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

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.

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