The 10 Best Indie Love Songs Ever

What with Valentine's day being tomorrow, I made a list of the best indie love songs. All the other blogs are doing this, but their lists suck. (Some of them really suck.)

So here we go,

1. My Bloody Valentine - You Made Me Realise


I could make this entire list out of My Bloody Valentine songs and it would be better than it is now. The lyrics are chillingly good.

2. Belle & Sebastian - If She Wants Me

I guess I'll go with this Belle & Sebastian song.

3. Animal Collective - Purple Bottle



There's one list where this guy says My Girls is a love song.

4. Yo La Tengo - Sugarcube



The video is great.

5. Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea




6. The White Stripes - Fell in Love with a Girl



7. Slowdive - Alison



More shoegaze.

8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps




9. The Postal Service - Such Great Heights



Tired and cliche, but I feel obligated to include it. Have you seen the screamo version? It's hilarious.

10. Los Campesinos! - You! Me! Dancing!





They sure love exclamation points!

The Beach Boys are the new Velvet Underground

Whenever something they like gets even mildly popular, everyone either deny ever liking it or will insist that they liked it before everyone else did.

This leads to hipsters' constant appreciation of things no one cares about, like The Beach Boys.

No one under the age of 60 cares about The Beach Boys, so now hipsters are starting to not only listen to The Beach Boys, but also start bands that rip off The Beach Boys, like how Animal Collective has vocal harmonies and Vampire Weekend has embraced California.




If you want to sound like a music expert, say your favorite album of all time is Pet Sounds. Trust me on this one, people will be asking you to recommend music to them for years.

Fleet Foxes dude ripping off the Beach Boys' look.

This is a band that I found out about via Gorilla vs. Bear that blatantly rips off The Beach Boys.

The 63 Best Indie Albums of the 00's

 Making a list of the best albums of an entire decade is a bit different than doing one for a single year. With single year best of lists, you can just throw whatever albums you feel like in and say "Who cares? It's just a trivial year-end list." but with decade lists you have to be at least partially objective.

  You never realize how long a decade is until you're making a list of albums and you're like, "Should I include Bright Eyes? I mean, nobody listens to it now, but we used to." Ten years is a long time, man.

  Then, there's always that "What really should be considered indie?" question. For this list I've used the "any good alternative music, that's not Radiohead" definition.

  The 00's were crazy. So crazy we don't even know what we're calling it. Some say "naughts", others say "aughts". Me? I'm just using 00's because it works well in text form and is relatively idiot proof. For the first time, you could had unlimited access to all music ever and didn't have to worry about paying for it or anything. You can spend weeks just digging through music websites trying to find something new and amazing.

  That said, I feel like these are my favorite indie albums of the past decade:

(See the full list after the jump.)

63. Everything All the Time - Band of Horses

62. One Beat - Sleater-Kinney

63. Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not - Arctic Monkeys

60. Boys and Girls in America - The Hold Steady

59. Domestica - Cursive

58. Summer in Abaddon - Pinback

57. Nouns - No Age

56. Oh, Inverted World - The Shins

55. Murray Street - Sonic Youth

54. Atlas - Battles

53. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - Phoenix

52. Microcastle - Deerhunter

51. Give Up - The Postal Service

The Rural Alberta Advantage - "In the Summertime" (A History Lesson*)

This is a story. A story of indie rock's recent history. A story that no one else is going to tell you about. They'll insist that they don't want to talk about how they used to listen to The Rapture, but the truth is that they weren't actually listening to The Rapture because they weren't that cool.

Once upon a time, it was 2003. Before that it was 2002 and before that it was 2001. We were all in high school then and blogs and Pitchfork weren't as important as they would become. Emo was an acceptable genre. It was a simpler time.

Indie rock was really seen as a kind of emo-ish thing. Listening to Bright Eyes was still acceptable. Arcade Fire hadn't happened yet. Postal Service was a pretty cool buzzband in the single-oriented time.

There was a record label called Saddle Creek. It was like how Merge or Domino is now. All the cool buzzbands were on Saddle Creek: Bright Eyes, Cursive, The Faint, Azure Ray.

Saddle Creek was located in Omaha, Nebraska. I know this may seem hard to believe, but Omaha was seen almost the same way Brooklyn is now. It's crazy. A stupid little town in the middle of nowhere! What were we thinking?

The Rural Alberta Advantage are a band on Saddle Creek, which apparently still exists. (Hmm, Tokyo Police Club seems to be on Saddle Creek too. The More You Know.*)



I posted "In the Summertime" because it's the only song that they have a video of on YouTube. It's funny how things work out that way.

They got some free mp3s on their website here.

I think "Don't Haunt This Place" is probably their best song. The rest of Hometowns is great too, so don't hesitate to buy the album. The dudes have gotta pay their rent.

The 10 Best Indie Albums of 2009

It seems like all I do is lists now. I'm tired of doing them and I'm sure some of you are tired of reading them, but it's my responsibility to do at least 10 best of lists at the end of each year AND I haven't even started on all those decade lists. Blogging is harder than you think.

So here's what I thought were the best indie albums of 2009. The year was pretty good. (Especially after last year. 2008 sucked. I mean seriously, Fleet Foxes is great and all if you're in the mood for it, but if you're not, it sucks.)

10. Logos - Atlas Sound

Yeah, the cover sucks.

9. Catacombs - Cass McCombs

For some reason my internet is being slow. Uploading all these album covers is not as easy as it should be.

8. Post-Nothing - Japandroids

Cool band name. 

 












7. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - Phoenix

Remember The Faint? Phoenix is kind of like The Faint only a lot poppier. Eh, maybe not.

6. Embryonic - The Flaming Lips

5. ...For the Whole World to See - Death


I still can't believe this was recorded in 1975. Not really indie, but whatever.

4. Album - Girls

3. Farm - Dinosaur Jr

When most bands reunite or keep putting out music when they're old, it usually sucks. Dinosaur Jr's latest two albums are a notable exception. 

2. Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective

I think I misspelled it. Oh well.

Animal Collective does it again! They make another awesome album that sounds different than all their other albums, but is still as awesome as the rest of their albums.

The trippy album art is pretty cool too.

1. Veckatimest - Grizzly Bear

I'm pretty sure I misspelled this one too. Why can't bands make their albums easier to spell? I mean the whole elitism thing about hard to spell albums felt tired years ago.

I remember when this album leaked. I was like "Meh, MPP is better." but now I'm like "MPP is okay but it's not the best Animal Collective album. That new Grizzly Bear album grows on you after repeated listening."