Round the List

The final part of the countdown of alternative album titans salutes the undeniable masterpieces of the form. Part One:  http://roundthelist.blogspot.com/2021/06/my-little-underground-30-essential.html?m=1 Part Two:  http://roundthelist.blogspot.com/2021/07/my-little-underground-30-essential.html?m=1 10 TALKING HEADS Remain in Light (1980) If you had to choose one word to describe Talking Heads’ astonishing Remain in Light it would be hyperactive. From the first second to the last, the plethora of ideas, both musical and lyrical, that pours out of every beat is dizzying and dazzling in equal measure. Never a band to stand still stylistically, David Byrne’s New Wave innovators took a giant leap forward by introducing techniques and motifs from Afrobeat into their eccentric melange of post-punk art rock and linguistic Dada. Making electrifying use of dense polyrhythms to generate a relentless energy and skittish unpredictability, Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On), the me...

From Mancunian racket to Californian slackers, here’s part two of the rundown of essential alternative music albums since 1980. Part One:  http://roundthelist.blogspot.com/2021/06/my-little-underground-30-essential.html?m=1 Part Three:  http://roundthelist.blogspot.com/2021/07/my-little-underground-30-essential_11.html?m=1 20 HUSKER DU Zen Arcade (1984) In 1984, Husker Du, the darlings of the loud, fast, visceral US Hardcore scene, did the unthinkable and released a concept double album. As every frustrated teen growing up in Reagan’s America knew, grandiose rock operas were the preserve of the bloated corporate rock mainstream and complete anathema to a musical movement that prized brevity and power over grand overarching storytelling arcs. And yet, remarkably, Zen Arcade became a (relative) hit for indie label SST and still stands as the Minnesota trio’s finest hour and seven minutes. Ostensibly the bleak tale of a disaffected youth who leaves his broken home to find himself...

I have a confession to make. Not long ago I joined an indie music group on Facebook. At first it was an opportunity to reminisce over neglected Britpop B-sides or impress people with the fact that I’d heard of The Jasmine Minks, but after a while it was the heated arguments about genre and canon that became both hilariously petty and horribly addictive. Group members would set out inflexible rules for what bands, scenes and albums should be regarded as properly indie that rivalled the Treaty of Versailles for complexity (and effectiveness). Did indie strictly mean independent or was it a particular sound, style or spirit? What happens to a band deemed indie who move to a major label and make their greatest record? Are they written out of indie-history (or indstory) because they turned their backs on a 4-track recorder and a drummer who was permanently out of time? Such disputes are of course completely pointless yet kinda fun at the same time. The use of the term alternative rather tha...