Tag: Indie
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Noah Cyrus ‘The End of Everything’ (2020)
Being the sister of megastar Miley Cyrus and the daughter of similarly commercially popular father Billy Ray Cyrus doesn’t leave a whole lot of room on the family tree for another well known music star. But it seems like Noah Cyrus may revel in that sort of environment. Her 8 song extended play The End…
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Local Natives ‘Gorilla Manor’ (2010)
Gorilla Manor was an absolute gem of an album when it was released in 2010 and almost immediately became a fixture during my final years of college. Everything about this album brings me back to those sunny days in Isla Vista, feeling the wind on your face as you biked past front yards littered with…
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Ratatat ‘Ratatat’ (2004)
In the genre of guitar electronica (which is pretty damn niche), Ratatat ruled supreme during my high school and early college days. These guys were the epitome of Brooklyn hipsters before it was fashionable to be a Brooklyn hipster, recording their neo-psychedelic electronic rock album in their bassist’s Crown Heights apartment during the resurgence of…
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The Long Winters ‘Putting The Days To Bed’ (2006)
The Long Winters never fail to remind me of my college years for a handful of reasons. Putting The Days To Bed was released during my senior year of high school and was a mainstay during that summer as well as my freshman year in the Francisco Torres dorm rooms (6th floor represent!) at UC…
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Death Cab For Cutie ‘Plans’ (2005)
Death Cab For Cutie’s lead singer and songwriter Ben Gibbard has been such a fixture in the Indie Rock scene for so long now that it’s easy to forget in 2005 Death Cab was just beginning to reach their star power. Following 2003’s excellent Transatlanticism that was released independently and saw the band achieve cult-like…
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Phoenix ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’ (2009)
If you went to college in the late 2000’s there was no escaping Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. This was one of those glittery boppy Indie rock albums that was custom-made for the coming-of-age college demographic, fun and carefree and subtly sophisticated in the sort of way that made you feel like a child and adult all…
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Feist ‘Let It Die’ (2004)
My first exposure to Feist was through the excellent Broken Social Scene, effectively an art collective doubling as a massive musical experiment. The group has boasted nearly 25 members over the past two decades (at one point having 16 at a single point during the early 2000’s). Feist was one of the throng, played a…
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Del Water Gap ‘Del Water Gap’ (2021)
Del Water Gap is the solo project of Brooklyn based musician Samuel Jaffe. His self-titled debut is a nostalgia-soaked collection of 12 songs that delights in surprising you at every turn in a charming way that Indie Pop is known for. There’s a slight 90’s alternative hum buzzing underneath the surface that finds its way…
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Bon Iver ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ (2008)
The story behind the recording of For Emma Forever Ago is almost mythological in nature. Bon Iver (who at that point was simply known as Justin Vernon) had just gone through two particularly nasty breakups– the first with his band of childhood friends that had been together for over a decade, and the second to…
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Matt Corby ‘Rainbow Valley’ (2018)
Matt Corby’s Rainbow Valley is loaded with atmospheric sheen that’s smoother than a can of peanut butter. Recorded in Corby’s home studio on a five-acre plot in Byron Bay, Australia, Rainbow Valley is a wide-ranging musical journey into the spacey world of Indie R&B. The backing tracks feature an impressively set of instruments all played…
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The Flaming Lips ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’ (2002)
The Flaming Lips 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots was somewhat of a watershed moment in Indie pop history. Featuring a bevy of electronic instruments, dreamy delays, and wispy vocals from frontman Wayne Coyne, the album played a sizable role in taking traditional pop music song structures and blending them with the avant-garde to…
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Broken Social Scene ‘You Forgot It In People’ (2002)
Broken Social Scene were Indie darlings in the early aughts, known for their ambient instrumentals and song structures that featured an eclectic collection of musicians. What I’ve always appreciated about the group is how freely their members floated in and out of the group. Over the course of their 25-year history as a band, Broken…
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Cassino ‘Sounds of Salvation’ (2007)
Cassino’s lead singer Nick Torres is one of my favorite lyricists of all-time, both from his stint in pop-punk band Northstar and his subsequent folk rock project Cassino. Torres and childhood friend Tyler Odom actually formed Cassino after Northstar broke up in the mid-2000’s, putting down their overdriven guitars for a subtler indie/folk sound. And…
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The Honorary Title ‘Anything Else but the Truth’ (2006)
Once upon a time The Honorary Title served as a transformational musical intersection for me, blending teenage love for emo music and burgeoning adulthood love for indie/folk into one clean experience. At one point in my life they may have been my favorite band, and at the same point in my life I’m confident one…
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Foals ‘Total Life Forever’ (2010)
Total Life Forever hits the perfect blend of spacey math-rock guitar lines, catchy vocal melodies, and drum/bass grooves that sound like they’re pulled straight out of a trendy London nightclub at 2am. It’s as good as it was when it dropped in 2010. Keyboardist Edwin Congreve, bassist Walter Gervers and drummer Jack Bevan are incredibly…
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Rilo Kiley ‘More Adventurous’ (2004)
One thing I love most about Rilo Kiley is the witty lyrical wordplay that frontwoman Jenny Lewis is known for. From the opening lines of “It’s A Hit” it’s hard to tell if Lewis is singing a song or doing a tight ten at the Laugh Factory, waxing poetic about all the idiosyncrasies of human…
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Volcano Choir ‘Repave’ (2013)
If there’s one thing Bon Iver has mastered throughout his career, it is his innate ability to take a basic human emotion and somehow translate that into an auditory experience that feels tangible. There’s simply no one better at conveying emotion, in all of its assorted colors, over a 3-5 minute timespan. He is our…
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Penny and Sparrow ‘Olly Olly’ (2022)
Lo-fi acoustic guitar draped under synths that drip down the walls like honey. Vocal melodies heard from a church service taking place in space. This is a portrait of a Nashville bedroom in the rain. Incorporating country and R&B musical elements has been done once over, but this feels fresh, new, and inspired. Layers of…
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Gang of Youths ‘Go Farther In Lightness’ (2017)
Heartfelt and sincere, big and epic, soft and intimate. This 2017 sophomore release from Australian rockers Gang of Youths captures the vast complexities of the human experience in a way not many albums have. A crooning baritone and introspective lyrics from vocalist David Le’aupepe place themselves perfectly in between an exemplary musical performance from the…
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