Welcome to another installment of Ask A Music Critic! And thanks to everyone who has sent me questions. Please keep them coming at [email protected].
What do you consider the first great indie album? — Scott from British Columbia
Short and to the point. I like it! However, my answer will be anything but.
First of all, while there aren’t many words in your inquiry, the ones that are there are subjective. “Great,” obviously, is in the eye of the beholder. But so is “indie.” Does it describe a business situation, a specific sound, or merely a general vibe? Even “first” is open to question, depending on how you define the other two words.
This requires careful consideration. Let’s walk through my thought process.
The Velvet Underground — The Velvet Underground & Nico
This was the album that immediately came to mind when I read your question. And that’s because it’s the most common answer. It’s what you say when you don’t want to think too deeply about the “first great indie album” because it just sounds correct. “Oh yeah, Lou Reed! Sunglasses! Dark clothes! New York City! Drones! Drugs! Sadomasochism! The beautiful, icy blonde woman singer!” The Velvet Underground is credited with inventing the look, sound, and feel of non-mainstream “hip” music, even after the point when so-called indie bands stopped looking, sounding, or feeling all that much like The Velvet Underground. It’s why Charli XCX can wear a Max’s Kansas City t-shirt on Saturday Night Live in 2025 and have it resonate as a signifier of cool taste for at least half the audience. (Meanwhile, the other half will assume that it’s a reference to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.) Not bad for a record that came out nearly 60 years ago.
It might be the obvious answer, but it’s also probably the best one. There’s only one problem: The Velvet Underground & Nico came out on Verve, which at the time was owned by MGM Records, a subsidiary of the legendary film studio. Which means it was hardly an “indie” record in the business sense.
How much does that matter? I’m not sure. Let’s think more about this.
The Modern Lovers — The Modern Lovers
The second album that came to mind when I read your question. The Modern Lovers was a band fronted by Jonathan Richman, a Lou Reed acolyte who once wrote a song about how much he loved The Velvet Underground titled, conveniently, “Velvet Underground.” He was part of the first generation of musicians who were influenced by The Velvet Underground while also being genuinely independent from the corporate music world. Their self-titled 1976 LP — featuring the song “Roadrunner,” which is most associated in the “normie” world with the Anthony Bourdain documentary of the same name — was put out by Beserkley Records, an indie label launched in 1973 and based in Berkeley, California. For the next 11 years, they were known for putting out various proto-punk records. The first Modern Lovers album is their most famous and important release, though they also had success with the underrated power-pop artist Greg Kihn in the early ’80s.
This is the less obvious answer, but it’s a good one. Here’s the problem: It might be a little too indie, in the sense that it’s not quite famous enough to represent the genre on the whole.
How much does that matter? I’m not sure. Let’s think more about this.
R.E.M. — Murmur
The third album that came to mind. It came out in 1983, which part of me thinks might be too late and a different part of me suspects could be exactly right on time. The question isn’t “what is the first indie album?” but “what is the first great indie album?” Greatness in this context, to me, means more than just the quality of the music. It also suggests a record that means something greater than just a record, in the sense of being an historical placeholder for a sound, style, and movement. And that certainly seems true for Murmur, a bellwether for the early days of the American indie rock scene of the ’80s, which was more widespread and impactful than the more insular ’60s New York and ’70s Boston scenes the previous two suggestions represent. Plus, the guys in R.E.M. still resemble the sorts of bookish, scruffy, street-clothes individuals you see form indie-rock bands today. Unlike the first two choices, Murmur is a record that could have come out in any other year since 1983 and still done well on year-end critics’ lists.
This was not my original answer, but it might be most logically sound. Here’s the problem: For the average indie fan under the age of 40, R.E.M. does not necessarily scan as “indie.” They scan instead as a major-label, mainstream rock band. The one that made “Losing My Religion” and “Everybody Hurts.” While their indie era is their most celebrated, it was also relatively short-lived, lasting only five years.
How much does that matter? I’m not sure. Let’s think more about this.
Pavement — Slanted And Enchanted
The fourth album that came to mind, after I thought about this for way too long. As a middle-aged man whose beard is rapidly losing melanin, the suggestion feels heretical. Slanted And Enchanted came out in 1992, well after countless other “great” indie albums were released. But that’s the perspective of someone who was alive when Slanted And Enchanted was new. History feels a certain way when you’re living through it. But that’s not the only (or even most common) way to experience history. Much of the time, people approach these things in retrospect.
If I strain my brain and try to imagine how a person born in 2000 might look at this, Slanted And Enchanted makes the most sense. Think of it this way: What band from history is most quintessentially indie? What would the average person on the street say if you asked, “Tell me the name of an indie group off the top of your head?” Who would you expect to come up first in a Google Images search for “indie musician”? I think it’s fair to assume that the answer, in each instance, is Pavement. And if the answer is Pavement, the older records I mentioned only count as preamble to Slanted And Enchanted, which is otherwise the “beginning” of indie rock as we currently know it.
This is not an answer I even like, but it might make the most sense to a person who is not me. How much does that matter? Actually, it matters quite a lot, since I’m the one writing this column.
I think I’m done thinking about this.
The Velvet Underground — The Velvet Underground & Nico
This is it. The right answer. I am officially done thinking about this.
With the creation of Nebraska getting the big-picture treatment, what are some recordings of albums you’d like to see depicted as a film or — even better — as a limited TV series? Exile On Main St. comes to mind as an obvious choice, but thinking of the Joe Strummer quote on the recording of “Straight To Hell,” I might go with Combat Rock. This scene as an ending would be brilliant. “I’d written the lyric staying up all night at the Iroquois Hotel. I went down to Electric Lady and I just put the vocal down on tape, we finished about twenty to midnight. We took the E train from the Village up to Times Square. I’ll never forget coming out of the subway exit, just before midnight, into a hundred billion people, and I knew we had just done something really great.” There are tons and tons of more entries. What are some of yours? — Shea from Pelahatchie, Miss.
I like your answer! My only fear is who they might cast to play Strummer. It would be difficult — impossible, even — to find an actor as cool as him. I don’t really want to see, say, Eddie Redmayne sing “Rock The Casbah.”
I think the making of Exile On Main St. would be an incredible movie, but it would have to be done Richard Linklater-style, where there’s no plot and you’re just hanging out with the characters as they do progressively larger amounts of drugs. A mellower version of the Linklater approach — the Everybody Wants Some!! to the Dazed And Confused movie that is Exile — would be the making of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, which has been described by the participants as one long clubhouse hang with loads of laughs (and great music, obviously). But I must go with my stock answer to this question, which I have shared elsewhere: A fictionalized remake of I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, with Peter Sarsgaard as Jeff Tweedy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Jay Bennett.
Now, Philip Seymour Hoffman has been dead for 11 years, which (I concede) is a complication. Maybe we go with Cooper Hoffman as Bennett and Gabriel LaBelle — who has already played real-life people like Steven Spielberg and Lorne Michaels — as Tweedy. Can we make this happen, Hollywood? I am working on the screenplay as we speak.