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Pavement
Pavement, formed in Stockton, California in 1989, became one of the most influential bands of the 1990s American indie rock underground, and their deliberately loose, lo-fi recording aesthetic and Stephen Malkmus's oblique, wordplay-heavy lyrics established much of the stylistic template that later "slacker" indie rock bands drew from. The band's 1994 album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, recorded with noticeably higher production quality than their earlier, more deliberately rough-sounding releases, became a critical touchstone for 1990s American indie rock while still maintaining significant underground credibility relative to more overtly commercial alternative rock acts of the same era. Pavement never achieved major mainstream commercial success in the way some of their alternative rock contemporaries did, but their sustained critical acclaim and their direct influence on numerous subsequent indie rock bands has made them one of the most frequently cited "band's band" acts of the decade, deeply respected within music industry and critic circles specifically. Malkmus's continued influence on indie rock songwriting, both through Pavement and his subsequent long solo career, along with the band's occasional reunion tours drawing significant nostalgic interest, has cemented Pavement's reputation as one of the most foundational and influential American indie rock bands of the 1990s underground scene.
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Arcade Fire
Arcade Fire's 2004 debut album Funeral, written partly in response to several band members' family deaths during its creation, combined orchestral, multi-instrumentalist arrangements with genuinely large emotional ambition, distinguishing the band from indie rock's more stripped-down, minimalist tendencies of the era. The Montreal-based band's large lineup, frequently featuring seven or more members playing a wide range of instruments including strings, horns, and accordion simultaneously, gave their live performances an unusually large-scale, communal energy that helped establish their reputation as one of indie rock's most compelling live acts. Their 2010 album The Suburbs won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, a surprising recognition for a genuinely independent-label rock album competing against far more commercially mainstream nominees, and the win became one of the most widely discussed Grammy upsets in the ceremony's modern history. Arcade Fire's combination of large-scale orchestral ambition and genuine emotional and thematic seriousness, addressing suburban alienation, mortality, and technology's effect on modern life, helped establish that indie rock bands could achieve major mainstream commercial and awards recognition without abandoning genuinely ambitious, non-commercial artistic goals.
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