Somewhere between the âindie rock revivalâ of the early-2000s and the emergence of âpoptimismâ in the early-2010s, the UK charts were dominated by a procession of homogenous bands making a type of music that has come to be referred to as: âLandfill Indieâ.Both beloved and despised, Landfill Indie is basically âindie rock revivalâ afterbirth. The music industry, upon seeing the meteoric rise of The Strokes, Bloc Party and The Libertines, fanned out across these United Kingdoms in search of white boys with weak jawlines, playing in bands with names like a problematic flavour of Walkers Sensations (hello to Bombay Bicycle Club and Cajun Dance Party).
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Dozens upon dozens of identikit âThe Somethingsâ bands were plucked from the pavements of regional towns and dropped onto Radio 1 playlists overnight. From the pages of NME to all-ages club nights to the âShirtsâ section at Topman, their presence was inescapable. By the end of the decade, The Kooksâ debut would outsell most albums by The Beatles in the UK, Scouting For Girls had a slew of Top 10 hits, and a band called âThe Ordinary Boysâ became so notable they ended up with a song on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.The mass-produced nature of Landfill meant there was a surplus of artists but a dearth of originality, which in turn bred contempt. In 2008, Andrew Harrison of The Word magazine coined the term âLandfill Indieâ, essentially turning the entire sub-genre into a critical punching bag. In a 2009 essay partly attributing the appetite for electro-pop icons like Lady Gaga, Little Boots and La Roux to Winklepicker fatigue, Peter Robinson recalls the time he visited the Sony HQ off Kensington High Street and wrote âSCOUTING FOR GIRLS = SHITâ on a chalkboard. âAll these bands!â Simon Reynolds similarly reflected in The Guardian in 2010. âWhere did they come from? Why did they bother? Couldn't they tell they were shit?âIn many ways, though, the flack levelled at some of these bands was unwarranted. As Razorlightâs Johnny Borrell noted in a 2016 VICE interview: âBands werenât allowed to develop on their own before they were swept up in the machine.â And, for all its faults, the Landfill era was probably the last time any national outlet regularly published phrases like âthe Sunderland trioâ, before the knock-on effects of the 2008 financial crisis clustered the entire industry around the M25. The scene booted open the door for people from outside London to become full-time musicians by singing about what they knew, which is what most British people know: that their post-industrial hometown or middle-class suburbia was and is shit, that youth is precious and fleeting, and that the most reliable modes of escape are romance and drinking.
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Creatively, Landfill Indie remains one of the least exciting things to happen to music this century. The 2000s birthed grime â one of the most significant British musical developments in decades; the mainstream success of emo bands in the US paved the way for countless thriving local scenes; the initial indie boom peeled off into more experimental, diverse and ultimately short-lived subcultures, like nu rave and electroclash.All of this was far more exciting and influential than Landfill Indie, which hasnât gone down in British music history as much as itâs been absorbed into British life by osmosis. At some point, these overwhelmingly white, trilby-doffed men singing about local boozers, university girlfriends and World War II became our cultural ground zero, speaking to something so uniquely pedestrian about the British experience that it became eternally relevant. You can still see bastions of its popularity today, with The Wombats drawing one of the largest crowds at Reading Festival 2019 and The Kooks and Bombay Bicycle Club billed to headline separate days of this yearâs now-cancelled All Points East (arguably, the true spirit of Landfill Indie lives on through singer-songwriters like Ed Sheeran and Sam Fender).All of which is to say: those of us who grew up with Landfill Indie have decided to unpack its enduring emotional appeal by ranking the 50 greatest most average songs of all time. For the sake of this list, weâve defined the âLandfillâ era as beginning when Pete Doherty was banned from playing with The Libertines due to substance abuse problems (mid-2003) and ending the day Spector released âChevy Thunderâ (early 2012). Weâre focusing on British bands only â so, while Black Kidsâ âIâm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With Youâ and We Are Scientistsâ âThis Scene Is Deadâ may be worthy soldiers for the cause, they are American and therefore too unique to be included in this homogenous group of Isle of Wight Festival fodder. Similarly, we have taken all folk-leaning (Kate Nash, Jamie T), pop-infused (The Ting Tings, Lily Allen), garage rock (The Subways), art rock (Franz Ferdinand) and throwback (The Pipettes) bands out of the running for being too innovative, and therefore not True Landfill.
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True Landfill is a family caravan holiday in August: kind of shit, kind of a laugh, largely unremarkable. At both its zenith and nadir, itâs âDry Your Eyesâ for couples who have fights at Tiger Tiger; ska for men who drink bottled lager in polo shirts. Itâs observational comedy about funerals, a viral video of a fight in a kebab shop, a wooden sign on a mantlepiece that says âToday is a perfect day to start living your dreams.â We have no choice but to embrace it, because itâs always there, floundering between waves of nostalgia and indifference: The Great British High Street of chart music.â Emma GarlandThese lads are from Reading, where I was born, which is probably the main reason theyâve snuck onto this list. I was the only one on the team who voted for them. Stand up tall, RG crew! â Ryan BassilConsidering this is basically like one of Uncle Albertâs sobering monologues from Only Fools and Horses gained sentience and started pinning mod badges to its hat, âLocal Boyâ goes off. It has a riff that would make Pete Doherty well up, a chorus melody straight out of The Buzzcocks playbook and a video that looks like it was set designed for an episode of Eastenders.With their most recent album charting at 26 in the UK in 2016, The Rifles are arguably the finest example of Landfill bands fading into cultural obscurity while still doing better on paper than most of your favourite artists ever will. â Emma Garland
50: “Mr Understanding” – Pete and the Pirates
49: “Local Boy” – The Rifles
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48: “House Party At Boothy’s” – Little Man Tate
47: “Annie, Let’s Not Wait” – Guillemots
46: “How It All Went Wrong” – Les Incompétents
45: “The Photos On My Wall” – Good Shoes
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44: “Amylase” – Cajun Dance Party
43: “Second Minute or Hour” – Jack Peñate
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42: “Gone Up In Flames” – Morning Runner
41: “Panic Attack” – The Paddingtons
40: “Romantic Type” – The Pigeon Detectives
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39: “Our Velocity” – Maximo Park
38: “Hounds Of Love” – The Futureheads
37: “Munich” – Editors
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36: “Killamangiro” – Babyshambles
35: “Somewhere Else” – Razorlight
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34: “She’s Attracted To” – Young Knives
33: “Stan Bowles” – The Others
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32: “What You Know” – Two Door Cinema Club
31: “Passchendaele” – GoodBooks
30: “Woolley Bridge” – Bromheads Jacket
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Sonically, itâs Landfill with all the trimmings: crunchy guitars, rumbling drums and a vocal that sort of sounds like someone youâd overhear outside a pub in London Fields. â Lauren OâNeillCuriously family-friendly, this CBBC-ass anthem has kept spirits high on car journeys from Margate to The Valleys. In actual fact, itâs a song about ketamine, so not really family-friendly at all â but fair play to our Welsh representatives for this simply huge song, which pissed off everyone, remains wildly fun to sing and refuses to die. â Hannah EwensGlasvegas are what I like to refer to as âdart board indieâ. That is, the more matured and heavy-hearted corner of Landfill specifically reserved for blokes who are out of shape but in touch with their feelings (see also: Elbow, Athlete and Escapology-era Robbie Williams).Glasvegas generally have more bite to them, but âDaddyâs Goneâ is a prime example of this particular sub-category. A rare Scottish entry to the Landfill canon, it was received overwhelmingly positively by rock journalists in 2007 because it struck upon a formula guaranteed to win the heart of any British man: down-to-earth lyrics about parental loss, shimmering post-rock guitars and a bloke bellowing his heart out about how all he wanted was âa kick about in the parkâ with his da. Absolutely fair play. â Emma Garland
29: “Monster” – The Automatic
28: “Daddy’s Gone” – Glasvegas
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27: “Moving To New York” – The Wombats
26: “For Lovers” – Wolfman ft. Pete Doherty
25: “Lucio Starts Fires” – Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong
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In JLJJJâs case, that âsomethingâ was their much-hyped self-titled debut album, which promised to bring back real rock ânâ roll with a sound that hadnât been heard since the halcyon days of Razorlight a few years earlier. Curiously, the album never actually materialised, despite being sent out to music critics, reviewed in the NME and then bizarrely retracted as it âdidnât represent their current soundâ. â Jack CummingsAs a Sheffield band, Milburn were condemned to languish in the shadows of Arctic Monkeys, but they knew (and indeed know â they reformed in 2016 after an eight-year split) their way around a brawny-as-fuck banger. âSend In The Boysâ is my favourite example of that nouse.The track gallops in with the energy of an Olympic sprinter whoâs drunk at least four pints and a Jagerbomb, as noisy drums give way to a âTeddy Pickerââstyle guitar line, before such a thing was even a twinkle in Alex Turnerâs eye. â Lauren OâNeillâFace for the Radioâ is âWonderwallâ for the Bebo generation, released during that brief period when saying your poseur enemy looks like he watches Trainspotting â15 times a weekâ was the ultimate dunk.A beautiful ditty about the virtues of being ugly â and perhaps even a mild criticism of the hopeless, cyclical nature of capitalism (âWages on a Friday / Spent on Saturday!â) â I can only recall this song with a full whiplash spinal-cringe. â Hannah Ewens
24: “Send in the Boys” – Milburn
23: “Face for the Radio” – The View
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22: “We’ll Live and Die in These Towns” – The Enemy
21: “Apply Some Pressure” – Maximo Park
20: “She’s Got You High” – Mumm-Ra
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Mumm-Ra were from Bexhill-on-Sea, they were MySpace darlings and, for reasons that are retrospectively unclear, they had a toy duck as a mascot. It would be easy to make fun of such an unashamedly sincere and twee band and song, but âSheâs Got You Highâ has guitars that float like a dream, and it does a solid job of conjuring up that warm, fantasy feeling of being loved-up. â Tara JoshiA relentlessly hooky song, and possibly the only entry to seriously interrogate the sonic possibilities of jingle bells (and hand claps!), âSee You at the Lightsâ is one of the best tracks by the very underrated Glasgow three-piece 1990s.Defined by straight line riffs, an enjoyably Bobby Gillespie-like vocal performance from singer Jackie McKeown and, obviously, the bit that goes âba-da-ba-ba-da-ba-da-da-daâ, âSee You at the Lightsâ remains on the cooler side of the late-2000s Carling Academy sound, and stands up today as an impressive slab of Landfill Indie that has earned its considerable swagger. â Lauren OâNeillWas it this music video that popularised the âindie cindyâ look â plum coloured tights, bangs, playing the drums â or was it merely a reflection of the era? Regardless, this 80s-inspired banger is joyful, cutesy and fun. I have absolutely no shame in admitting that I once queued up to get a signature from the Mystery Jets, that âTwo Doors Downâ was a big part of my teenage soundtrack, and that lead singer Blaine Harrison is an accessibility activist hero who had his hairstyles jacked by Matty Healy. â Helen Thomas
19: “See You at the Lights” – 1990s
18: “Two Doors Down” – Mystery Jets
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17: “Men’s Needs” – The Cribs
16: “Valerie” – The Zutons
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Anyway, compared to the slick swing of the Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse cover, thereâs something that feels a bit quaint and sexless about this now â but isnât that low-key what most British indie was all about? These were unabashedly tender songs sung by people in bad jeans, fumbling over very sincere emotions rather than, you know, shagging, and we were all here for it. â Tara JoshiYou know that thing about guilty pleasures not actually being guilty pleasures, because once you climb past your ego and get over yourself theyâre actually quite good, and nothing to feel guilty about? Thatâs basically 75 percent of The Kooksâ Inside In/Inside Out.This is one of the best tracks on that album. Everyone who shopped at Topman in the late-2000s would no doubt pick âNaiveâ or âShe Moves in Her Own Wayâ as the best Kooks tune, but real Landfill Indie heads â those who shopped for suits at Beyond Retro â would whisper to you that they liked this tune the best, while sucking on a liquorice paper cigarette. And if they didnât fess up to liking it, thereâs a strong chance they were lying and listened to it in secret. God, growing up is awful. â Ryan BassilIf you didnât have âYou stood out like a sore thumb, the most beautiful sore thumb Iâd ever seenâ in your MSN name in 2007, can you really call yourself a Landfill Indie enthusiast?
15: “Sofa Song” – The Kooks
14: “About Your Dress” – The Maccabees
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âAbout Your Dressâ is realistically the peak of The Maccabeesâ particular brand of Landfill â noisy, sharp-cornered guitars that feel like the soundtrack to the inner monologue of a 17-year-old, pained but polite lyrics sung in Orlando Weeksâ signature quiver, and a gentle strain of masculinity that united football lads with boys who carried around copies of The Catcher in the Rye like Birkin bags, making sure everyone saw.A genuinely great song by Britainâs Poshest Band. â Lauren OâNeillI have a genuine fondness for âIf You Wannaâ â a breakup song that is neither âgood riddanceâ nor âIâm so sad, maybe I should chop my dick offâ. The protagonist respects his exâs decision to leave, but wants to make sure she knows that he is always, always an option to her. So much so that the phrase âyou wanna come backâ is repeated 16 times in this timeless beta anthem. â Helen ThomasIâll start with the caveat that I was a giant Bombay Bicycle Club fangirl â as in, I made MySpace friends through a mutual love of the band (shout out Mia, Tom, Jacob, hope youâre well) â so this entry might be a bit biased.Named after an Indian restaurant for reasons that were probably funny when they formed (they were, in fairness, teenagers at the time), this north London band started out making guitar songs about house parties, Hampstead Heath, being too scared to make a move on romantic interests (mood!) and even titled a track âEmergency Contraception Bluesâ.
13: “If You Wanna” – The Vaccines
12: “Always Like This” – Bombay Bicycle Club
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Their influences were maybe a little more ~Serious than some of their peers (they would namecheck Pavement, Slint, Mogwai), front-person Jack Steadmanâs tremulous voice had a Marmite appeal, and they had an engaging youthful vitality (it was a classic hallmark of their shows to have the stage invaded).IMO, this is the song that showed their ability to reach beyond the Landfill Indie confines: the relaxed, ambient synth loop at the beginning and that delicious little riff would set them up for some of their best work, blending taut instrumentation, catchy hooks and dreamy electro. â Tara JoshiArmed with a wardrobe full of Burton Menswear cardigans, The Ordinary Boys came along looking to infuse a bit of âoi oi saveloyâ into the UK Charts of 2005. All credit to them, âBoys Will Be Boysâ is undeniably catchy and, despite reinforcing a rhetoric that could simply never run today, its knowing cheekiness is what gives it its charm.The Ordinary Boys were never going to be the next Rolling Stones â or even Madness, if weâre sticking to the realm of âdad approved skaâ â but lead singer Prestonâs stint on Celebrity Big Brother and subsequent Never Mind the Buzzcocks appearance suggested that he was anything but âordinaryâ. His marriage to former Paris Hilton impersonator Chantelle Houghton might have given off a âPete Doherty and Kate Mossâ feel in their eyes, when in fact they were more, well, Preston and Chantelle.
11: “Boys Will Be Boys” – The Ordinary Boys
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While career-defining for him (using the term very loosely), this ultimately served as the downfall for The Ordinary Boys in the court of public opinion. Resigned to Soccer AM highlight reels, this song is truly a reminder of what was a much simpler time. â Jumi AkinfenwaBlessed with the clout of being a Libertines offshoot, Dirty Pretty Things were a group that genuine music nerds, Skins fans and Jack Wills models could all agree on for a while. They didnât outstay their welcome, folding after a couple of albums, and in all honesty it was for the best.With its mocking barbs (âOh tell me what did you expect / Oh youâre so easily ledâ), âBang Bang Youâre Deadâ is part-ironic death march, part laughing match. Itâs widely believed to be about Pete Doherty, which Carl Barat has denied, but to whom else would he have given the âmidas touchâ (the only phrase to appear as many times in Landfill Indie as in the Bible) only for it to be thrown back in his face? â Hannah EwensâTwenty-two grand job? Iâll be having some of that, pleaseâ â is what I told myself when I was 13, doing a paper round for a tenner a week, and this song was released. When I eventually hit that titular wage bracket, I was in my early twenties, living in London, and realised, much like everyone else, that 22-grand a year isnât much to get by on.
10: “Bang Bang You’re Dead” – Dirty Pretty Things
9: “22 Grand Job” – The Rakes
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While Hard Fiâs âLiving For The Weekendâ was a song about what happened after the working week ended â echoing what rave culture had done years earlier, but to a shit tune â â22 Grand Jobâ communicated the experience of being mildly satisfied with the life you were able to live on a meagre pay cheque.Itâs not great, but itâs alright. That was how post-university life felt before the global economy went to shit and this song became a relic, along with homeownership and back-combing your hair. â Ryan BassilIt is important to note here that while the Arctic Monkeys are not a Landfill Indie band, âMardy Bumâ is a Landfill Indie song. We know this because it sounds like something you would hear during a scene transition on an episode of The Inbetweeners.As one of the most successful British acts of this century, itâs safe to say that Arctic Monkeys themselves have transcended the Landfill label â that nail was smashed into the coffin the moment they released an album set on a fictional space station â though it probably never applied to them in the first place, considering that even their first record, the honest-to-God rhapsodic Whatever People Say I Am, Thatâs What Iâm Not, felt as genuinely exciting as guitar music by four white boys can.Itâs fair to say, however, that the band were some of the main instigators of Landfill Indie, inspiring many copycat acts (lots of whom are featured in this list) who attempted to replicate their success, and inevitably did so in a less surprising and dynamic way.
8: “Mardy Bum” – Arctic Monkeys
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âMardy Bumâ â with its singable riff (a very important quality around these parts), relatableLAD lyrics about a moody girlfriend and down-to-earth northern-ness â was like rocket fuel to the fire of the Landfill genre weâve come to know, enjoy and tolerate. We celebrate its contribution, not least because it brought the word âreytâ into common parlance. â Lauren OâNeillImagine trying to explain the term âscenestersâ to a Gen Z teen: âLike hipsters, but this very specific cultural moment in the 2000s that your now tragically uncool millennial relatives thought would last forever?âAnyway, âHey Scenestersâ will be one of the artefacts that future musical anthropologists will pore over in the centuries to come as the perfect distillation of the Landfill era. Angular guitar riff? Check. Poorly communicated turn-of-the-millennium ennui? Check. Sneering use of the word âdarlingâ in a âcome on sweetheart, weâre all post-Nuts magazine hereâ way? Go on then.If you want to know the true legacy of this track, the last time I heard it played was to a crowd of very enthusiastic ageing hipsters at a wedding party where the cake was a pile of artisanal cheeses. Everyone went mad for it, including me, which says it all, really. â Zing TsjengI was 16 when this dropped and remember thinking a) that it was good, and b) that I had at least three years to go before reaching the age when everything would change. Somewhere in my early twenties I dug the song out on an old iPod and mentally accosted both The Courteeners and my teenage self: âWhat the fuck were they talking about? Being 19 was shit.â
7: “Hey Scenesters” – The Cribs
6: “Not Nineteen Forever” – The Courteeners
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Now, the song strikes a different chord. Iâm 28; 19 feels far away â far enough to listen to a song I was too embarrassed to say I liked when I was in my early twenties, and to properly enjoy it. I guess thatâs one thing getting old does to you: you enjoy things without worrying whether or not you should.The lyrics go, âI know it seems strange, things they change.â When I was younger, that sentiment seemed good. I wanted to go forward to the better life, but as an adult itâs more complex. I miss being young. I really miss loads about it, and itâs never coming back, and âNot Nineteen Foreverâ makes me feel those feelings all at once, in a way some of my favourite songs just donât. The juryâs out on whether Iâll feel the same about any other Courteeners song by the time Iâm 80, but âNot Nineteen Foreverâ is immortal. â Ryan BassilBabbling about tragedy, morals, lipstick and bloody murder like Russell Brand after a gram of speed, vocalist Edward âLarrikinâ Leeson seems to use Catherine Parr â Henry VIIIâs sixth and only surviving wife, who was allowed to keep the Queen's jewels and dresses after his death â as some sort of metaphor for gender identity.âI'm the sixth queen / I'm the wrong queen / I've got mascara running through my bloodstreamâ go the opening lyrics. Later on: âI was a boy who yearned to be a cover girl.â Itâs hammy, and loaded with stereotypes, and isnât really about anything other than quixotic English boysâ obsession with âsocietal underbelliesâ theyâve never experienced, but it does literally sound like a wine-drunk classics student reciting a poem down Regentâs Canal at 2AM â and for that it ranks high.
5: “Six Queens” – Larrikin Love
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Larrikin Love were basically the bridge between The Libertines and Patrick Wolf â a jagged, folk-inspired indie outfit with a thespian flair (by which I mean they cited Arthur Rimbaud as an influence and had a violin player). âSix Queensâ is confrontational and feminine, perfectly embodying indieâs short-lived era where every man desperately wanted to be both a rugged Irish traveller and a 19th-century poet with a billowing white shirt and chlamydia. â Emma GarlandFourteen long years after the release of âNaĂŻveâ, I challenge you not to feel something as you listen back and hear Luke Kookâs raspy vocals come in over the second loop of that choppy staccato guitar. Yes, this is pure Landfill-by-numbers, but it was painted by the Michelangelos of the genre. The way it builds from a soft and restrained stutter â with vocals growing ever more frantic into a swirling chorus of youthful energy and GCSE English-level lyrics â make it one of the least forgettable songs on this list.Despite being titled âNaĂŻveâ, it remains the most sophisticated song The Kooks ever wrote, launching them into the relative immortality of soundtracking 17 Again and a singular episode of One Tree Hill. Itâs just a shame The Kooks never brought out another song half as good as this; plus, its memory will forever be tainted by the fact their debut album, Inside In/Inside Out, also contained a song named âJackie Big Titsâ.
4: “Naïve” – The Kooks
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In perhaps the same way people from the south had no idea what Alex Turner was on about in "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor", Iâve sung along to this 1,000 times but still had to look up the lyrics to the bit when Luke Kook warbles âfond of askingâ. Comprehension issues aside, to me, âNaĂŻveâ will forever represent the innocence of summer, oversized sky blue plastic sunglasses and the generous v-neck selection at Topman. â Jack CummingsIf thereâs one man who defined, embodied and lived Landfill Indie, it is Johnny Borrell. Having spent his early career in the disorderly orbit of the The Libertines â whose place in rock history was cemented by a desperate kinetic energy, mythologised love-hate dynamic and vision of a dilapidated Britain animated by romance and narcotics â Borrell went on to form the spectacularly middle-of-the-road Razorlight.Alongside âGolden Touch,â âDonât Go Back to Dalstonâ formed the centrepiece of Razorlightâs 2004 debut album Up All Night â though to hear it now, it feels like a dirge to its genre and the scene it generated, sung by a man who personified both. âDonât go back to Dalston,â Borrell near-hums. âDonât go up the junction.âThe song feels like a psychic sealing off of a time that listeners will never have again, âDalstonâ a symbol for all the places associated with that early 21st century London indie boom. Over three minutes, the track builds rowdily, soundtracking a supercut of memories from a time when girls dressed like Jenny from The Chase and everything sort of smelled like mephedrone; a time that, for many, coincided with youth and freedom.In 2020, the trackâs pained repetition of âCome back to meâ sounds less like Borrell appealing to a lover to return home, and more like an articulation of our weird relationships with nostalgia and the past. In everything it evokes â winklepickers and hair you couldnât get a comb through if you tried, and, fundamentally, a younger version of yourself that you will never get back to again â âDonât Go Back to Dalstonâ is a distillation of the reasons why Landfill Indie still appeals emotionally, despite the fact it is sometimes not actually very good. â Lauren OâNeillAnyone worth their salt knows âfuckâ is the best word in the English language, so following it with the next best word â âforeverâ â is the zenith of all statements. Itâs not hate. Itâs not love. Itâs two fingers toward the idea that anything, whether good or bad, could last more than the precise amount of time in which you feel that things, which it cannot.Itâs a song about happiness, but a happiness thatâs trying to be upbeat in spite of whatever else life has thrown at you.âNew Labour or Tory.â âDeath and glory.â The choices here seem stark and wild, so why not take the hedonistic route away from everything and âfuck forever, if you donât mind?â Thatâs how Pete Doherty has always seen things. He toured Russia as a teenage poet, thanks to a grant from the British Council, was in one of two British bands to âbreakâ America since the days of Blur and Oasis (the other being the Arctic Monkeys), then slowly succumbed to what seems (per quotes from him) to be a life of opioid daydreams, away from everything.Like everything else by The Libertines and Babyshambles, the feeling within âFuck Foreverâ can be tooled toward whatever you want. Thatâs the beauty of Pete Dohertyâs music. He gives you the words, you live whatever you want through them. â Ryan BassilThe Fratellis have described this song as a âdouble-edged swordâ â the thing that made them and killed them. But Iâm sure everyone whoâs written a stone cold masterpiece has felt that way.âChelsea Daggerâ is the song you write when youâre taking a shot at rock superstardom. In an interview with The Guardian, Jon Fratelli recalled that magic moment: âI found the notebook with the lyrics the other night. It came to me really quickly,â he said. âI was going [sings the familiar refrain] âDo-do-do-do-do-do,â and it was so easy to write that I couldnât believe nobody had ever used [the melody] before.âNeither could the people of Britain. âChelsea Daggerâ demands the listener tear off their top, tits akimbo, and howl into the night. With that rolling drop, stomp and slap, it has more pomp than a travelling circus, more pizzazz than a Bugsy Malone number and, with almost alchemical precision, the exact degree of stupidity as people who still yell âGaryâ at festivals. By the final chorus, crowds will yield to its power, hand-in-hand in with enemies, weeping and screaming.The Fratellis reached the very peak of what Landfill Indie could achieve when they charmed a nation and cemented their place in football matches, pubs, karaoke booths, weddings and summer barbecues for at least another couple of centuries.âChelsea Daggerâ is the sound of COVID-19 being over, your friends and family safe, as you steam towards your favourite people at the pub. âChelsea Daggerâ is the sound of it being fucking On. â Hannah EwensWords by: @jumiaa, @ryanbassil, @jackcummings92, @hannahrosewens, @emmaggarland, @tara_dwmd, @misszing, @hiyalauren and @iamhelenthomasIf you feel strangely compelled to revisit all these songs again, weâve put the full playlist on the VICE UK Spotify: