Intro: Taking a cue from the Forgotten Gialli film series put out by Vinegar Syndrome, which highlights movies from the Italian thriller subgenre that have fallen through the cracks, I’ve created my own indie rock variety. As is the case with any form of art, what is considered “forgotten” depends on the audience, not necessarily the availability. This series will focus on albums put out around the early aughts, sometimes delving into the late 90s, but I hope to avoid anything beyond 2010, and earlier than 1990. Most of the records spotlighted will be from my personal CD collection.
Context: Spotify is not the world, but it’s usually a good barometer of how popular something is, at least since the service was launched and started counting plays. With that in mind, Ola Podrida has one song with over a million plays (“Run Off the Road”). Non-Prophets have one song around 900k. The Fern Knight record is not on Spotify at all (it is available on Bandcamp, in truncated form). But enough about metrics, on to the records.
Ola Podrida – Ola Podrida
(Plug Research, 2007)
The prevalence of hushed white boy singers in the early aughts is difficult to overstate. On the tail end of that decade came this cinematic yet understated project from film (All the Real Girls) and TV composer, David Wingo. His band, named after a Spanish stew (olla podrida), created this overlooked album of slice-of-rural-life songs, influenced by swimming holes, warm nights and clumsy adolescent hands. Like the characters in David Gordon Green’s early small-town romance and escape films, the boys and girls of Ola Podrida’s Southern America are searching (often awkwardly) for a connection across wide open prairies, and warmth on those cold Texas nights. There’s something comforting in Wingo’s slight, tremulous voice, like crickets in summer or having someone run their fingers gently along your forearm. The band’s self-titled debut is still the strongest distillation of their sound, both perfectly zeitgeist-y and kinda timeless. Pull up a chair on the front porch. Lean back.
Video:
Lyric:
“We jumped at the count of nine / But you still needed more time / You jumped at the count of eighteen / And let out a joyful scream”
Rec’d if you like (RIYL):
Zooey Deschanel, artisanal moonshine, Terrence Malick
Fern Knight – Seven Years of Seven Limbs
(Normal Records, 2003)
The project of vocalist/cellist Margie Wienk and multi-instrumentalist Michael Corcoran, the two musicians came up in the Rhode Island indie scene playing with the band Difference Engine and The Eyesores. Subsequent releases put the band scarcely in “freak-folk” territory (following the band’s move to Philadelphia), but in 2003 when Seven Years was released, their music was categorized (by their press release) as “folk-noir,” and comparisons were made to artists like Nick Drake, Julee Cruise and Barbara Manning, not Devandra Banhart or Joanna Newsom. The band leaned more into the pastoral and gothic on later releases, but the melodies were never stronger than on this first record.
Lyric:
“I can’t wait / To see your kingdom / Your spires toppling / Into each other”
RIYL:
Germany’s Black Forest, Will Oldham at his most bucolic, Wolf conservation
Non-Prophets – Hope
(Lex Records, 2003)
“I’m sick of head raps,” Sage spits on lead single, “Damage.” A self-identified “real underground rapper,” a vegetarian and violently straight edge hip-hop kid from a “microscopic” town, Sage Francis came up in late 90s freestyle rap and slam poetry circles only to become something of a darling during the early aughts indie-rap boom (along with Atmosphere, Buck 65, Aesop Rock, etc). Hope was released in 2003, a year after his critically lauded debut, Personal Journals. Like Aesop Rock’s Bazooka Tooth, it feels like a response to newfound fame, with Sage taking a step back and adopting his anti-commercial rap alter ego, Xaul Zan, to spit broader battle raps over boom bap production by buddy Joe Beats. Hope sounds like both “hiphop book report,” in the words of Francis in the liner notes, and a much needed artistic exorcism; Francis going back to his roots, slightly distancing himself from the political and personal anger of Personal Journals. Making something the kids can dance, not cry, to.
Video:
Lyric:
“I attended candle light vigils for Matthew Shepard / While you put out another Fuck-You-Faggot record“
RIYL:
Natalie Portman, post-hardcore, Do the Right Thing
Mimsy Farmer Fanclub 
