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

it's not really like that though

landfill indie bands are British, that's one of their defining features.

In a way - and this is obv an insanely flattering comparison for both the Strokes and Landfill Indie - this is like saying Buddy Holly is an example of the British Invasion.

I've heard German Britpop bands

Strokes and Libertines get mentioned in the same breath all the time, and it's those two bands that really birthed this thing.

Sure the majority of the list upthread are pale imitators of something that was already pretty pale and imitatey, but I struggle to see why Strokes wouldn't be included in this genre, even if they weren't from the UK.

It's not as though it was a scene like Grunge where all the bands knew each other and shared rhythm guitarists.

whatever that picture upthread is, it's the worst transition timeline i've ever seen

Fuck it, I'm gonna throw in The White Stripes, the Vines and the Hives under this bus too, suck it

You haven't heard any German Britpop bands, because like landfill indie, Britpop is not a distinct genre of music.

whatever that picture upthread is, it's the worst transition timeline i've ever seen

― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, May 29, 2023 10:55 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's Pete Doherty of The Libertines / Babyshambles, having a bit breakfast.

Is there such a thing as a distinct genre of music though?

if you're going to call the strokes landfill then there's no point in calling anything landfill

strokes aren't landfill, they just dug the hole

Okay I'm happy with that

I think we've got to get over this idea that "landfill" as a word should be taken literally though. Plenty of legit genre terms come out of critically dismissive coinages

much like with goth, you know a band is definitely landfill when their fans vehemently deny that they're landfill.

whatever that picture upthread is, it's the worst transition timeline i've ever seen

― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, May 29, 2023 2:55 PM

lmao

I think we've got to get over this idea that "landfill" as a word should be taken literally though. Plenty of legit genre terms come out of critically dismissive coinages

It's way more interesting if taken literally though! The phenomenon of a group of bands being heavily pushed and no one biting over a relatively large period of time is interesting in what it says about the UK music industry of the time. Extending it to bands that were successful and not British means you've just got another term for 00's guitar music and that's not needed or interesting in any way.

tbf a lot of these bands were relatively successful at the time but they've been clogging up CD racks in charity shops ever since.

It's way more interesting if taken literally though! The phenomenon of a group of bands being heavily pushed and no one biting over a relatively large period of time is interesting in what it says about the UK music industry of the time. Extending it to bands that were successful and not British means you've just got another term for 00's guitar music and that's not needed or interesting in any way.

― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, May 30, 2023 9:31 AM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think it is interesting, and clearly proven, that people understand what's meant by "landfill", as a generally well-defined style of music from a particular era, rather than just a pejorative descriptor of "shit UK guitar music", especially when boosters (I think probably Steve Lamacq) tried to reclaim the term somewhat.

It wasn't too different from the post-grunge boom in the mid-late 90s - a glut of often sub-rate bands, maybe one or two diamonds in the rough (like Arctic Monkeys, Maximo Park etc), being signed and hyped-up beyond what they could deliver.

The NME tried to call this the New Rock Revolution or something daft. No one calls it that. But it's not as if "no one bited" - this stuff was hugely popular and there were definitely people I knew who listened to this kind of thing almost exclusively. Tune in to (popular commercial UK rock station) Radio X and it's like being transported to an alternative universe where Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds are one of the most important things to ever happen to music.

From a UK perspective, the Strokes were often mentioned in the same breath as the Libertines, the Hives etc. For a long time I assumed they were all British bands. They all had that similar "back-to-basics" rock sound, dressed similarly. And it's easier to lump The Strokes in with bands like The Libertines than other New York bands of the era like Animal Collective, or even the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Anyway, here's Wonderwall...

Well I've looked up the top5 results for landfill indie and every time the Strokes are mentioned it is as an influence - "landfill indie is British guitar bands trying to sound like the Strokes" (which, again, is closer to the Beatles trying to sound like Buddy Holly) and in one example "British guitar bands trying to sound like the Libertines who in turn were trying to sound like the Strokes". The moment you described I lived through as well and just feels completely separate from landfill indie - not because I think the bands of the garage rock revival were particularly great, but they were internationally successful on a commercial and critical basis, while no one outside the UK has ever heard of most of this landfill shit. Libertines at the time seemed like the tail end of that thing.

and clearly proven

yet to be proven on ILX I think

Not my perspective, so we can agree to disagree. Strokes/Libertines kicked it all off c2001 (they toured together), and that set the stage for the rest of it. Whether the following bands were objectively any good or how successful they were doesn't really matter to me because I never liked any of those kinds of bands

"Good Enough" is a single released by English Britpop band Dodgy. The single was released on 29 July 1996 and was the band's highest-charting single, reaching number four in the United Kingdom. In 1997, the song charted in Canada, peaking at number 20 on the RPM Top Singles chart.

As I remember it "landfill" came about as a term to describe the avalanche of quite faceless bands who picked up guitars in 2005-6, inspired by The Strokes previously but probably more so Franz Ferdinand, Libertines, Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, that first wave who somehow had hits in 2002-4 and started causing a bit of excitement.

The landfill acts would have maybe one or two singles that did well or a quick writeup in the NME and disappear again. Your Pigeon Detectives, your Courteeners, your Paddingtons etc. A bit like the Dodgy / Northern Uproar / Menswear era of Britpop, direct copyists rather than similar acts being caught in a net.

The term has since lurched backwards to cover people who were also around in 02-04 who couldn't outlast their first brush with the charts, like Futureheads, Maximo Park, Mystery Jets, caught up in that vortex of Paul Epworth production/remixes, #9 hits, now horribly dated cutout graphic design. Maybe a bit more idiosyncratic, hence why they've run away with this poll. And outwards to include anybody else who was small-time and getting in the NME then, Pipettes etc.

Landfill is a fun shorthand but unless you want to dismiss literally anything any UK guitar bands did post-Strokes with a smirk (tempting I know, I've just had an interview with Hard-Fi land in my email inbox, what fresh hell etc etc) it isn't useful as the only term. Some of these would've surely been slogging away without hearing the Strokes/Libertines and immediately rushing out to buy a guitar, and they'd have constituted whatever UK indie became next without the hype, which means they can tell us something about where it was going anyway.

Even if where it was going was a bit shite.

I asked on facebook the guy who created the 'Indie Landfill' term and he says the strokes are definitely not Indie Landfill.

wtf of course they're not ffs

this fuckin thread

i don't think the strokes have anything to do with it. not even as an influence.
primary influences being: beatles without the fannying around, oasis, small faces, oasis, chas n dave, oasis, madness, oasis, the jam, oasis, the who. british suburban claustrophobia & lack of ambition writ large in conservative "proper guitar music" overweight guys with quadrophenia parkas & union jack guitars.
strokes were an entirely disconnected phenomenon from another continent with a louche retro NY iggy/television/pretenders vibe which pretty much none of the british bands were going for or were capable of plying. "landfill" as i always understood it extends further back into the charity shop bins and encompasses garbage like ocean colour scene, feeder, and the farm.

Okay, fine, maybe the Strokes were just shite then

they are for different folks.

i mean, the landfill bands sound more like the Strokes than Garbage, come on

^one of the better reading comprehension fails of recent ilx

To me, The Strokes don't sound anything like Television, and just because they were from NYC and wore leather jackets. If they'd been from the UK and made exactly that sound, we wouldn't be making the comparison

And the only thing "landfill" about Garbage was the name

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100048520886600

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.

Dreadful band

Kings of Leon are absolutely the non-UK band who most feel like they belong in this list.

Kings Of Leon were landfill

when i say the strokes kinda sound like television, what i mean is that the strokes love to do stuff like that sounds like the intro to "venus", especially the last bit of that (although i guess they really only leaned into that sound from room on fire onwards) and generally love guitar syncopation. television of course were way looser, jammier, less pop etc., it's not that close overall

when i first encountered the 1975 i thought they were yet another shit british band in the vein of two door cinema club, the more pop later end of this stuff etc. - very glad to have been wrong there in the end

Kings of Leon don't count at all. the whole point of the term is it signifies loads of disposable copies of other recent stuff. not just music that people think is shit now. like it or not when the Kings of Leon came out they were distinctive, annoyingly so

were they though

oh sure they don't count, but they match the sound of late 2000s uk indie rock more than the other bands suggested.

You could argue that every band in that list above had something "distinctive" going on.

I'm listening to Room On Fire album for the first time and it really does sound like it could have been made by any of these UK indie bands. Even matey's singing voice slips into a sort of Manc yowl

No Americans allowed in the pit. And if you were around before 2005 you're not allowed in the pit.

I brought KoL up not as an example of landfill but as a reminder of how one record - similar enough in sound and barely heard now outside two songs - towered over it all and everything else since, sales-wise.

that people understand what's meant by "landfill", as a generally well-defined style of music from a particular era

well which sound is that exactly because with that vice list the net's already been cast so wide as to be useless by any metric - what are guillemots doing there for instance, they have more in common with like, arcade fire than anything else much in this whole area.

do you just mean the dominant sound of 00s uk indie being 'garage rock revival' and 'post-punk revival', which obviously had a whole lot of overlap but there's acts which are pretty clearly just drawing on one or the other. but if you're going to call that whole thing 'landfill', even non-uk bands, where are you drawing the line? early yeah yeah yeahs were definitely lumped in with garage rock revival. the white stripes & the black keys of course. the killers weirdly outlasted all the other post-punk revival bands and finally made a very good album over a decade later. kings of leon are what happens if you give one of the lesser of these acts real arena rock ambitions.

but then like, are the rapture landfill by that whole metric? it's not too far from them to bloc party etc. really lol

the whole point of the term 'landfill' seemed to be about the lesser bands that just got briefly hyped by nme before being quickly abandoned, or were too shit even for nme to like much, or even just the bands that didn't quite make it to the same level of popularity as the bigger names. i think daniel_rf is pretty otm but an important point is that even though some of acts termed landfill did have a fair bit of success, they weren't hip at all.

well which sound is that exactly because with that vice list the net's already been cast so wide as to be useless by any metric - what are guillemots doing there for instance, they have more in common with like, arcade fire than anything else much in this whole area.

I agree Guillemots have less to do with this than KoL and the Strokes.

The Strokes are the backhoe loaders of indie rock, cascading soil onto the heads of the landfill bands in a manner both functional and unsightly.

― like the vengaboys with music degrees (Matt #2), Monday, 29 May 2023 20:25 (yesterday) link

you can pretty much extend this sound to any 00s/early 10s indie act that was primarily part of the garage rock and/or post-punk revivals, while excluding anyone who got too far away from the guitars to keep out the wrong sort of dance-punk acts i guess (like i don't think anyone would argue for lcd soundsystem regardless of opinions on their quality)? but idk what the point of lumping all that together as landfill would be - then what do we call the shit end of it?

anyway want to hear some australian landfill

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n4gdGRM_iY

the san cisco song is still distinctly one of the worst songs i have ever heard

yeah this is what I was trying to say before. if you call the whole genre and anyone lumped in with it the nickname used to describe its dregs and shit imitators, you've got nowhere to go.

to use a Britpop adjacent analogy it'd be a bit like calling somebody like Super Furry Animals "Noelrock"