Underlined Passages - Landfill Indie

Landfill Indie, Underlined Passages‘ fifth full-length, is a bit of a sleeper protest record. Reacting to the fickle dismissiveness of modern indie rock 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 recent corporate digital fractionation of indie rock into a million clades is also currently basking in the glory of a late 90s/early ‘aughts revival.

Having shared the stage with bands like Explosions in the Sky, The Stills, Now It’s Overhead, The Octopus Project, Matt Pond PA, Joan as Police Woman, Grandaddy, Q and not U, Laura Burhenn, Laura Viers, and Karate, most of which are currently in “revival” mode, Nestor within Underlined Passages‘ new album is squarely in the zeitgeist of audiences looking back and forward simultaneously.

Landfill Indie goes back sonically to Nestor’s roots as a staple and influencer in the early ‘aughts Baltimore DIY indie rock scene, one heavily invested in technicolor recordings with solid melodies and recognized in 2008 by Rolling Stone as a scene that produced Future Islands, Wye Oak, Beach House, and Dan Deacon.

Teaming up again with longtime producer Frank Marchand (Bob Mould, War on Drugs, The Thermals), Underlined Passages delivers on Landfill Indie hopeful yet skeptical middle-aged perspectives on maintaining purpose, questioning relationships, and reexamining oneself in light of our culture’s movement squarely into a digitized, avatar-centric reality.

The nine songs on Landfill Indie show a wistful nostalgia for meaningful relationships and substantial conversations with people who “get you.”  The record 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. This is right in line with Underlined Passages‘ “outsider looking in” ethos, which connects them so closely with their enthusiastic fans.

The Baltimore-based band has been steadily winning over audiences that “just get” the nostalgic-yet-modern rock they have been creating in the vein of early ‘aughts Nada Surf, American Football, and Promise Ring-but of course, with a sound that is uniquely theirs. The band’s guitar-driven, soulful, lush, and shoegazy music and incredible songwriting talent are on full display on Landfill Indie.

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.”