Britainology 21: Landfill Indie feat. Fred Macpherson and Oscar Rickett

Maybe this was his intended life journey, but after that Pitchfork review Travis Morrison ended up being a guy married to a *journalist* who wrote an article along the lines of "my husband is a forgotten popular musician and I had no idea." Long live "Emergency & I", Anubis will judge Pitchfork wanting when its time comes.

This episode was so good

I think the real death of Landfill Indie was best encapsulated with the second Hard-Fi album debuting at number one in the UK charts but at the same time selling as many copies as your nan’s brownies at a bake sale. It was actually quite something to witness at the time, an album flopping that hard in spite of topping the charts. Landfill Indie was simultaneously omnipresent and yet nobody was buying it either. Just zero cultural significance whatsoever even at the time. Also jokes aside I do think of all the bands who get abuse from that era, Hard-Fi probably deserved it the least. Bar the stupid band name they clearly knew how to write simple but catchy pop songs and the press seemed to enjoy sticking the boot in on class lines as they were clearly not public school blowouts lien themselves/the rest of the landfill indie acts at the time. Hope they are all doing well and still earning some decent cash from Living for the Weekend residuals as they deserve it

I was in middle school when Muse got huge in America, and high school when Arctic Monkeys got huge, so they really became bands for Kids Who Like Music And Wearing T-Shirts. My first real concert was Muse in Cleveland, good times

I distinctly remember NME calling Hard-Fi 'chav rock'

thank you from the only teen who was OBSESSED with this shit at the time in all of Western Pennsylvania

Surely The Prodigy are the musical bridging point between Rock and EDM, at least in the UK if we're going to go some way to explaining how pendulum and mumford and sons can share a music taste as much as they really really should not.

Wait, does Fred know Tom Friend? Because I know Tom Friend. He taught me music management & marketing to me at uni and he said the exact same thing about seeing the Arctic Monkeys in class! I'm having a six degrees of speperation moment here 😮😮😮

Another set of bands to make you say "oh, fuck" I'd say would also be: The Pidgeon Detectives The Rapture Reverend and the Makers The Zutons Hellogoodbye The Automatic New Young Pony Club Tokyo Police Club Two Door Cinema Club CSS Crystal Castles The Rumble Strips The Dykinees The Young Knives OK Go The Hold Steady The Aquabats Nizlopi Jack Penatte Towers of London Feeder The Feeling The Hoosiers The Bravery Orson (Canadian I think, but close enough) The View (high slung guitars alert!) The Horrors The Rakes The Dead 60's Enter Shikari The Gossip The Hives Kasabian (should have stopped tbh) Keane Embrace The Enemy The Subways Lost Prophets Nine Black Alps Athlete Any other suggestions are welcome. This makes me want a Midwestology episode specifically either about Midwest Emo, Math Rock or Nu Metal, because that would be legit fun to delve into. Deerhoof are still legit to this day imo. Genuinely incredible work ethic and prolific AF. This has genuinely been one my fave epsiodes. Bought back a lot of memories of watching E4 in the morning before school, getting ready with "Kick the Bucket" playing in the background.

I distinctly remember how I and this girl were really the only ones in my midsize kentucky town to follow the british indie scene. I, being a wildly pretentious teenager, would occasionally read NME at the public library and got into the Nu-rave scene in my quest for a 'deeper kind of cool' (or just klaxons really). The girl went full in on landfill indie as part of a general deep Anglophilia. I remember how much it came off like a copy of a copy. Of course, she eventually moved to england and im still kicking it in kentucky.

re: open mic comedians and podcasters waiting for Milo to get knocked down a few pegs: "embattled Milo" is the most hilarious thing i can conceptualise mostly because he has the energy of one of those guys that some random person in a youtube video comment will say with no provocation is a huge bastard IRL but when you ask "huh, why do you say this?" they will never respond

In “Landfill Indie” vs “Indie Landfill”, does either version have a postpositive adjective?

I just had an extremely terrible flashback to the 2010 Blackhawks the moment you mentioned the kooks

*puts on college era playlist of Los Campesinos and Johnny Foreigner*

The lead singer of the Von Bondies was my real estate agent last year

Boots Riley's collaborator is Pam the Funkstress.

Absolutely fascinating to realize how we experienced the things talked about here with a 5 year delay in Eastern Europe.

feels weird to be in my early 20s and my teenage years basically being defined by liking all these same bands but like 5-10 years after their heyday, just a hand me down youth culture

Shamefully will admit that I was one of the Mumford/ Frank Turner/Muse/Pendulum guys. Have no idea how that taste formed. Throw Enter Shikari into the mix and you have 2007-2011 middle-class, mediocre mid-teenage "I'm not like the other guys" energy

The thing about ‘New York City Cops’ is interesting to hear because I was a college radio MD in the early aughts. I and my peers kind of wrote The Strokes of as a Television/Stooges ripoff but the kids clearly liked em! The Yeah Yeah Yeahs very similarly. But we saw them as absolutely idiot major label schemes—because of how they were promo’ed in CMJ (basically = NME). Hearing about the definition of Indie and labels is absolutely surreal—we saw the original ‘Wanna Buy a Bridge’ Rough Trade as the definition of indie and then idk like Pavement and Superchunk.

Remember going to an NME indie rave after show do in Bristol, (Klaxons, CSS, Sunshine Underground, new young pony club) and hearing that one had done too much Ket again, great times

Love the mystery jets it was always funny that their dad was a guitarist in the band

bonus

i really loved les incompetents but it was impossible to get a hold of their music in north america ;/

Oh fuck, was Hard-Fi actually a thing in the UK? I was the only person in my general circle in the US that listened to them, so it makes me happy to know they weren't just like, out there floating around with no fans.