The turn of the century was a bit of a no man's land for indie-rock, but all was not lost. In the years between the moment that Britpop’s big hitters had got a little stale and the arrival of a new generation of rock’n’roll upstarts, there was still lots of captivating sounds to lose yourself in. It mostly occurred away from the mainstream, with the limelight now on a wave of nu-metal groups seizing their moment, and it resulted in a number of intriguing, experimental-ish records seemingly unburdened with the weight of commercial expectations.
Some became bigger than others, sizeable enough (like the nocturnal grooves of Doves’ debut Lost Souls, the Mercury Prize-winning folky strums of Badly Drawn Boy’s The House Of Bewilderbeast or Sigur Rós’s transfixing Ágætis byrjun) that to include them on an “underrated” list would be a liberty too far. Instead, here’s the contenders from (mostly) the periphery, a group of guitar bands and artists revelling in the freedom of doing their own thing. It wouldn’t be long until the guard changed again with the big breakthrough of The Strokes, The White Stripes et al just a year or so later but this curious little patch in 2000 resulted in some corkers that deserve revisiting…
