By now you’ve already heard mixes recapping 2009′s best albums. So I won’t bore you with yet another list topped by Merriweather Post Pavilion. Instead, I bring you a mix of songs from 1999, now a full 10 years behind us.
1. “Barcelona” – The Rentals
2. “Breakfast of Champions” – Rainer Maria
3. “The Aristocratic Swells” – Beulah
4. “I Don’t Want to Get Over You” – The Magnetic Fields
5. “Never Meant” – American Football
6. “The Plan” – Built to Spill
7. “Roanoke Born” – Aloha
8. “Loro” – Pinback
9. “Over My Head ” – Red House Painters
You can download the full mix, or add it (in part) on Spotify.
I was an incoming sophomore in high school in 1999, and had a CD collection whose range started at emo and ended at hardcore, with the bands on that summer’s Warped Tour somewhere in between. But soon I would be introduced to a different kind of sound.
The song was “Loro” by Pinback, the eighth track on this mix. It was the first indie song I ever heard. Through “Loro,” I became aware of a different breed of listener. One that seemed to my teenage mind to be part of a more sophisticated audience. Smart, but cool. Young, but not too young. In short, it was the sort of thing that college students listened to.
People like that didn’t live in Naples, Florida, a town dominated by geriatric upper-class conservatives. But somehow I knew they were out there, wearing plaid shirts and big belt buckles. They were cool, and I wanted to be like them.
My interest in and knowledge of the genre snowballed, thanks to sites like Epitonic, where I could jump from related band to related band for hours on end. Indie was blossoming, and I was determined to keep up with its growth. Eventually, I came across each of the artists on this mix, who now mean a lot to me because they were part of that initial process of discovery.
I’ve since given up the quest to be cool, but the hunt for new music continues, and, I hope, will never end. I’m so excited about the new sounds I’ll discover this year, and about sharing them here with you. Once again, happy 2010.