Chapter 4 Soundtrack: Best New Music

The playlist accompanying SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS' fourth chapter tackles Pitchfork's kingmaker era, blog rock, and the rise of online indie music media

Every chapter in my book SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion (pre-order it!) has a soundtrack. They’ll be printed in the book, and I’m posting them as playlists here at Substack. So far I’ve published the soundtracks for Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3. Today I present the tunes for Chapter 4, “Best New Music.”

This chapter is about how the rise of online media covering indie music led to a new star-making pipeline. The emergence of Pitchfork as a kingmaker (and career-destroyer) is one component of that story; so is the proliferation of a vast ecosystem of music blogs like Stereogum, where I now work as Managing Editor. The chapter also explores how poptimism — the idea that all music deserves a fair shake, not just music from genres that have a reputation as Important — began to shape the perspective of the music critics covering indie rock. But that storyline echoes through the rest of the book, so it doesn’t really come to bear on this chapter’s soundtrack.

Instead, with these 20 tracks, I focused on indie rock artists that got a big boost from Pitchfork and/or ones that fit under the book’s working definition of “blog rock.” Consider it a time capsule for an era when some new quirky and ambitious indie band was popping up every day.

Broken Social Scene, "KC Accidental" (2002)

Menomena, "The Late Great Libido" (2003)

The New Pornographers, "The Laws Have Changed" (2003)

The Unicorns, "I Was Born (A Unicorn)" (2003)

The Fiery Furnaces, "Blueberry Boat" (2004)

Arcade Fire, "Wake Up" (2004)

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, "In This Home on Ice" (2005)

Sufjan Stevens, "Chicago" (2005)

Architecture In Helsinki, "Do the Whirlwind" (2005)

Sleater-Kinney, "Jumpers" (2005)

Wolf Parade, "I'll Believe In Anything" (2005)

The Boy Least Likely To, "Be Gentle With Me" (2005)

Animal Collective, "The Purple Bottle" (2005)

Tapes 'n Tapes - "Just Drums" (2005)

The Hold Steady, "Stuck Between Stations" (2006)

Grizzly Bear, "Knife" (2006)

TV On The Radio, "Wolf Like Me" (2006)

Spoon, "The Underdog" (2007)

Deerhunter, "Nothing Ever Happened" (2008)

Vampire Weekend, "Oxford Comma" (2008)

SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion is out Aug. 26 via St. Martin’s Press. Pre-order it here.