Landfill Indie, Underlined Passages' fifth full-length, is a bit of a sleeper protest record. Reacting to the fickle dismissiveness of modern indie rock audiences and the relegation of contemporary alternative music to a million subcategories and enclaves, songwriter Michael Nestor offers eight songs in Landfill Indie that play like an eclectic late-90s mixtape.
This is on purpose, of course, to underscore the irony that the same audiences that are okay with the corporate fractionation of indie rock into a million clades are also currently basking in the glory of a late' 90s-early' aughts revival.
Teaming up again with longtime producer Frank Marchand (Bob Mould, War on Drugs, The Thermals) and mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side Music (Sufjan Stevens, The Promise Ring, Dismemberment Plan) and Cefe Flynn (Chroma Mastering), Underlined Passages is releasing the record in three formats (cassette, vinyl, CD) with unique track listings and song sequences to underscore the boutique nature of physical media.
The record suggests that current audiences are opining for days of yore yet missing the fact that “days of yore” were not always better. Case in point: the record's namesake is a direct protest against the music snobbery displayed in the Vice article on the term “landfill indie.”
Topically, the record deals with middle-aged perspectives on maintaining purpose, questioning relationships, and reexamining oneself squarely in light of our culture's movement into a digitized, avatar-centric reality. Michael alluded to this in a recent Voyage Baltimore interview, where he said,
“We try to write indie rock music that concerns what is real to us now in middle age and does not cater to the tropes that resonate with the younger set nowadays. Although easily dismissed as a “get off my lawn” perspective, it is far from that. There is resonance and rhyme across the different phases of life, and we have weaved these metaphors through our music as we have drifted from our 30s into our 40s.”
Lyrics like these from the song “brythe:” “Here we are, come together/Your revolution/I did not notice. All this time/come between us/Some revolution/I did not notice” showcase Gen-Y/late Gen-X antipathy to the recent focus on keyboard culture. Michael will be the first to note that some of the lyrics to the record were created using AI Chat GPT, which is part of the irony he is trying to paint with this perspective.
However passive-aggressively protesting, the record is still predominantly hopeful, very much in line with previous Underlined Passages efforts.
There is a wistful nostalgia for meaningful relationships and substantial conversations with people who “get you.” Like in the lyric for “erydy:” “Nobody to work it out/everybody twist and shout/Crying on the kitchen floor/we don’t have that time no more.”
Landfill Indie is, in some way, a complimentary bookend to Underlined Passages’ successful second record, The Fantastic Quest. Fans of the band will see the connections, especially in the tonal quality of the recording and the band's reconnection with their shoegaze roots. Live, immediate, and bombastic Landfill Indie contrasts with their smooth 80s-new-wavy and smoothly produced 2022 effort, Neon Inoculation.
In this new record, Underlined Passages proves once again that they know and trust their audience to read between the lines. UP knows their fans will be comfortable in UP’s wistful songcraft. The band trusts that their people enjoy solid indie rock that speaks to them, much like our favorite bands did for us when we got that Maxell mixtape with the handwritten song titles from friends in high school.
Landfill Indie is a unique take on the gratefulness and belonging one feels when living as an outsider to a system one knows can be better and, in doing so, commiserating with folks who feel the same way.
Underlined Passages in this new record does indeed prove what The Big Takeover wrote about the band, "Getting more profound and musically compelling has made Underlined Passages one of the best bands around."