To celebrate our 20th anniversary, we have highlighted the albums that have helped define Under the Radar over those years, starting with albums released in 2000 as the initial seeds for the magazine were being planted and stretching all the way to 2021.
This is not a definitive list of the best albums of the last two decades, nor is it a complete list of our favorites. Instead it’s a collection of albums that meant something to us for one reason or another. For example, Broadcast was the first ever band I interviewed and The Delgados were the first band I ever interviewed in person, both for another publication just prior to starting Under the Radar, and both artist’s albums at the time are included.
For starters I put together an extensive list of albums we could write about and then our writers handpicked which ones they were most passionate about revisiting. We weren’t able to write about every album I would’ve liked to, but for each year I’ve included short lists of other important releases. Albums from 2001 are featured in a whole separate section related to that year.
Any longtime reader won’t be surprised by many of the albums chosen. Nor should they be shocked by the lack of much genre representation outside of our main area of coverage, indie rock and its various sub-genres. This is an honest reflection of the artists and albums we have championed for 20 years.
2000
Broadcast
The Noise Made by People (Warp, 2000)
I once read that Broadcast wrote every album as if it were the score to an unrealized film script. For their debut, the English band sound like they’re soundtracking the departure of survivors from a bombed out airport hangar in a post-apocalyptic world where a mad scramble to reach life on a new planet has taken hold. The organic nature of the compositions gives the hissing electronic backgrounds something pulsing and striving towards an escape from the mundaneness that marks the everyday. Recorded over a period of two years and produced by the band themselves, the finished product sounds startlingly alive and contemporary, even with all of the Twilight Zone lounge romp and cabaret melodies. Dishing out doleful reassurances on the nature of identity and of the difficulties in communing with others, Trish Keenan’s angelic and haunting voice sounds as timeless as ever. The album stands as testament to the future as best imagined in the past. By Stephen Axeman
The Delgados
The Great Eastern (Chemikal Underground, 2000)
Whether one hears The Great Eastern today for the first time or the fifteenth, the Scottish quartet’s timeless melodic strengths continue to hold. Released on their own Chemikal Underground label, this 2000 Mercury Prize nominee marked a creative roll that continued with The Delgados’ gorgeous 2002 follow-up, Hate. By Hays Davis
Doves
Lost Souls (Heavenly/Astralwerks, 2000)
After surviving a studio fire that claimed all of their equipment and the recordings they’d been working on, Jimi Goodwin and twin brothers Jez and Andy Williams had a rebirth from mediocre house music outfit Sub Sub to a band that helped define the sound of British indie rock in the ’00s. Doves’ debut album, Lost Souls, kicks off with a groovy instrumental track, aptly named “Firesuite.” Recorded in a claustrophobic Manchester studio attached to a graveyard, the album showcases their melancholy tendencies tinged with euphoria that became the band’s trademark sound. Contemporaries of Elbow and Coldplay, Doves didn’t typically chart as high in the U.S. as their counterparts, but that didn’t stop them from selling out American shows. Their unique brand of downbeat, guitar-laden rock, which is also somehow danceable and uplifting, found an audience on both sides of the pond, and Lost Souls set the groundwork for many brilliant Doves albums to come. By Laura Ferreiro
Grandaddy
The Sophtware Slump (V2, 2000)
These haunting, melodic songs that find heart in modern technology hit the Top 40 of the UK albums and singles charts, moved David Bowie to seek them out backstage, and led Grandaddy to the cover of Under the Radar’s first issue. You’ll believe a robot can cry, along with a few humans. By Hays Davis
Sigur Rós
Ágaetis byrjun (FatCat, 2000)
That one group could entirely reinvent themselves after a largely conventional debut is a feat in and of itself, but very seldom does an album genuinely defy any and all genre categorization. Resembling instead a relic from some peculiar afterworld of sights and sounds still alien to those of us on earth, Sigur Rós’s magnum opus Ágaetis byrjun saw the Icelandic post-rockers tap into some lovely ethereal inspiration in delivering one of the
2002
most wholly unique releases in popular music. Jónsi’s inimitably extraterrestrial vocals pair superbly well with the orchestral flourishes of the group’s ambient soundscapes, with “Starálfur,” “Olsen Olsen,” and “Ágætis byrjun” providing fresh fantasies for those looking to escape reality for a time. Words cannot describe the utter beauty of Ágaetis byrjun, its strange sensation just as pure and affecting two decades on. (First released in Iceland in 1999, we’re honoring its international release in the UK in 2000 and America in 2001). By Austin Saalman
Also released in 2000: The Avalanches: Since I left You, Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour of the Bewilderbeast, Black Box Recorder: Facts of Life, Clinic: Internal Wrangler, Goldfrapp: Felt Mountain, and Radiohead: Kid A.
Bright Eyes
Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (Saddle Creek, 2002)
With Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, the Omaha-based band Bright Eyes showcased their ability to adapt to other genres—including the infusion of folk and orchestra instrumentals that would only grow stronger over time. However, aspects of angst and twenty-something emo-ness remained, especially on the standout and live show staple, “Lover I Don’t Have to Love.” This record opened both Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes up to new audiences and marked the first time Under the Radar interviewed the expanding group (the one and only interview done by our Co-Publisher Wendy Lynch Redfern). By Lexi Lane
Broken Social Scene
You Forgot It In People (Arts & Crafts, 2002)
Broken Social Scene redefined what a band could be. The sprawling collective of 10+ musicians was founded by core players Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, but an open-door policy extended to members of Toronto’s alterative/indie scene. With You Forgot It In People, the group mutated and reassembled pop songs into a dense, exciting, and influential melange of non-existent subgenres. There’s the banjo-led Appalachian emo of “Anthems For a Seventeen Year-Old Girl,” Sebadoh’s answer to Neu! on “Cause = Time,” and some kind of jazzy trip-hop elevator music with “Pacific Theme.” The end result is disparate yet cohesive, and indie rock’s answer to Snarky Puppy. By Hayden Merrick
The Flaming Lips
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Warner Bros., 2002)
Perhaps the ultimate Flaming Lips record, 2002’s fuses the band’s alt-rock sensibilities from the first two decades of their career with the spacey electronics that would become a prominent feature in the next two. Initially telling the story of a girl named Yoshimi who works for the city and battles, well, pink robots, the album abandons the narrative it sets up after four songs and instead becomes a lysergically-drenched rumination on love, death, and existence in our current, technologically-driven world—exactly the brand of off-kilter one would is a psychedelic head trip of enormous emotional depth that truly has to be heard to be believed. of the same scene in New York), Interpol appeared like a sharpened blade with their sleek suits, angular guitars, and glowering temperament. All of which added up to a million easy Joy Division comparisons, but a) who wouldn’t want more Joy Division b) songs like “NYC,” “Obstacle 1,” and “Leif Erikson” still elicit goosebumps almost two decades later, and c) there’s absolutely zero chance Ian Curtis would have tried to get away with Paul Banks’ “We have two hundred couches where you can sleep tight, grim rite” chorus. led many young listeners to other bands, but it is, in its own right, a masterpiece.
