Declaration of Independents

Pop music, at least artistically, is dead. And everyone already knows it.

To call last year's best-selling albums-a Wal-Mart Top 100 replete with boy bands, girl groups, Beavises and Buttheads-artistically vacant just won't raise any eyebrows. If any sentiment has become more passé than critical disdain for mainstream pop music, it is the desire to pontificate about it. As far as popular music is concerned, it is clear by now that last year's usual suspects-Britney Spears, NSync, Eminem, Limp Bizkit-aren't doing anything new for their art form, but it is up to individual listeners to decide whether to love or hate them for that.

Chart-wise, Y2K was an especially bad year for mainstream rock records, which made up the lowest percentage of total album sales (still more than any other genre, though) that they have in a decade. As even worthy rock bands like U2 saw their commercial fates falter, the Britneys and Marshall Mathers' of the world more than took up the slack. But even if candyland dance music and homophobic hip-hop turned a few stomachs, their lite fizz could hardly compare to the decade-old swill fronted by hair-rock suckas like Creed and Three Doors Down, still riffing on that whole Alice In Chains thing, along with the rip-hop pimps riding on Rage Against the Machine's coattails. No wonder last year's best-selling rock album (the Beatles' "1") turned out to be a singles collection from a band that broke up in 1970.

But amidst the chart malaise came one glaring and notable exception-Radiohead's spectral, astonishing Kid A, easily the most challenging and important album of the year. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard charts-a rare feat for any English act-and in the process showed that somewhere beyond the TRL/MTV axis, there are people eager to hear something they haven't heard before. With its multitracked vocals and crisp blasts of sepulchral, arctic chill, Kid A's success proves that something beyond rock-something beyond almost anything done before in music-is not only needed, but wanted by the public.

A glance outside the confines of Billboard and TRL reveals a story that the charts just don't tell-that music today, especially rock music, is more vital than it has been since 1991. A flurry of independent, largely unknown bands, some new, some who have been struggling for years, are making brash, captivating new music that, like Kid A, captures this post-millennium moment perfectly. But unlike the grunge era, dominated by a monolithic sound and look, today's independent bands are informed by a variety of musical styles and geographic origins. They can't be pigeonholed into one "scene" or one sound, or even one city.

That may be why, glancing over critics' top-10 lists from this past year, there are a lot of names you don't know, and not a lot of clear favorites. While that can make finding new music that suits your tastes more difficult, it can also make the search more exciting. And while there is no one dominant scene or sound, there are some patterns and commonalties among them that may not be apparent. So, in that spirit, Recess thought we would offer our readers a road map to some of the records that really made Y2K tick.