Top 25 Albums Of The 2000s: 05-01

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 albums of the last decade.

#05: Procrastination – Zero
Zero nailed everything on Procrastination – a fittingly tongue-in-cheek title, great production values and some of their best choruses songs. While this may have been Zero’s third full-length album release, it could well have been their first. For kids who’d already heard and loved these songs several times before at gigs, to have them on their iPods with pro-produced sound was a well deserved bonus because, let’s face it, Zero was all about the live act. This vibe transferred emphatically into a top-class studio recording courtesy some crazy, Mendonsa-provided guitar licks and the feigned vocal histrionics of that ‘PSP’ intro. We waited five years for this record; they made sure it was worth it.

#04: Maby Baking – The Supersonics
The first time we caught The Supersonics live, at a largely empty, weekday, Hard Rock Cafe gig in Mumbai, we were literally amazed by the fact that these four dudes from Kolkata, who we had never heard before, could fill a three hour set with post-Britpop punk that didn’t come off as entirely derivative. Or entirely boring. With a vastly superior repertoire than many of their contemporaries, we can see how monumental the predicament of recording/releasing just 11 songs on their debut album must have been. But they picked their best songs, threw in their best chops and ensured that come what may, they would make the best of their time with these songs. Our time too.

#03: New Day: The Love Album – Shaa’ir + Func
“Lovebeat” was what Shaai’ir + Func called the music on their debut. It made sense, we suppose, to create an entirely new term for such an entirely new sound. You could hear electronica, soul, rock, funk, ska, jazz, blues, metal and even Bollywood in the songs but first and foremost, these were dance tunes. Dance tunes with proper, meaningful lyrics. Needless to say, it was crackerjack stuff that sounded even better live, making New Day an instant classic from one of the definitive Indian indie acts, perhaps, of all-time.
#02: Rabbi – Rabbi Shergill
Music reviewers spend a large part of their time trying to describe what they hear. When Rabbi Shergill released his debut album, they found they had a lot of words to work with when trying to adequately put to paper his completely unique sound. Punjabi-Sufi-folk-rock-fusion-singer-songwriter sort-of told you what was going on, but you often heard adjectives such as “eclectic”, “philosophical”, and even “spiritual” being thrown around. But more than anything else, it was the honesty in the record that made it such a fulfilling listen. On Rabbi, each word is not just felt, it’s lived.

#01: Hook – Zero
Sidd Coutto knows how to write good pop. He knows exactly what template he wants his music to fit in, and within that, with a nearly-but-not-quite formulaic approach, he’ll write some great pop songs. A decade ago though, we didn’t know this. He didn’t either. What he did know was that his band had a bunch of decent musicians and one guitar prodigy, and they wanted to play their own stuff in front of college audiences that were so used watching bands perform either ’80s classic rock covers or original material that sounded like ’80s classic rock, the threat of getting bottled at gigs was always imminent. So he wrote six songs (and one with his guitar player), recorded them at home and in cheap studios, printed a bunch of CDs and sold them for 50 bucks a pop.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Hook is our #1 album of the 2000s. Tomorrow, you can download it on Indiecision for free in a special feature where we reveal all the stories behind each of the eight songs on this seminal Indian indie album.

Check out #25 – #16 and #15 – #05.

The Indiecision Decade In Review