With Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, Garden State, and “The O.C.” opening doors for small bands to earn some mainstream respect, 2004 is being considered by some publications to be the year that “indie” ceased to be shorthand for “independent”; just as likely, it could be the year that “pop” ceases to be derided as merely short for “popular,” as it saw MP3 blogs and other internet outlets paving new, industry-free avenues for should-be worldwide hits from artists such as M.I.A., Rachel Stevens, The Knife, Fox n’Wolf, Ce’Cile, Scissor Sisters, U.S.E., Slim Thug, PAS/CAL, Lady Sovereign, Love Is All, Johnny Boy, and Girls Aloud, among others. pitchfork

Art Brut – Formed A Band starts matters as only it should, its bracing mix of idealist comment – “stop buying your albums from the supermarket” – and manifest(o) absurdity – “we’re gonna be the band that writes the song that makes Israel and Palestine get along” consequenceofsound

The Long Blondes – Giddy Stratospheres Oldest trick in the book. Two guitars. One goes Dur-Dur. Other goes Diddle-iddle-ur. It sounds ace…. three and a half minutes of, er, giddy pop fun – there’s hand claps and everything. drownedinsound

The Libertines – Music When The Lights Go Out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_D4BiIuHHM&app=desktop

Razorlight – Golden Touch a melancholic, minor-chord kind of mood singing a hushed, staccato hymn for all those poor boys who’ve lusted from afar only to suffer the pain of rebuke nme

Wilco – Wishful Thinking There are only two songs on A Ghost Is Born that supercede Wilco’s influences and arrangement struggles, moments when studio texture and songwriting merge smoothly to represent the album’s grey mood in a way that’s genuinely moving rather than disappointingly motionless. Whereas the ambient storm that drifts over the entire album can be distracting, on “Wishful Thinking” it creates just the right overcast backdrop, guiding Tweedy’s softly cracking voice as he combs through feedback blankets looking for love’s tunnel-end light pitchfork

Rilo Kiley – Does He Love You? too blunt and lacks poetry pitchfork

The Go! Team – Bottle Rocket a riotous mish-mash of whatever they could find lying around, moulded into something that sounds like Basement Jaxx on MDMA. In space. Or something nme

Morrissey – First Of The Gang To Die it certainly retains his favourite muses of doomed romanticism and a vicarious glee at the fallible pseudo-tough guy image. Most importantly of all, however, is that it is a tune. A proper great pop song, and we haven’t heard one of those from this man for around a decade. drownedinsound

The Veils – The Tide That Left and Never Came Back  the song finds a balance between pain and resigned fate, tempering Andrews’ sorrow and its ragged guitar breaks with happier rhythm guitar doodle and sunny supporting harmonies. It’s another Bernard Butler-helmed production and seems touched with his ability to find maturity in simple textures or the folds of a shirt pitchfork

The Mountain Goats – Your Belgian Things Darnielle’s nasal-(Jonathan) Donahue emerges intermittently, and is less digestible than in previous years. pitchfork

Guided By Voices – Girls of Wild Strawberries Guided By Voices will never make another album, but seeing as they’ve just released one of the highlights of their career, you wouldn’t want them to blow it now, would you? drownedinsound (Editors note: 16 years later at the time of writing, more than ten additional albums after the re-formed with various line-ups)

CocoRosie – Good Friday they’ve actually (re)invented a genre consisting of folk, hip-hop, and blues that has never been pursued prior to this album tinymixtapes

Devendra Banhart – This Beard is for Siobhan The album sounds as though he and his guitar have run over to the mic, whether in studio or a field clicking with crickets, pressed the red button and just blazed. Banhart is a complete antidote to all the consumer focus groups or hit-writers, too scared to tamper with the formula. He has stumbled upon a personal Eureka that says there’re no laws governing what can be written about in song except self-imposed ones and he’s taken that to his heart, and in Technicolor. Playful little ditties cover the most amazing array of topics including dancing teeth. Yes, teeth! (You owe it to yourself to hear ‘This Beard Is For Siobhan’.) drownedinsound

The Futureheads – A to B if tracks such as … the unrepentantly chorus-milking “A to B” smack of bands 30 years bygone, The Futureheads manage to incorporate a series of startlingly fresh flourishes into their fast-paced pop pitchfork

The Streets – Fit but You Know It (Futureheads Remix) replaces the original backing track with surly, brittle artrock and is the best thing Sunderland’s finest have done yet nme

Annie – Chewing Gum Annie’s “Anniemal,” was hardly revolutionary, and its impact could not really be described as seismic… she just released a really solid collection of shimmering, danceable, irresistibly catchy pop songs…. “Chewing Gum,” with its silly framing device of a distorted Annie asking herself about the secrets to her maneating (well, man-chewing) success, was ridiculous enough that it was obvious that Annie was in on the joke billboard

Johnny Boy – You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve The duo’s twisting, bubbling tune takes us through The Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’ to Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’, constantly tickling the soaring changes with ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ style tape loops. With some lofty production from James Dean Bradfield, this song is infectious in its relentless ambition

Bright Eyes – Lua The world’s gone crazy. Bush back in, after money laundering and fighting terror with war. Everything’s in flux.

Bright Eyes is at Number 1 and 2 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart… But are the masses truly ready for descriptive beauty and lush, spacious guitar sounds such as ’Lua’?

The beauty of ’Lua’ is its musical simplicity and in its graphic lyricism, … but as teasers to forthcoming albums go, this is more like Angelina Jolie ushering you from behind a pane of bullet proof glass than a sip of sherry. drownedsinsound

Of Montreal – Lysergic Bliss might be one of the best and most inventive pop songs Barnes’ has ever written, and following directly after “Disconnect the Dots”, you start to think you’re in the presence of genius. I say this only because it isn’t often a sunny pop number is interrupted to hear a woman whisper encouragingly, “Ok gentlemen remember your breathing, 1, 2, 3, 4…” before an array of Barnes overdub vocals blend into a choral display that sounds like something from the Queen songbook. That this leads into a full-on lounge instrumental break complete with afro beat percussion, though, takes it into another realm all together popmatters

NERD – Drill Sergeant

Modest Mouse – Float On A snappy, silver-lined indie-pop march that asserts, “Good news is on the way.” … its chill-pill positivity nailed the zeitgeist during Bush’s re-election: Good news is slow sometimes. rollingstone

Regina Spektor – Us a modern masterpiece of oblique storytelling. Haunting strings and heartfelt pianos lie as backdrop to a lyrics about how “They built a statue of us/the tourists come and stare at us”, amongst a wrecked city (“Named after us…and they tell us its all our fault”) struggling for answers. Whether its all a metaphor for the shrinking world the glories of being in love provides, or a very literal reflection of love borne against a backdrop of revolution, its this open-to-interpretation nature that makes much of Soviet Kitsch really quite special. louderthanwar

Adem – Everything You Need  the lilting grace, rolling acoustics, and undertow of wheezing harmonium on the wonderful “Everything You Need” sits comfortably alongside the low-rent Scottish folk propelled by the likes of Domino labelmates James Yorkston and ex-Beta Band member Lone Pigeon pitchfork

Love Is All – Make Out Fall Out Make Up utterly frantic, it’s the sound of Go! Team massacred by the Slits theskinny

Max Richter – Horizon Variations Constituted mainly of sparse pieces that lean on string quartets and pianos in equal measure, The Blue Notebooks is a case study in direct, minor-key melody. Each of the piano pieces establish strong melodic motifs in under two minutes, all the while resisting additional orchestration pitchfork

Aberfeldy – Vegetarian Restaurant at their best when they stumble beyond trite infantilism. First single “Vegetarian Restaurant” lopes along with winning “Tangled Up in Blue” guitar strums, accented with subtle fiddles and lovely boy/girl harmonies pitchfork

The Killers – Mr Brightside Its infectious melody is destined to turn thousands of wandering, dreaming music lovers faces to the sky and thank whoever lives up there that someone’s put out a song that bounces, talks, and breathes drownedinsound

Kings of Leon – The Bucket voted Kings of Leon’s greatest song by NME.COM users nme

Electrelane – Enter Laughing it is the intuitively simple rhythm section that binds the whole shebang together, supplying tension and cacophony as needed… Moments of focus are intertwined with the surreal; magnificent choral flourishes, distorted blasts of saxophone and moody instrumentals all come and go with an overwhelming sense of purpose. drownedinsound

Animal Collective – Who Could Win A Rabbit The song’s furiously strummed acoustic guitar hook, hectic free-associative verses, and borderline incoherent (but utterly memorable) chorus strike like an amphetamine-driven summer camp sing-along pitchfork

Interpol – Evil the guitars pulsate, pause as if for breath and then surge as the melody soars and Banks offers hard-won optimism: “It took a life span with no cellmate/The long way back/Sandy, why can’t we look the other way?” What was once forced for Interpol now comes naturally rollingstone

LCD Soundsystem – Movement the sort of sht kicking rock n’ roll song with crushing guitars and an electronic motif that Primal Scream occasionally deigned to make at the end of the last century, when they were really good drownedinsound

Arcade Fire – Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels) From its curtain-raising orchestral pulse to its open-ended, ethereal finale, it is unavoidably marked as a preview of things to come pitchfork

Jens Lekman – You Are The Light a tour de force of chamber pop, sounding like a mix of a Sarah band, Dexys Midnight Runners, and Orlando. The full horn section, the swirling strings, and the cooing background vocals couple with Lekman’s  sugar-sweet vocals to make this one his best song yet, and about the best indie pop song of 2004 allmusicguide

The Magnetic Fields – I Don’t Believe You i consists of 14 airtight wonders of self-deprecation, future standards delivered with the wit of Voltaire (or at least Steven Wright). No one writes more subversive songs of love and heartbreak and encases them in varying guises, from stage serenades (“I Die”) to ’80s synth-pop grinders (“I Thought You Were My Boyfriend”). Best of all is “I Don’t Believe You”, an ingenious use of enunciated punctuation as its prickly kiss-off. popmatters

Language of Flowers – If It’s Not You a catchy little track that could have come from the soundtrack to Empire Records. Faster, sing-along-ish and rougher around the edges, the band is intent on recreating the mid-’80s or early ’90s alt-rock/pop era with the same panache popmatters

Mclusky – She Will Only Bring You Happiness Their old singer is an, ahem, _ex_-criminal… drownedinsound

The Dears – Lost in the Plot Yes, they had a bit of a Smiths thing going on – listen and you’ll see what we mean – but that wasn’t all they had going on theskinny

The Pipettes – It Hurts To See You Dance So Well Imagine, if you will: a world in which The B-52s were produced by Phil Spector, where “Mister Sandman” is as popular as Britney Spears’ “Toxic”, and retro-chic is so chic. This is the world of the Pipettes popmatters

The Delgados – Girls of Valour all driving indie pop and Beach Boys harmonies, the sort of song that if it had been sung by McFly would have been number one for five weeks drownedinsound

Dungen – Panda clearly evokes another time and headspace, but there’s an underlying passion that keeps it sounding fresh …. Put on your ear-goggles and head back to the late ’60s allmusicguide

Brakes – Pick up the Phone precisely apes the Fall, with its careening chords and histrionic vocal rhythm pitchfork

The Happy Couple – Another Sunny Day a frothy sun-kissed track that features most of the hallmarks of classic indie pop, a swinging tambourine, walls of strummy acoustic guitars, cutie pie lyrics, swooning synth strings and “ba da ba” background vocals allmusicguide

British Sea Power Allied WIth The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa – A Lovely Day Tomorrow If you’re hearing the track for the first-ever time, I envy you. It’s a real treat for the ears…. The subject matter is the Czech resistance against the Nazis during WWII,and in particular, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking German SS official and a main architect of the Holocaust, who was ambushed by a team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to kill the Reich-Protector; the team was trained by the British Special Operations Executive.

The twist in the tale was that the Nazis falsely linked the Czech and Slovak soldiers and resistance partisans to the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. Both villages were razed; all men and boys over the age of 16 were shot, and all but a handful of the women and children were deported and killed in Nazi concentration camps.

The BSP/Ecstasy of Saint Theresa single was a celebration of the entry of Czech Republic into the European Union, with a limited edition of 1,942 copies (the year the operation took place). Kateřina Winterová delivers an ever better rendition in her native tongue, on the b-side thenewvinylvillain

Belle & Sebastian – Your Covers Blown The Queen comparisons flatter it so, but frankly, this song’s dorkier by metric miles, more tender, and somehow more fist-pumping, too: A “Hey Ya!” for the outcasts pitchfork

The Embassy – Information is what ‘Inbetween Days’ would sound like if Robert Smith had had a sensible haircut, a healthy tan and a lot less emotional baggage. drownedinsound

Sufjan Stevens – To Be Alone With You A master of what he called the ‘strummy-strum acoustic guitar song’, Stevens’ affecting music tackles issues as tricky as abandonment, death and Christmas with family… ostensibly (though not too overtly) about Jesus, many of Stevens’ listeners prefer to excavate from its lyrics an implicit queerness: “You gave up a wife and a family / You gave your ghost / To be alone with me.” It’s an interpretation fuelled by the ambiguous sexuality in a number of his later songs, too. theguardian

Laura Veirs – Rapture an oddly beautiful album – far more engaging than you’d expect of one written in a grey Seattle winter, pondering mortality, Moby Dick and the great sheet of blackened ice after which it’s named…. from coffee-house folk to haunting lullabies. The finest, Rapture, deliberates on the death of beauty while namechecking Monet, Virginia Woolf and Kurt Cobain. You won’t get that on a Beyoncé album. theguardian

The Polyphonic Spree – Section 12 (Hold Me Now) Delaughter is stingier with his pop songs this time, filling out the album with much ponderous, quasi-symphonic ballast. And his muppetish Wayne Coyne impression is now more irritating than winsome. Clearly, extreme joy has its limits as a creative tool. Uncut

Micah P Hinson – Close Your Eyes he comforts a lover with sweet words: “Close you eyes and don’t you make a sound/ There’s no worries now, there’s no one else around to hear you cry.” But are these words really so innocent? Couldn’t he just as likely be sending her to her death as to sleep pitchfork

The Earlies – Wayward Song comes on like Brian creating the Chemical Brothers’ “The Sunshine Underground” by accident three decades early, only with a lovely pastoral woodwind section, a dash of serene waltz and Southern Gothic choirs orbiting the sympathetic assurance that “It’s alright/ To let yourself down/ Again tonight“. popmatters

The Organ – Brother TS Eliot once observed that good poets borrow while great poets steal. The Organ, an all-female five-piece from Vancouver, seem to have taken him at his word and nicked it all from The Cure theskinny

Franz Ferdinand – Michael Franz Ferdinand’s album arrives packed not just with fizzing guitars, disco-influenced drums and intriguing shifts in tempo, but also memorable songs, laden with hooklines and startling riffs.

Michael appears to be a love song aimed squarely at a man. This really shouldn’t seem like a brave move in 2004, but it does. Morrissey and the Magnetic Fields aside, indie doesn’t really do gay. On the rare occasions that an alt-rock artist dabbles with sexual ambiguity in their lyrics, they either start carrying on as if they personally invented the concept of homosexuality and deserve some sort of medal – see electro-rapper Peaches – or else, like Suede, they overdo the mincing and end up sounding ridiculous, like John Inman visiting an indie disco. Michael does neither, settling for an intriguing combination of sly humour and bug-eyed lust, as if the song’s central character started camping it up for a laugh and ended up in rather deeper water than he had anticipated. theguardian

Bloc Party – Helicopter It sounds like… cowboys. Why cowboys? Why not? The shirts and boots are as hot right now as the BP boys who’re currently blowing up in all the cool corners of America and the ICE COLD chambers of Europe. ‘Helicopter’ is a rally cry, a call to arms against all those accepting fools sitting still. They’re shootin’ doubters at dawn and having breakfast with Scandinavian beauties. Sounding like yet more guitars tumbling into space. Fresh and inventive. Alsorts’a buzzing, vocal ghosts swooping and topped with big dollops of horse chase bass. Those oft’ off key, perfection back-tracking, backing vocals are cased in fuzz…discard your pretender-hipster yankie fad bands, and take this, and party. Yeehaw! drownedinsound

Loney Dear – Ignorant Boy, Beautiful Girl It’s so tiny and so squeezed in the cracks; so brittle and so important. It’s destructive in the most silent way possible and I defy you not to be moved by the final minute 32ftpersecond

Iron & Wine – Passing Afternoon Beam’s transition from his cosy, unpolished country aesthetic to a cleaner, tighter sound. A new kind of power took hold, a fullness, with the welcoming of backing vocals and tentative drums. Passing Afternoon flows like prose, telling a tale much bigger than Beam himself. Our Endless Numbered Days’ reissue highlights the power of production in the formation of an artist’s oeuvre, whilst harnessing the record to its roots and encouraging respect for the album in its entirety as exactly what it was intended to be: pure, timeless, sighing songwriting. theskinny

Graham Coxon – Freakin’ Out could be the best tune The
Buzzcocks never wrote planb

The Walkmen – The Rat his bravado is a red herring. “The Rat”, at its core, is about ambivalence, loneliness, and disappointment. In so expressively articulating the frustration of being alone, The Walkmen speak to anyone who’s ever felt disenchanted, disenfranchised, or generally lost pitchfork

Elliott Smith – Memory Lane one long hymn to disappearance. And the fact that Smith finally made real what this album suggests is a heartbreaking paradox: that this is his most successful work of art and that it had to be his last. planb

Joanna Newsom – Bridges and Balloons