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

Just had a go at listening to Up The Bracket and it's kind of confounding just how popular this band was.

Granted, I agree, the songs could possibly be great in other people's hands, but the production and just overall sonic choices are terrible. Drums (especially open hi hats) drowning almost everything out save for the gross buzzy cackhanded guitarwork, sloppy harmonies, inaudible bass. All the frequencies are upper mid-range fighting over each other, despite a very narrow sound palette. It confirms my suspicions at the time that I was better off boosting the bands playing at my local venue than these hacks

Xp re: Anglophila dying out in the late 90’s / early 00’s. Oddly that coincides with the widespread uptake of the internet so you could see what we’re actually like.

― Agnes, Agatha, Germaine and Jack (Willl)

i blame jk rowling personally

pvmic

The rockumentary moment I cringed at the most - in the sense of me wrinkling up my face and squinting in embarrassment - was in the final episode of BBC Four's indie documentary series where, after seeing the Libertines, one of the guys at Rough Trade recalled going off to Geoff and saying "The Beatles at Hamburg in 1961, I've just seen it. We have to sign this band now."

My main prior exposure to the Libertines was via the jukebox in my local pub which seemed to play them constantly. And I wonder if the album had been deliberately mixed to sound good on pub jukeboxes - to mingle with the sound of loud chatters and glasswashers.

I don't hear The Clash or The Jam in their music either. Those bands were nowhere near as formalist for a start, taking influence from Northern Soul, dub and things like surf rock etc. Libertines had more in common with pre-punk pub rock. I'd say their main heirs would have been The Stranglers or something like that

Agree generally, altho imo the Stranglers don't quite fit as they were strong musicians and also went on strange stylistic detours.

Kilburn and the High Roads then

Also good suggestion about it being top-heavy to suit jukeboxes. I think Oasis' albums were mastered so loud partly for similar reasons ?

It's more the general idea of pub rock really though isn't it. "Fuck this Coldplay nonsense, let's make a racket that sounds good in the pub"

Kilburn and the High Roads then

Not them either. More like Lew Lewis or something. Or John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett.

xp True I guess I just find fascinating the idea that this thinking being held as far as the mixing/mastering. Context-specific mixing as a thing beyond making sure things sound good on the radio always interests me (cf a few things in the early 80s being specifically mixed to sound great on walkman headphones etc)

It's strange that it was around this time that Warp started releasing this kind of music. I don't mind Maximo Park. Born Ruffians I have no recollection of. I know Warp release all sorts but these two bands were a weird choice and I never quite understood what made them so different that a label like Warp would sign them

It connects in my mind to the rhetoric of a 'dance' group being applied more liberally at the time, i.e. the revival of the term 'dance-punk' in the wake of LCD/Rapture but also Franz Ferdinand describing themselves as making dance music with guitars, also the other month I re-read P4k's Silent Alarm Remixed review which contains a minor detour about how this reclamation of the term 'dance music' that now comes over quite sweet and dated. The equivalent would be like 1991 Warp signing idk The Hollow Men (ignoring that 1991 Warp was far smaller ergo more single-minded than the immediately pre-MP Warp).

That's Maximo Park anyway. Born Ruffians' Hummingbird was on an omnipresent Orange Mobile advert in the late 00s but I know nothing of them beyond that.

Libertines sounded like bad Buzzcocks more than anything, without of course any of the wit or innovation

bloc party were one of the worst bands of this era.

that is all.

someone played me their favourite bloc party song once and it was the damnedest thing, not only could i not pick out a single note, sound, noise riff or phrase from it now, i distinctly remember at the time feeling the exact same thing *as i listened*

no other piece of music has ever to my recollection had this effect, in many ways a triumph of whatever the opposite of synergy is, an entire music production effort blended into a polite mud

Wasn’t the whole buzz with the Libertines that they had a scene going on where they were playing squat parties etc? And in that context compared to any of the other dreck the NME were supposed to be covering in that era at least they had an angle / were ‘living it’ whatever ‘it’ entails in the early 00’s.

Also re: bands with the swagger of Oasis etc, here’s Pete queueing to buy Be Here Now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quba72Xli8o

ok i won't stand for trashing bloc party here, they were actually great. i also respect that they just completely went off the rails making bizarre terrible creative decisions instead of fading into mediocrity like most of their peers

Franz Ferdinand describing themselves as making dance music with guitars

i wish they actually did this more, or had just gone fully pop following on from "do you want to". i remember they tried to work with xenomania but it didn't work out

Bloc party were great and i'm in the minority that thinks they got better over the remainder of the 2000s, before throwing it all away again in the 2010s. The only other band to get their (relative) weird on with album number three was...

Franz Ferdinand who were also great - really these are the two uk indie bands from this era i care about.

Voted “Mardy Bum” – Arctic Monkeys because it was literally the only song I knew.
I knew a couple other bands but couldn't even fake knowing the songs listed by them.
Maybe if I heard them I'd be like "oh, right," but I own the Arctic Monkeys debut and still play it so why bother?

re: those Libertines lyrics, was Soho still capable of sustaining a scene when the Libertines hit? were there a lot of squats there? I think even with this kind of cringey guitar music now they'd be shouting out Camden instead.

There were never squats in Soho afaik, I thought they were totally a Camden band? And welcome to it tbh.

a killing a young man by throwing him off a balcony in Whitechapel band iirc

i only heard (didnt hear) the one bloc party song blame the woman who selected it as indicative tbh

the best thing to come out of the libertines (who have at least two good songs that are far better than described above tbh) is the crackfox

thinking about julian casablancas as a comparison point to bloc party, in that he also went wildly off the rails creatively (at least with his solo material) but a lot of that worked out somehow

re: those Libertines lyrics, was Soho still capable of sustaining a scene when the Libertines hit? were there a lot of squats there? I think even with this kind of cringey guitar music now they'd be shouting out Camden instead.

or goofy or whatever

just weird bleary eyed moments of drunken jollity

https://video-images.vice.com/articles/5b7d316c37c9df00079e7d7e/lede/1534934921283-39887038_490371108096206_2701426011324547072_n.jpeg

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Oo it's tense...

if you're gonna do that then i think its only fitting we read it in russell brand voice

Fair enough, but.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Who are the 2 utter cloth eared cunts who voted for Chelsea Dagger?

Decent top three, six even.

Loads with one, seems like every landfill has a punter that still loves them

“Can’t Stand Me Now” by the Libertines is better than any of these.

it is, and Up the Bracket is a great album, as various of us have insisted upthread

also, "landfill indie" is not a genre.

in conclusion, blood sausage is disgusting

Is it though

Who calls their band Pete and the Pirates? I mean really

still by my reckoning not in the top 5 worst band names here.

Is it though

No it isn't.

Indeed, it isn't

Might be an idea for a poll - best 50 UK indie singles from 2002-2010 (UK definition of indie only)

Does that include independent electronic labels like DMZ etc or are we talking guitar nonsense only?

guitar nonsense only, I'm afraid

Loads with one, seems like every landfill has a punter that still loves them

― Mark G, Sunday, 28 May 2023 11:30 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is the ilx/landfill paradox, every poster on the site will distain landfill indie and yet every specific landfill track or band will have at least one poster willing to defend them, argue that they don't really count as landfill indie etc (maybe not the Pidgeon Detectives)

by far the best garage rock revival act was the exploding hearts though

I think they demonstrate how much better this era could have been if it leaned more heavily on '70s/80s power-pop influence.

Landfill indie is not a genre, nor is it specific to garage punk or the 2000s. It's just the nature of indie - there's no shortage of current non-garage indie bands that are landfill. It refers to the neverending garbage pile inherent in any indie subgenre.

Of course there were a few good songs from this era. The tracks that hold up don't really define landfill. The Strokes aren't landfill.

Might be an idea for a poll - best 50 UK indie singles from 2002-2010 (UK definition of indie only)

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

sponsored by Carling