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

“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

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