A Beginner's Guide to Indie Pop and Rock

Cafe Society
1

I’m requesting a guide, not giving one.

Growing up, I was never into music that much. I remember being pretty apathetic to it all except for a song here and there – Damn Yankees’ *Higher *being the most notable one in the late eighties – until sometime in the early nineties when I went on a trip with my older sister and she somehow wound up turning me into a country fan even when my dad, a connoisseur of country going back as far as the nineteen teens, had never been able to.

I spent the next ten years listening to the stuff and while I still like Collin Raye, Nickel Creek, Allison Krauss, Marty Robbins, and a handful of other artists, I’m no longer a fan and can’t stomach anything post 2001. The breaking point for me was some insultingly stupid song about an answering machine and after hearing it one too many times, I turned the dial to my local rock station and haven’t looked back.

Fast forward four more years and I’m a definite fan of rock. While most people seem to be decrying its decline and imminent death, I’m enjoying it. Maybe it helps that while I was into country, I was *completely *unaware of all but the most astronomically popular pop songs and so I’ve had much pleasure in discovering what most other people are entirely sick of. 90’s rock… uh, rocks. I love grunge – Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, et al – and am also quite fond of most of the alt-rock that everyone else is probably sick of by now, Blind Melon’s No Rain being a particular favorite and the Red Hot Chilli Pepper’s entire catalog being another.

I also have to mention Tool and A Perfect Circle as all-time favorites but neither is indicative of 90’s rock so grouping them with the others would be weird.

Anyway, since I once made a total conversion from country to rock, I was wondering if anyone interested could help me make another conversion, from all rock to rock and indie. Over the past year, I’ve been subjected to lots of new music from many different friends and am really starting to appreciate some of it although it’s still pretty limited. As of right now, the only two bands I’m entirely sure I like are Frou Frou and Zero 7 although I’m really starting to dig Metric thanks to the song, Dead Disco, that grettle recently sent me.

With those three bands and the dozen or so other artists listed, could anyone give me some suggestions as to what other bands I should track down and listen to? Living in a small town, I can’t just immerse myself in indie music the same way I could with the mainstream only a couple years ago.

Any help would be appreciated. (And anyone else looking for suggestions can feel free to ask as well)

2

I always recommend Sublime’s 40oz to Freedom. It’s a good blend of lots of different styles, fairly raw and low-tech production values, and a great album that you can just groove to. Think of a blend of reggae, punk, ska, and hip-hop. Lots of catchy tunes.

It’s not technically indie, but it has an indie feel to it (unlike their later self-titled albums).

3

I’m glad you mentioned that as I forgot to mention in my OP that I’m more than willing to try anything with an indie flavor, not just acts that’re one hundred percent. I’m looking for music to enjoy, not to build some vague concept of musical credibility.

I unabashedly like The Monkees. I’m never going to have great taste in music.

4

I’ll recommend the albums I’ve been listening to most recently:

Who Killed the Zutons? by The Zutons
Please Describe Yourself by Dogs Die in Hot Cars
From a Basement on a Hill by Elliot Smith
both albums by **The Thrills **

All excellent albums, with the Zutons and Dogs Die in Hot Cars being albums you can dance to, Elliot Smith being a singer/songwriter guy, and The Thrills sounding kinda like the Beach Boys.

Also, maybe the easiest way to discover good indie music is by looking at good indie magazines. I think Magnet Magazine, Filter Magazine, and Rockpile Magazine are all magazines with pretty good opinions and can be found at Barnes and Noble or other similar places. And those magazines can do much better desciptions of any album or group than I ever could.

5

For the most part, I don’t particularly care for indie music. That said, the roots of the genre are very much worth checking out, as there are some real classics there. If you’re not familiar with the Talking Heads, Sonic Youth, the Pixies, the Stone Roses, Fugazi, Elvis Costello or Hüsker Dü, you’re missing out on some good stuff.

For current recommendations, I recommend looking up any of your favorite bands/albums on the AllMusic Guide and just exploring either the genres or the similar artists.

6

Oh yeah, one other thing that’s worked well for me is to check out the labels’ websites. They’ll have their other bands listed, and a lot of the smaller/less mainstream ones will have a decent selection of free .mp3s, so you can check stuff out that way.

7

You would probably enjoy Cursive’s The Ugly Organ. The cello work on it is excellent (IMO not enough orchestral strings make it into rock music). I think any Tool fan could definitely get into this CD, but that isn’t to say they sound the same. I just think they work well for reasons I probably couldn’t enumerate.

Some of the bands you mention seem to lean more away from indie rock as such and more to the heavier side of things. So ultrafilter’s Fugazi recommendation is really good. Each Fugazi album is a little different, though, so it is hard to say which one might make a good “first listen”. Probably “In on the Kill Taker” or “End Hits”, followed by “The Argument” and then “Red Medicine.” Not an order that represents my favorites, but what I think is a good “approachability” order.

I would love to recommend At the Drive In’s Relationship of Command and Mars Volta’s Deloused in the Comatorium but they might be a little outside your tastes (faster and more aggressive than the grunge-styled alternative but not “speed metal” by any stretch of the imagination).

8

Totally random listing of great music you should give a listen to:

Liz Phair Exile in Guyville
The Meters Best of The Meters
Blues Traveler Travelers & Thieves, Four, Straight on 'til Morning
Widespread Panic Til The Medicine Takes
Eliott Smith XO
Gillian Welch Time: The Revelator
Leftover Salmon Euphoria
Del McCoury Del & The Boys
Phish Rift, Hoist, A Picture Of Nectar, Billy Breathes
Counting Crows August & Everything After, Recovering the Satellites, Hard Candy
Mark Knopfler The Ragpicker’s Dream, Sailing to Philadelphia
Indigo Girls Swamp Ophelia, 1200 Curfews
The Black Crowes Southern Harmony & Musical Companion, Amorica
And you should definitely take a listen to Alison Krauss & Union Station’s new disc Lonely Runs Both Ways, which is so far removed from modern country that it’s in a different time zone. If I had to call it anything, I’d say it was newgrass, but it leans heavily towards Americana. To an extent the same goes for their last studio album prior, New Favorite, which I consider to be one of the best produced albums of the late 1990’s, hands down.

9

Desaparecidos - Read Music/Speak Spanish
Death Cab For Cutie - The Photo Album
Cursive - Domestica
Beulah - Yoko
Muse - Absolution (I think you’ll really like this one!)

My favorites are types like Death Cab For Cutie and Bright Eyes, but I think they’d be too folky/sissy/emo for you, so I only recommended the Photo Album, which is just undeniably good. Rock on!

~S&S (who feels kinda stupid, having said ‘rock on’)

10

Also,

Kyuss - The Green Machine

That is all.

11

Er, isn’t that the name of a song off Blues for the Red Sun?

As high-quality as they are, Kyuss has little connection to what’s generally considered indie pop/rock.

12

I’d second the Elliot Smith, Cursive, and Death Cab. I think that they have pretty much universal appeal. If you like poppier stuff then my guilty pleasures that get me constant ridicule from my friends when they’re being annoying indie hipsters are:

Saves the Day Stay What You Are
The Juliana Theory Understand This is a Dream

13

Why go for a print magazine when you’ve got Pitchfork Media? (Of course, I predict that now there’ll be requisite wave of BLARG BLARG ONLY ELITIST HIPSTERS READ PITCHFORK AND THEY HAD THIS ONE REVIEW I DIDN’T AGREE WITH ETC ETC.)

Anyway. We can’t forget Faith No More - not exactly indie rock, but rather important when considering it all. The New Pornographers are always good, and we can’t forget the newcomers like Franz Ferdinand, Arcade Fire and those.

Not to forget one of the essential ones - Radiohead.

14

Some of my favorite groups that could be considered “indie pop and rock”:

Ben Folds (with the Ben Folds Five and as a solo artist)
Belle and Sebastian
Raveonettes
White Stripes
New Pornographers
Shins
Strokes
Elliott Smith (more of a singer-songwriter, as others have mentioned)
Tom Waits (who has done everything from singer-songwritery folk to beatnik jazz to film noir-styled blues to creepy turn-of-the-century carnival music)
Wilco
Morphine
Weezer
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

I’m also a big fan of rockabilly, swing, lounge, surf, alt-country, jazz, ska, punk… all great non-mainstream genres, but not necessarily to everyone’s tastes. I can recommend plenty of those too!

15

10 Albums I can listen to any time…

The Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy and The Lash
Gillian Welch - Hell Among the Yearlings
X - More Fun In The New World
Johnny Dowd - Cemetary Shoes
The Rezillos - Can’t Stand The Rezillos
The Velvet Underground - White Light / White Heat
The Barracudas - Drop Out With The Barracudas
The Replacements - Let It Be
Mötorhead - No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith

and as Ultrafilter said… you can also check out AllMusic Guide and browse their genres.

16

Quicksand-Slip
Its heavy and harmonic. A bit similar to Tool, maybe a little more punk. Its old, they never quite caught on, and could be indie. But its good, and thats all that matters.
I tend to latch on to the music I like and never stop with it, I can’t stop listening to Shiner either. In their early days (Splay, Lula Divina) they were a three piece, which is amazing considering the ammount of sound they could create. Its heavy and brilliant.

Oh, and since you mentioned rediscovering rock a bit after everyone else, Ill recommend some (guitar driven) classic rock that I discovered after being mostly into punk/indie/grunge growing up. This stuff is the basis for most eveyting that came after and it still holds up. (You’re indie loving friends may think you’re crazy.)
The Who-Live at Leeds
Led Zeppelin-anything, but especially Led Zeppelin, self titled debut
Jimi Hendrix-really any of the newly released stuff, but especially First Rays of the New Rising Sun
The Rolling Stones-Exile on Main Street

17

Yet again, I’m going to recommend KEXP. In addition to their live and archived streams of their regular programming, they have a bunch of short live performances available; so you might want to do some listening and see what you like.

18

WOXY FM is a good source for indie pop/rock as well as all sorts of non-mainstream music. I second all of ultrafilter’s recommendations to help get a base on the genre. Indie rock is such a vague label that I can see a band like Kyuss being lopped into it.

Other bands to check out:

St. Etienne—very danceable and sexy indie pop/dance

Belle & Sebastian—melodic, charming, sweet “twee” pop

Pulp—my favorite Brit Pop band, along with The Stone Roses. Infectious melodies, rock instrumentation, danceable beats

Stereolab—nouveau Krautrock. Mix of synths, guitars, drums, bass. It’s very melodic, heavily based on repeating patterns, intertwining vocal lines, sound textures, hypnotic rhythmic figures.

My Bloody Valentine—specifically the album Loveless. It may take several listens to get into it, but once you do, you can’t help but think this may just be the best album of the 90s. They’re classified as shoegazer rock. The style is based very much on rich textural soundscapes: droning, swirling guitars, vocals more as melodic instrument and contrast than a lyrical vehicle, just general impressions of sound.

The Cocteau Twins—Similar in approach as My Bloody Valentine, but gentler and a little poppier. Very ethereal, like a soundscape to a dream (perhaps why this subgenre is known as “dream pop.”) You might know the lead singer, Beth Fraser, from the Massive Attack song “Teardrop.”

19

Yeah, my bad. I apparently have it mislabelled on my minidisc. Kyuss is stoner-rock, in my opinion, and as such, being out of the mainstream and a bit different, they certainly qualify as indie rock.

20

I guess…I’m not so sure Kyuss really qualifies as a rock band, but they sure aren’t mainstream.

There seem to be two different definitions of indie floating around. One seems to pertain to stuff that sounds a lot like alternative rock but doesn’t get exposure and may be on smaller labels. The other pertains to anything that’s not on a major label. Which are you looking for, Aesiron?