The 100 Best Indie Rock Albums of All Time. Includes albums by Death Cab for Cutie, Neko Case, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bon Iver, TV on the Radio, Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Liz Phair, and Sonic Youth.
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I liked their attempt at defining indie rock:
Per any Top 100 lists, the comments are an integral amendment to the thing itself. These don't disappoint!
they excused themselves right out of the gate for any omissions that made anyone stabby but seriously no ween? afghan whigs? husker du? pixies? throwing muses ffs?? make it make sense
Not to mention nothing from The Smiths.
These also irked me. And what about Pylon? Murmur was also way too low on the list.
And they even broke their own rule a few times. I love Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but Nonesuch was part of a major label.,
I’ll use this thread as a recommendations bucket and suggest Cure for Pain by Morphine (Rykodisc, 1993). It’s an outlier by virtue of having [almost] no electric or acoustic guitar, but it would get the little saxophone icon among others.
It looks to me like they intentionally left off a lot of 80s stuff, particularly pre-1988, including releases from indie labels. Maybe because they fall more easily into another named scene (new wave, college rock, alternative rock, experimental rock etc). They only kept six 80s albums (and only 3 before 88). It's not super consistent: I can see an argument for Feelies as indie-influential above other impact, but once you have Murmur why not Surfer Rosa or Doolittle? I think they're a bit too inclusive after 2010ish but there's then stuff there I never heard so that's more useful to me than more of the same adulation of <whatever>.
Did you see another place where they broke the major label rule? I think YHF was the "one exception" called out in the pre-amble. Like I was surprised there was no Luna but Luna was on Elektra (owned by Warner.)
I wish the little drawn tags were clickable - I'd like to see all the ones marked as "Underdogs" or "Surprisingly Horny" for examples.
I echo the statements above. Seems like it has a bit too much of a recency bias. That said, I enjoyed looking, being reminded, being bewildered, and occasionally surprised.
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