Sound and Tender Buttons came out they seemed to have moved on or maybe they just didn't fit this scene they were desperately trying to hold on to. They did that with a few bands who were way more consistent than their fleeting interest would suggest. The Clientele's Violet Hour got a very good review at the time but that was about it. Same goes for The Radio Dept who featured in their top 10 in 2003 but never again despite making even better albums further on.

Looking back I find it interesting some of the bands they barely acknowledged during that time. You would have thought that at least one person would have noticed Spoon at some point during that decade. Electrelane, Ted Leo & The Pharamacists, Phoenix (especially It's Never Been Like That which is basically a very good Strokes record in places), Jens Lekman, The Exploding Hearts, Camera Obscura and Cut Copy all seem like artists who could have fit in there somewhere.

FWIW publishers (the job title not the organisation) are usually directly on the hook for the commercial performance of the title down to the balance sheet level. NME had the more nebulously defined title of Brand Director as well which may have had something more to do with what Mark's talking about. In general the more copies you're selling the more leeway your editorial staff will have and if the overall sales trend has been downwards for 10-15 years it's going to hit a point where they go "yeah OK enough, more Oasis more Strokes now."

Obviously the point of all commercial publications aimed at young people is, when it comes down to it, to sell more shit to young people and I'd guess that you could learn a lot from looking at the changes in what's being advertised in the magazine over that extended period. When people fundamentally stop buying the things your advertisers are trying to sell that creates an additional pinch point even aside from circulation issues.

I don't know this for sure but my guess is that editorial budgets would have been slashed again and again over that period and the internet will have exacerbated that. Watering down the product was very much an IPC thing across the board.

So yeah "challenging music" isn't really going to be prioritised up against all that but you can probably pinpoint the legendarily disastrous Godspeed! You Black Emperor cover as the unequivocal end for all of that.

Sorry I should probably say re: publishers - directly on the hook for the commercial performance of the title down to the balance sheet level, but (with rare exceptions) also not powerful enough to be fully corporate, a lot of them are seen as expendable and can and will be moved on if they aren't performing, probably more so than a lot of editors.

re cost-cutting, didn't someone* upthread (or on another thread?) say something abt a fairly good nme website and comments ecology being devoloped in the late 90s and then more or less abandoned, at least in terms of maintenance or further development or even tweaking? -- which definitely suggests significant cost-cutting (as does the closure of MM of course)

*michael jones? koogs? sorry guys i'm usually quite good at telling you apart (applies double if it was someone else)

re publishers/brand-managers etc -- matt is right here of course, i'm half-projecting from my own (much much earlier) time at nme when the publisher was also more or less the brand-manager, and very much not a former writer or editor (at least not a music-press editor)

That happened right across the board after the dotcom bubble and might be a separate issue to the question of print budgets, or it might just be a case of sinking all boats. Pre-2000 NME had maybe twice as many words in it than the later version.

Also fwiw the NME message board was seriously terrible in ways the people running it probably couldn't control. Like it would be a thread entitled 'BEST BAND EVER' and you'd click through the first post would go 'STONE ROSES' and there'd be a loads of 'yes mate' type responses and then maybe a 'fuck off, Manic Street Preachers' and then there'd be a half arsed fight. There's only so much you can do when your readers are right there in large numbers telling you what they are (also why Pitchfork's best move was to allow no comments or community engagement ever).

Best Band Ever. Official Poll

Faux Starp

Tell me more about the GYBE! cover feature at NME and why it was disastrous.

i'd like to hear about that, too

https://www.brainwashed.com/godspeed/deadmetheney/images/nme/nme1.jpg

it was a about a band that (almost) no-one listens to, with no singer, one blurry photo and a couple of short quotes. so no-one really cared

haha just noticed the same issue attempted to stoke the "fight" between Mogwai (see gybe, above) and Blur which was Blur and their fans and whatever NME readship was left not giving a shit and Mogwai getting a good run on merch

I believe at the time it was the lowest-selling issue ever? Also wow they were really going hard on post-rock at that point, the implied 'well if GYBE's not your thing here's some Mogwai!'

At that point NME was reviewing quite a range of stuff, from chart pop to post-rock (that's my memory of it). I started posting on ILM two years after that issue and it didn't seem like a massive leap.

I also remember reading angry letters, some of which I thought were made up but maybe not, given our Landfill future.

NME cover connections

https://sites.create-cdn.net/siteimages/5/5/8/55872/69/7/2/6972232/246x317.jpg

Cover connections continued
http://lucyobrien.co.uk/content/5-journalism/youth-suicide-nme.jpg

not quite but

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/8CsAAOSwwiVfEtYY/s-l400.jpg

I did like the long blondes