Slate.Year 2002.

Five best indie

albums.
By David Samuels
Posted Friday, Dec. 13, 2002, at 1:29 PM ET

The most important story of the year in indie rock is that Elliott Smith didn't
release a record—and when he does release one, sometime in the middle of
next year, it will be on Dreamworks. The reigning bard of passive-aggressive
rock, Smith is a younger Neil Young minus the country-rock influence—the
prototype for an entire generation of indie singer-songwriters, none of whom
have come close to matching his gift for embittered lyrics and deceptively
gentle melodies. The fact that he records for Dreamworks, the corporate
megarock giant owned in part by David Geffen, rather than Kill Rock Stars—
the Olympia, Wash.-based indie for which Smith recorded his first two
incredibly influential records—is as clear a sign as any that indie labels are
now the minor leagues for the big-corporate majors. Only the redoubtable
Cat Power (whose new record will be coming out in February on Matador),
the queen of sadcore, continues to make the case for indie rock as a world
apart.

Which isn't to say that niche-market singer-songwriters and bands on their

way up can't still produce great music. What follows is a brief anthology of
five of the most notable indie rock artists of the year.

Neil Halstead's first solo album, Sleeping on Roads

(4AD), contains nine modest, literate, intensely tuneful songs. (It actually
came out last year in Europe but has only been available in the United States
this year.) The difference between Halstead and most literate singer-
songwriters who play acoustic guitar is that Halstead writes beautiful,
dreamy melodies, has a wonderful voice, and can play his guitar—workaday
talents honed by his day job as lead singer and songwriter for Mojave 3, the
sadcore champs whose Excuses for Travellers was my favorite record of 2000
(Elliott Smith's Figure 8 was a close second). "Driving With Burt" is an
accessible favorite with moody, autumnal guitars that seem to move in time
with the wheels of a bus. Halstead writes songs about gentle losers, addicts,
lovers, and people looking for shelter—his voice is quiet, tuneful, and
unsentimental.
Guided by Voices is a great rock band routinely derided by major-label
types as symbolizing everything self-indulgent, weird, and annoying about
indie rock. My first impression after hearing GBV for the first time, way back
in the '80s, was that I was listening to a poorly produced rock and roll record
by a fourth-grade teacher from Ohio who wrote fractured, surrealist rock
poetry, set it to atmospheric thrash, then sang the whole mess in a fake
British accent. Which is exactly what it was. And it was awful. Then,
suddenly, it wasn't.

Part of the success of this recipe has to do with the mad

conviction of lead singer and lyricist Robert Pollard in his own material. On
Universal Truths and Cycles (the group's homecoming record on
Matador), Doug Gillard adds some unusually disciplined and exciting guitar
—chug-a-long '80s punk mixed with heavy gusts of Pete Townshend-esque
classic rock guitar (to match Pollard's increasingly Daltrey-esque vocals). The
result is the closest thing to Tommy that indie rock is ever likely to produce.
(For a lovely early-Who steal, click here.)

But the real payoff for Guided by Voices listeners is that Pollard simply
inhabits a different stylistic universe than any other rock songwriter. Song
titles like "Christian Animation Torch Carriers" and "Factory of Raw Essentials"
have a loony, fun surrealism, making great use of a genre that is usually the
artistic refuge of scoundrels. Pollard's genius as a writer is his way of starting
with nonsense, then letting you in for a glimpse of meaning, then following it
up with more nonsense. "Does she blend well?/ Your choice, I mean/ Your
angel-baby-monkey girl/ a gift of smiles and love reduction?" he asks. When
he follows this with a stately chorus of "Does it hurt you/ to love, I mean" you
think you have the fox cornered: It's a confessional song about a girl. Then
it's not. In the end, every Pollard song collapses in on a phrase that is built to
sustain repeated listenings without ever quite becoming fixed in its meaning.

It's hard to say whether the fact that Universal Truths and Cycles was the
best rock record of the year—and that the single "Everywhere Is Helicopter"
was the best heart-pounding rocker of the year —is good news or bad news
for indie rock, especially considering that it's music by guys over 40 who are
mining a stylistic vein they pioneered in the '80s. OK, it's bad news. But this
is still a great record.
 Sarah Utter and Maggie Vail of Bangs sing with the
infectious energy of the great Susanna Hoffs: With the accompaniment of a
solid drummer, they sound like the greatest girls-school punk band ever.
(Obsessive indie fan alert: Maggie's sister Tobi is credited on the liner notes
for "screams, backup vocals, hand claps." Tobi Vail was Kurt Cobain's
girlfriend.) Bangs' debut EP, Call and Response, is also a timely reminder of
how little the (supposedly virtuous) hipsters of the indie rock business have
done to redress the commercial imbalance between the sexes. If Bangs were,
say, the Strokes—hunky guys playing warmed-over Velvets and Iggy Pop,
rather than indie girls playing old Go-Gos' riffs —they'd be celebrating their
first gold record right now instead of touring the South to support a 16-
minute-long EP on Kill Rock Stars. Bangs are women who rock—and who sing
like the Bangles. Slimy A&R guy alert: Get these girls into a major studio
right now, surround them with a bunch of production pros, put Susanna Hoffs
on one track, and then market the crap out of them!

Richard Buckner sounds like a froggy, bumptious

combination of Warren Zevon and Ryan Adams, conveyed in the voice of a
'90s shy-guy-who-can't-sing. The spare arrangements on Impasse—released
on tiny Chicago-based Overcoat Records—thankfully return to the sound of
his terrific debut, Bloomed, dispensing with the orchestral impasto he laid
down on his forgettable major-label work for MCA. At heart, Buckner is an
honest craftsman writing country-tinged relationship ballads: I picture him
living alone in Canada in some place with no furniture, a drifter-type in a
Russell Banks novel.

What's unusual about Buckner is that he writes well-crafted dysfunctional-

guy songs. The lyrics seem like verbal litter when you read them on paper
but cohere into allusive stories when sung. Buckner's strongest point, I think,
is always the beginnings of songs. The opening line is usually the best: "Born
into giving it up/ and closing down when it's done," or "Was I there/ all loaded
at the wrong door." Overall, Impasse is a tight, focused record from a guy
who got dropped by a major label and badly needs to recapture his audience.
I have played it with my old Dusty Spingfield record, with Gram Parsons
records, and with my recent thrift shop discovery—Slowhand, by Eric
Clapton. I think that MCA made a big mistake by dumping Richard Buckner.

On the other hand, I'm not sure exactly how I feel about Bill
Doss. He seems to spend his days in a universe of his own making, writing
film scores to freaky conceptual movies that exist only in his own weird head.
The Sunshine Fix's Age of the Sun (on the Los Angeles-based indie
Emperor Norton), Doss' latest project, pretty much encapsulates everything
that's right and wrong with approaching rock like an artiste. The album is
filled with annoying cultish passages where Doss twiddles the dials on
antique vacuum-tube consoles and endlessly repeats the same jaunty,
Victorian dance-hall-sounding themes again and again, as if to explain why
he's not a big rock star. What redeems the record is the combination of his
monomaniacal focus on a single theme—the sun—and an indelible gift for
writing happy-sounding interior music that recalls the best of late '60s/early
'70s light psychedelia: the Beach Boys, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, the
Beatles, Pink Floyd, even Chicago. Doss' guitars are warm and sweet, and his
lyrics have a cracked but literate charm. "Can't you hear the calling of a
luminous moon/ as it's setting on an hourglass," he sings, before launching
into a bright, pinwheel-eyed chorus of "I could show you all the mountains
you could climb/ all the mountains you could climb." Has Doss been staring
too hard at the sun? Sure. But Age of the Sun repays repeated listening—and
is the sort of record that your children will be interested to discover in your
collection.

Finally, my choice for the year's saddest, most depressing

sadcore record is from Carissa's Wierd, which records for the
heartbreakingly named Sad Robot label. Women who've been dumped
recently by their boyfriends during the holiday season will enjoy repeated
listenings of "Farewell to All Those Rotten Teeth" and "Ignorant Piece of
Shit"—just as their male counterparts will enjoy "Sofisticated Fuck Princess
Please Leave Me Alone." If you just broke up with someone and want to
plunge yourself into total, abject misery—or make someone else feel
miserable—buy it. In fact, buy all of these records. They'll keep you company
during the long, dark December holiday weeks to come—and you'll keep
some of America's most talented musicians in business.