Justin Vernon’s reinvention of Bon Iver as a full-band endeavour for its second album, replete with electronic washes, has been quietly but massively influential.
Recorded at the same time as its more illustrious sister album ‘Kid A’, 2001’s ‘Amnesiac’ showed Radiohead matching the scope of rock with the sonic possibilities offered by electronic music.
A jaded, cynical yet ultimately touching analysis of Western civilisation’s obsession with technology at the dawn of the millennium, Grandaddy’s ‘The Sophtware Slump’ feels even more relevant 20 years on.
Written off as commercial suicide at the time, MGMT’s lysergic second album ‘Congratulations’ has aged incredibly well ten years on.
A charming, retro-futurist vision for pop that was wildly out of step with the mainstream in 2000, Broadcast’s debut album ‘The Noise Made By People’ is a lost treasure.
An understated mix of alternative country and lush chamber-pop, Lambchop’s 2000 album ‘Nixon’ remains Kurt Wagner’s masterwork.
A skull-crushing onslaught of psych, krautrock, dub and post-punk enhanced by a small army of cutting edge producers, ‘XTRMNTR’ was Primal Scream’s second masterpiece.
Out of step with the great majority of what passed for alternative rock in the late Noughties, ‘Bitte Orca’ by Dirty Projectors has quietly shaped the subsequent decade.
Released in 2009 to a stunned reaction from fans and critics alike, ‘Primary Colours’ transformed The Horrors from a hipster punchline to a highly respected outfit.
‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ completed Animal Collective’s narrative arc and made them the most important American indie band of the Noughties.
