The 100 Greatest Indie-Rock Albums Ever — #30 to #21
Posted Thursday 11/15/2007 1:00 AM in
Guide
by
Jon Dolan, Josh Eells, Will Hermes, Jonah Weiner and Douglas Wolk
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30. Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Nonesuch, 2002This is Americana … on drugs
At the time, Wilco’s cracked masterpiece was obscured by a label-drama backstory. Unburdened by history, its pleasures are clearer: Jeff Tweedy’s warm, meandering melodies and a chilly sense of despair that hangs over the album like a Vicodin haze.
Download: “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” “Jesus, Etc.”
29. Violent Femmes, Violent Femmes, Slash, 1982
After beer and Bob Vecker, what made Milwaukee famous
Mangling acoustic instruments while pumping their shame-crazed folk-punk with the teen angst of a thousand Holden Caulfields, Wisconsin’s wimpiest came on like exploding human pimples.
Download: “Blister in the Sun,” “Add It Up”
28. The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs, Merge, 1999
Maybe the greatest old-fashioned tune whiz never to have a hit
Indie rockers usually eschew conventional songcraft; melody geyser Stephin Merritt is addicted to it. On this three-disc testament to pop’s primary obsession, the resplendently gay, devilishly smart, hilariously deadpan NYC crooner cycled every style of the 20th century through his synth-pop aesthetic, rhyming Ferdinand de Saussure, kosher and closure in the process.
Download: “The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure,” “A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off”
27. M.I.A., Arular, XL, 2005
Hip-hop recast as internationalist rebel music
M.I.A. makes a point of her Third World roots and revolutionary politics, and the first rule of Third World revolution is that you make weapons from whatever’s at hand. So her debut was a DJ-grenade lobbed into the disco, with sharpened fragments of dancehall, electroclash, jungle and new wave flying everywhere.
Download: “Galang,” “10 Dollar”
26. Belle and Sebastian, If You’re Feeling Sinister, The Enclave, 1996
Songs about girls who like boys who like boys who like …
Stuart Murdoch made it cool to be a sexually confused aesthete for the first time since the Smiths. On his septet’s second album, populated by messed-up teenagers straight out of J.D. Salinger, he distilled the blithely tuneful indie-pop aesthetic into intoxicatingly potent songs with elegant, formal orchestrations.
Download: “The Stars of Track and Field,” “Seeing Other People”
25. Sebadoh, III, Homestead, 1991Do not let your kid sister date this man
Leaving Dinosaur Jr., where his bass playing and atonal prattling were clearly not being appreciated, Lou Barlow became indie’s preeminent sensitive male — James Taylor with a bong, a crappy tape recorder and free time to translate his girl-scarred soul into rattletrap hate-folk.
Download: “The Freed Pig,” “Scars, Four Eyes”
24. The New Pornographers, Mass Romantic, Mint/Matador, 2000
The power-pop studio experiment that came crackling to life
It was originally an ad-hoc trifle, recorded over the course of almost three years: frontman Carl Newman’s vivacious power-pop project, with additional songs written by Destroyer’s Dan Bejar and occasional vocals by alt-country singer Neko Case. Then it caught on, and suddenly the Pornographers were a real band.
Download: “Letter From an Occupant,” “The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism”
23. Yo La Tengo, Painful, Matador/Atlantic, 1993
Feedback that wraps you up like a favorite fall sweater
Husband-and-wife team Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, foster parents to a million heartwarming squalls, spent the sweetest record of their 20-year career mumbling about the strangeness of love over haunting distortion, meditative folk and droning organs. A garage-rock version of domestic bliss.
Download: “From a Motel 6,” “Big Day Coming”
22. Meat Puppets, Meat Puppets II, SST, 1984
Country rock for easily agitated stoners
Brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood were Arizona acidheads who fingerpicked hillbilly solos and loved hardcore punk, so they accompanied their mumbled country visions of desert alienation with psychedelic sun-stroked noodling. Singing about the devil, drugs, “living Nixon’s mess” and their own spacious stupidity, they imagined the Southwest as a boundless dead end.
Download: “Lost,” “I’m a Mindless Idiot”
21. The Modern Lovers, The Modern Lovers, Berserkley, 1976
Jonathan Richman’s art-brut magnum opus
Recorded in 1972 and released after the band had broken up, these crude demos became a landmark: the bridge between the Velvet Underground (whom frontman Jonathan Richman idolized) and punk rock. Richman had no time for fancy stuff — he was too busy being in love with “the modern world.”
Download: “Roadrunner,” “She Cracked”
The Greatest Indie-Rock Album Ever
