The first rule of landfill indie is that you don’t talk about landfill indie.
The very mid-2000s phenomenon was coined by the NME to describe a generic, laddish form of indie rock. Yet despite being pushed, prodded and pilloried by music critics, at one point it dominated the UK airwaves and made arena-filling stars of its biggest names. It soon became unfashionable, but its influence lives on in today’s music scene.
This is the story of landfill indie: the genre that nobody wants to talk about.
If you’ve ever woken up in a cold sweat at night wondering where the term ‘landfill indie’ came from, then you shall worry no longer. According to a brilliantly unnecessary deep dive into the origins of the term from music blog All Things Loud, it was first coined by the NME journalist Andrew Harrison in a November 2007 review of a Jens Lekman album:
“Maybe it was general weariness at English bands’ method depravity and tunelessness that made Peter Bjorn And John’s whistle-driven Young Folks into one of the tunes of last year. That single opened a window to let in the light, air and general bracingness of Swedish pop, which resembles an alfresco health farm next to our own blighted landscape of landfill indie.”
The review was published in late 2007, but clearly the idea of landfill indie existed in the public’s consciousness long before that. It’s normally used to describe the procession of indie bands that had been trotted out in the post-Libertines, post-Arctic Monkeys world. These groups were unified by a few things: catchy guitar riffs, slightly naff lyrics about birds and booze, and an all-male line-up. Many were from unfashionable cities. Most were working-class. Many followed in the wake of The Libertines. But most landfill indie groups appeared after the runaway success of the first Arctic Monkeys album, which became the UK’s fastest-selling debut when it came out in January 2006.
Eager to replicate the success of the Monkeys, record labels were suddenly desperate to sign anyone wearing skinny jeans and clutching a guitar. In 2006, landfill indie started to take shape. The Kooks’ debut album sold more than 2 million copies, Razorlight’s second effort sold 1.6 million, and Costello Music by The Fratellis sold 1.2 million. Stars of CCTV by Hard-Fi was released in 2005 but eventually reached number one in January 2006, and would also go on to sell 1.2 million copies.
The record label template was now firmly established: sign an indie band, make loads of money. And so in 2007, landfill indie really caught fire. In January, The View released their debut album and it promptly went straight to number one. In February, the Kaiser Chiefs did the same with their second album. In May, The Pigeon Detectives’ Wait for Me went to number three and sold 227,000 copies by the end of the year. Then, over the course of six hazy summer weeks, there was a glut of landfill indie releases from The Twang, The Holloways, Editors, The Automatic and The Enemy.
By the start of 2008, landfill indie was dominating the charts. And other factors were helping to cement its rise. The Inbetweeners first aired in May 2008, and its soundtrack reads like a who’s who of landfill indie: The Wombats! Razorlight! Kate Nash! The Ting Tings! However, despite its near ubiquity at this point, there were signs that landfill indie was starting to lose its sheen.
Razorlight’s hotly-anticipated third album Slipway Fires was released in September 2008, but totally flopped. It was a similar story for Snow Patrol, whilst bands like Scouting for Girls and The Wombats were starting to take the genre into poppier territory, that was almost making a mockery of the original form.
Oversaturation also played a part in landfill indie’s decline. There were so many guitar bands being pushed at this point (largely by the still-influential NME) that the public were starting to tire of them. Their tastes were starting to shift, and more alternative indie bands such as Florence and the Machine, MGMT and Vampire Weekend were starting to appear in their place.
Most of landfill indie’s biggest-selling albums were panned by critics, and that constant derision made the genre unfashionable. But there was unquestionably some classism at play. Most of these bands were working class and not from London, instantly putting them at odds with your typical music journalist. It always felt unlikely that music scribes in Islington were going to ‘get’ a blokey indie band from Warrington or Worksop.
That element of classism still exists today, judging by the paltry media coverage that bands such as The Reytons, Catfish and the Bottlemen, the Courteeners, and The Lathums receive. All of those bands have headlined major festivals and sold out arenas, but their music is largely ignored by the music media.
Nowadays, you only need to listen to Radio X for 20 minutes to know that landfill indie never really went away. It’s arguably bigger than ever. And with the return of Oasis - The Beatles of landfill indie - you wouldn’t bet against it having its moment once more.