Top 25 Songs Of The 2000s: 25-16

The Indiecision Decade In Review is our retrospective of the last 10 years in Indian independent music.
These are our picks of the best Indian indie songs of the last decade.

#25: ‘Gutterment’ – Pin Drop Violence
For a couple of years in the early-’00s Pin Drop Violence was India’s flagship metal act. Fresh off their victory at I-Rock 2001, the Mumbai band incited brutal moshpits wherever they went powered by the uber-tight hardcore of their debut album Compose Oppose Dispose. ‘Gutterment’ was COD‘s pièce de résistance. Right from the melodrama of the sound sample used at the beginning (an Israeli woman whose child was a victim of a suicide bombing) to the aggro of the outro (“You ain’t listenin’ to what I have to say”), this was three and a half minutes of a top metal act on top of their form, ready to tear shit up.

Stream: ‘Gutterment’ (YouTube)

#24: ‘Voice’ – Pentagram
Is it still a sell-out if you involve the fans? The lead single off Pentagram’s first album in five years was promoted on the back of, of all things, a Nokia phone that could record video. Circumstances lead it to become the unofficial theme of the anti-reservation movement, but even without the political connotations ‘Voice’, and its accompanying DIY clip, became the apotheosis of a post-Bollywood Vishal Dadlani’s and a post-Func Randolph Correia’s ability to turn everything they do into a youth anthem.

Stream: ‘Voice’ (YouTube)

#23: ‘Mindstreet’ – Motherjane
Two words: that riff.

Stream: ‘Mindstreet’ (YouTube)

#22: ‘Bring Me Rain’ – Sridhar/Thayil
‘Bring Me Rain’ is the first of only two songs from 2009 that make it to this list. Suman Sridhar and Jeet Thayil’s prolific art experiments find their roots in an incredible understanding of minimal aesthetics. Be it their live shows, operas or their music, these sensibilities allow them to, ironically, explore vivid and often larger than life themes with just a line here, a harmonium sample there, and the discipline of Suman Sridhar’s delivery. ‘Bring Me Rain’ is all this.

Download: ‘Bring Me Rain’
#21: ‘Ate A Banana’ – Scribe
The centerpiece of hardcore act Scribe’s brilliant debut album Confect was this unintentional tribute to Danny Denzongpa’s character in the film Hum. ‘Bakhtawar’ is Scribe’s war cry; one that has come to mean more than most Bollywood machinations to hundreds of kids waiting to jump into a moshpit and injure something.

Stream: ‘Ate A Banana’ (MySpace)

#20: ‘Bandeh’ – Indian Ocean
It was a stroke of genius to get genre-less Delhi rockers Indian Ocean to score Black Friday, Anurag Kashyap’s cinematic adaptation of journalist Hussain Zaidi’s chronicle of the story behind the bomb blasts that ripped through Bombay in 1993. We shudder to think what a mainstream Bollywood composer would have done with such intricate subject matter but in the hands of the capital’s finest, we got a ballad that was simultaneously ominous and impassioned; it infused humanity into one very horrific incident.

Stream: ‘Bandeh’ (YouTube)

#19: ‘My Life’ – Them Clones
Despite Them Clones’ debut album Love. Hate. Heroes releasing only in 2009, the single ‘My Life’ is not a 2009 song. But you know this. You saw it in that Yamaha commercial years ago, and you heard it at the end of all their sets in the last few years. You knew it every time you sang “My life, my soul, my reason” in your head every time someone used the words ‘my’ and ‘life’ together in a sentence. It sounds better on Love. Hate. Heroes though.

Stream: ‘My Life’ (YouTube)

#18: ‘Light Tribe’ – Shaa’ir + Func
Shaa’ir + Func’s sophomore release Light Tribe was edgier, more aggressive and far more political than its predecessor (which was, after all, called The Love Album). Its eponymous album opener was S+F’s new statement of intent – we are angry, we are loud, and we’ll live this change.

Stream: ‘Light Tribe’ (YouTube)

#17: ‘Smoke Some Ganja’ – Helga’s Fun Castle
Zero drummer Siddharth Coutto was the funny guy with some serious songwriting chops, as embodied in this laidback, reggae-tinged pop-rock tune about the pleasures of pot. At the time, it felt like the catchiest song ever written, an instant crowd favourite as addictive as the object of its affection.

Stream: ‘Smoke Some Ganja’ (YouTube)

#16: ‘Stay Far’ – Medicis
Auroville, near Pondicherry, is perhaps better known for being a tourist destination than a breeding ground for Indian nu-metal. But that’s unfair. Because Medicis weren’t just nu-metal. They took the best ideas of the predominant metal sound of the time, perfected by bands like Deftones, Drowning Pool and Mudvayne, and put them together in a five song EP called In The Shade, which even today stands as a beacon of contemporary Indian rock. ‘Stay Far’ was the highlight; a monu-me(n)tal builder that saw four kids from the south effortlessly create metal mayhem.

Download: ‘Stay Far’
The Indiecision Decade in Review