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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bIC4V_DIrg

Yoooo

I like the 5 songs here I'm able to remember

good god, that interview. was that supposed to be cheeky!?

"did you ever call her katie manure?" ffs, how do you interview the kooks and come off the cuntiest cunt of the lot??

voted two cinema club btw.

two door cinema club soz

fwiw I think his voice does have a different quality about it - though perhaps much of this is due to the head voice he uses (which was standard at the time for opera singers.) Undoubtedly a great motivator for the continued existence of castrati was the culture/traditions of the vatican, moreschi was the maestro pro tempore of the sistine chapel choir, and his only recordings were made in the vatican.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

that's the damnedest thing, it's so fucking DARVO. we get called groomers but it's always been christian authorities who are the actual groomers.

sorry, i know we're supposed to be talking about how shit babyshambles are.

it's true that moreschi's voice is unusual. i can't think of any _physiological_ reason why this should be the case, though. my suspicion is that nobody sounds like moreschi today because, well, nobody really wants to!

I liked “Dakota” by Stereophonics. That doesn’t count as landfill indie?

Some more discussion on this list from a couple years ago:

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

good god, that interview. was that supposed to be cheeky!?

Yeah that was the Popworld style. This one arguably still crosses a line when it gets to the Melua stuff but it's one of Simon's more famous ones.

Landfill indie is just not a genre though....it's a pejorative term meaning "shitty example of a genre in which much shitty music was produced"--50 Shittiest Landfill Indie Songs makes some sense; 50 Best is just completely incoherent.

I suppose maybe 50 Least Shitty Landfill Indie Songs was deemed a little too uninspiring?

Oh, and _Up the Bracket_ is better than anything by the Strokes.

Oh, and _Up the Bracket_ is better than anything by the Strokes.

― gucci meme (theStalePrince)

I don’t even like the strokes but this is not even worth the discussion.

co-sign. libertines were always terrible. they make the strokes sound good.

(and i f'kn hate the strokes)

We did a 1000-post thread on this two years ago? Fucking hell lol

Oh wait, most of it was not from two years ago

Wow, there's a Boaby G skit on that thread I'd completely forgotten about.

As others have said I think "Mardy Bum" is a little out of place here. I voted for that but I have reluctant affection for the Mystery Jets and Two Door Cinema Club songs.

I recall liking a Glasvegas song that sounded a bit like Mazzy Star, but it's not the one on this list. Shout out to Jack Peñate who's done some writing for SAULT recently and is a big part of why Jessie Ware started her own musical career.

Incomplete list of actually-good UK guitar indie bands who began in the 00's:

Clearlake, Late Of The Pier, The Chap, My Computer, Youthmovies, Working For A Nuclear Free City, Electrelane, British Sea Power, Electric Soft Parade (their new album that came out 3 days ago = they've still got it!), The Cooper Temple Clause, Engineers, The Display Team, iLiKETRAiNS, Silvery, Field Music...

It wasn't all landfill around 'ere!

McLusky & 80s Matchbox are the two others that spring to mind. I think of Clearlake and Electrelane as being very late 90s but this is probably just an artefact of abandoning the UK in 2002.

Wild Beasts, Dutch Uncles, Esben & The Witch

I thought of McLusky but decided they weren't indie so much as noise-rock, underground, punk etc. Splitting hairs I know

Clearlake and Electrelane both began in 2000/01 I think - yeah, Electrelane's first single released in January '00 haha

Ahhhh ofc NickB

it IS notable though that most of these good bands are from either London, Brighton or up north. Landfill is very Midlands/Home Counties, discuss etc

I'll reluctantly allow Los Campesinos! if we're extending the Welsh any favours

Also Long Blondes and Clor are very much non-landfill

Wales are in this if Scotland are (which they are)

oh fuck, you've reminded me - Lapsus Linguae!! aaargh how could I forget haha

it IS notable though that most of these good bands are from either London, Brighton or up north. Landfill is very Midlands/Home Counties, discuss etc

― imago, Monday, 22 May 2023 07:54 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this theory blown to bits by taking stock of just how very very many of these terrible bands are also from London, albeit like, certain parts of it (cough Shoreditch) i bet

It's also just generally bullshit. There were loads of great bands around here at that time, it's just none of them made it into the press. Plus most of your list I would say is bad and boring indie music! British Sea Power as a counter-example to landfill indie, really?

also early 2000s = sappy mawkish singer-songwriter stuff like Turin Brakes, there was plenty of that about.

Long Blondes were landfill-genre but far better than their contemporaries, love them

Babyshambles is fascinating to me only for being Shaggs-adjacent in their complete ineptitude, their rhythm section was always making the worst decisions and then executing these decisions poorly, it’s kind of amazing

I voted Larrikin Love because they somehow were proto- the next decade of landfill in a prescient way and I like their lyrics

Also obv I’m not going to listen to all these songs but I did listen to the Joe Lean song and it’s totally fine?

Is joe lean meant to be a reference to Jolene

It's also just generally bullshit. There were loads of great bands around here at that time, it's just none of them made it into the press. Plus most of your list I would say is bad and boring indie music! British Sea Power as a counter-example to landfill indie, really?

― emil.y, Monday, 22 May 2023 13:43 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

NAME NAMES

Landfill indie, btw:

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

;)

I mean, to me that just sounds like dreary uninspired guitar music, so yeah? It is indie that I would throw into a landfill. Full disclosure: I only listened to the first four minutes before giving up, maybe something incredible happens during the next ten minutes?

I fast forwarded and can report nothing happened.

There's literally an extended noise jam at the end! PROGGE

Anyway the other bands I suggested are better and more exciting honest. Except the ones I crossed out lol

At what stage did Landfill Indie because a catch-all term for almost the entire decade of British indue as opposed to merely the likes of Milburn etc

The Display Team fall into my 'I love Cardiacs but can't find a way into their descendants' category. Iirc they were good at ABC I guess.

My Computer excellent as hell but I file them in the Max Tundra/Cursor Miner part of my mind

Late of the Pier fantastic but I have a weakness for most of the more d̷o̷n̷'̷t̷s̷a̷y̷n̷e̷w̷r̷a̷v̷e̷a̷g̷a̷i̷n̷ dance-oriented such bands of this period. Intimacy is Bloc Party's best!

Turin Brakes (and earlier mention of Athlete) could initiate New Acoustic Movement/non-Coldplay/Travis/Keane "post-Britpop" names nuggets poll if one hasn't been done.

suspect that the only reason any of this stuff sounded exciting to anyone is *that* was the depressing sound of indie from approx 1998-2002. I even prefer the landfill, it's that shit and dull.

Starsailor, Alfie, Terris, Haven - one noun wonders, supplanted by plurialised noun wonders with definite articles*. I disagree though, I think this period was better than landfill. For one it's leading names were generally better (Doves, Badly Drawn Boy, that there the Cold Play). Would not be surprised if that was just me though.

*Really the other side to this (in the sense of bands they would share compilations with) was JJ72, Muse, Idlewild, Feeder, My Vitriol, the phoenix-risen Ash - bands that could get equal NME and Kerrang! coverage. And then lol there's Stereophonics who sort of fit into all these categories in some way.

early Elbow are defensible is my bedwetter indie challops

Tried and failed to get into early Elbow, surprisingly.

*Really the other side to this (in the sense of bands they would share compilations with) was JJ72, Muse, Idlewild, Feeder, My Vitriol, the phoenix-risen Ash - bands that could get equal NME and Kerrang! coverage.

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Monday, 22 May 2023 16:18 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the Oceansize/Aereogramme axis of this clearly its pinnacle, altho both bands began juuuust before 2000

I got the Display Team to play my local club in Hertfordshire back when they were called Mumrah. Had no idea they were known outside of the local gig circuit. Anyway, they were a lot of fun and lovely chaps

But yes, let's not call all British rock c2000-2010 "indie Landfill". It is a genre with a specific sound

So is 'landfill' defined as acts working in a genre that's already been creatively strip-mined therefore nothing worthwhile can ever happen in it again? Because every genre/style is around 90% derivative and somewhat pointless, with the possible exception of classical/orchestral music. Probably there too though.

It was said upthread, but it's also about the push that these acts got - majors & 'independent' subsidiaries pressing thousands of CDs for the Next Big Thing acts that will invariably end up in landfill sites. I would say imagine the musical equivalent of the ET game but that's much more fun than these bands.