With all the Strokes anniversary chat, been thinking about how non-plussed I was at the time (I found them a bit annoying tbh). A year or two before I’d been through a big 70s New York phase after getting obsessed with Marquee Moon and Patti Smith’s Horses, and digging into the various compilations and 70s rock journalism.
Then I got into Jonathan Fire*Eater, then The Walkmen and quickly found myself obsessed with Interpol and acts that sat just outside of the emo world like Rival Schools, Pretty Girls Make Graves, At the Drive-in, Alkaline Trio, Deftones, Idlewild and Icarus Line.
But my most listened to album of 2001 was - predictably perhaps - Vespertine. And had just discovered The Shins.
I am rubbish with remembering the year things came out but I’d have been 2nd/ 3rd year at uni so was listening to Icaurus Line, Trail of Dead and Les Savy Fav.
1000% this. Seeing them live was like nothing else around that time. One of the most ridiculous live acts I’ve ever seen (and yes I saw Less Than Jake and Slipknot)
Now that is a name I haven’t heard in years. He painted an obscene mural on the walls of our rehearsal room a few years back when he was using it. Had no inkling that anyone else had ever heard of him.
Really wasn’t engaged with new releases in the early 2000s.
Sure I would have been really into The Strokes if it had come out a decade before.
So I was mainly listening to artists I’d already been a fan of for years - Bjork, Air, Bonnie Prince Billy, Gorky’s, Labradford, The Handsome Family, Stereolab, The Silver Jews.
