Top 10 Alternative Starter Albums

No band so exploded the normative musical models of the mid-'60s as did those ultimate alternative legends, The Velvet Underground. A ragged, haggard flophouse of deconstructed rock'n'roll, the Velvets invented new combinations as they went: John Cale's prepared-piano repetitions and caustic bows of viola; the ghastly, ghostly, tuneless, Teutonic moan of Nico; Mo Tucker's rudimentary, thumped-out percussion; Lou Reed's raga-riffic guitar. Yet, the VU debut is no dusty museum-piece, no dull rock-history lesson. Filled with a host of three-minute pop classics, it sounds alive —still, somehow, happening in this instant— each time you play it. It's hard to think of another record so blessed with that mythical, alchemical musical 'timelessness.'

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Sonic Youth had, over the course of the '80s, slowly grown into the coolest, most influential act in the American underground. When they issued the legendary double-LP Daydream Nation, in 1988, they became Godheads of a burgeoning scene: the record's circuit-frying guitar wattage, dada-ist lyricism, and half-ironic political posturing becoming a veritable bible for future grunge-rock hipsters; these two almighty slabs of black wax like two stone-carved tablets. Daydream Nation was released right at the moment in which alternative music was making the transition from a scattering of regional, satellite scenes to a mass youth-marketing movement, and Sonic Youth symbolized that shift when, in 1990, they 'sold out,' and signed to a major-label.

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Like The VU, Boston's iconic indie-rock troupe The Pixies are a rockband's rockband: their influence extending way beyond the records they sold in their day. Delivering a host of instant hits ("Debaser," "Here Comes Your Man," "Wave of Mutilation," "Monkey Gone to Heaven"), Doolittle riffs mightily on Black Francis's stream-of-consciousness rants and Joey Santiago's spaced-out surf guitar, its high-wire contrasts pushing alt-rock into the dynamic direction —quiet/loud— that would define rock'n'roll for the next decade. Many have suggested Doolittle may be the greatest indie-rock LP ever, and, given Pavement, Nirvana, the Foo Fighters, The Strokes, Spoon, TV on the Radio, and Radiohead are amongst its devotees, that could indeed be true.

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Kevin Shields' patented "fluff on the needle sound" —a droning, fuzzy, wall-of-noise built from guitars run through an array of effects pedals— has proved the blueprint for shoegazers past and present. Remaining eternal decades after its release, My Bloody Valentine's immortal opus could just as easily be called 'Timeless'; still sounding fierce, vital, and bittersweet to this day. The second record for the Irish outfit has achieved the status of modern-day myth: Shields burning through hundreds of thousands of pounds and undergoing a mental breakdown attempting to follow it up. Thus far, he still hasn't made a third MBV LP, leaving the legend of Loveless untouched.

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The debut disc from half-collapsing lo-fi smart-asses Pavement was, at essence, the world’s introduction to Stephen Malkmus. Handsome, affluent, and so sarcastic even his whole truths sounded like halves, the Crown Prince of slackerdom drawled his ironic, iconic way through a spiky, spirited set of ad-hoc lyrical gags and uncoiling, slinking guitar skree. Openly ripping licks from The Fall and Swell Maps, Pavement played a brand of noisy, funny indie-pop, in which songs of sparkling melody and lyrical oddity just happened to cloaked in an unfriendly exterior. Audiences saw right through it: Slanted and Enchanted kicking off a cult that'd follow Pavement through the rest of the '90s.

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Few albums have grown in posthumous stature to the degree that Neutral Milk Hotel's second LP has. Though critically acclaimed in its day, no one could've suspected that In the Aeroplane Over the Sea would go on to become one of the most beloved indie albums ever authored. The legacy this timeless, infinitely-influential set of fuzzy, brassy, open-hearted psychedelic pop leaves is its journey into the depths of Jeff Mangum's subconsciousness. Haunted by disturbing dreams, the specter of death, and the ghost of Anne Frank, the songwriter fashioned an interior monologue that reads like the great American novel. And like some musical Salinger, Mangum has refused to follow his masterpiece, retreating further into permanent artistic hibernation.

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As indie music entered the new millennium, Kid A arrived. Cometh the hour, cometh the album. With no singles taken off the LP —so as to preserve its sanctity as a singular work— Radiohead's fourth album was a work perfectly pitched to the era: riddled with anxieties, but embracing the inevitable digital epoch. In England, the band's decision to ditch the classic-rock guitars in favor of skipping digital static, dusty drum-machines, and analogue keyboards was treated as a kind of commercial suicide, but it proved to be anything but. Using the internet as promotional tool, Kid A stirred up the computer-age equivalent of word-of-mouth, going on to become far-and-away Radiohead's most acclaimed, influential, eternal album.

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If Kid A ushered in the new millennium's online musical era, Merriweather Post Pavilion served as a culmination to the '00s, as decade. Animal Collective had long been favorites of the underground; both by the bloggers who fervently, exuberantly cataloged every new development in left-field sound, and by the bands who were coming up in their wake. The outfit exploded tired notions of what a 'band' should be: having no definable frontman, no drummer, and rarely using guitar. They took influence not from the Beatles or the Stones, but every genre under the sun, from radical avant-gardism to club hip-hop. By the time they crossed over with their ninth LP —the peak of their decade's toil— these unassuming dudes had revolutionized indie music.

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