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2. Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
Year: 1998
In a lot of ways, this is the original hipster album. Jeff Mangum & Co. had the aura down pat, from the outsider sensibility of anachronistic displacement to Mangum's impossibly confident disbanding of the band after their near-perfect album proved the work to be that of a possible mad genius. The music itself is incredible, In The Aeroplane is an album everyone should try to listen to at least once, but it also feels tailor-made to a hipster crowd—lo-fi, but with memorable melodies, dark and often frightening, with flashes of beauty. And, if you needed any proof of exactly how much hipsters love this record, it sold the sixth most vinyl EP's in 2008.
3. Childish Gambino
Link:Â https://soundcloud.com/childish-gambino
Childish Gambino doesn't always plan a big promotional push behind the loose tracks he releases. Sometimes he'll just tweet out a link to a new song on SoundCloud, so if you want to keep up without needing a social media warning, just follow him on SC.
4. Radiohead - Kid A
Year: 2000
As one of the most hipster-appreciated bands around, Radiohead were always going to feature on this list - the question was, which album would it be? Although OK Computer saw Radiohead begin to depart from the alt-rock feel of Pablo Honey and The Bends, it was on Kid A that Radiohead's truly experimental side was let loose. With influences ranging from electronica to krautorck to jazz, the record was experimental, expansive, somewhat inaccessible and ceratainly polarising, the perfect "favorite Radiohead album" for any self-respecting hipster.
5. Arcade Fire - Funeral
Year: 2004
Arcade Fire got huge. But really, they're just the best example of a band hipsters love to have loved first. That started with Funeral; an album so inventive, catchy, and anthemic that it had to catch on eventually. However, it's also a remarkably urgent album, almost desperate in how much it wants to express and forceful in the emotions it wants you to feel. Every indie listener worth their salt remembers the first time they heard "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)," still joins in on the call and response to "Rebellion (Lies)," and can't help but smile when they hear "Wake Up." An obnoxious hipster might scoff and say something about not listening to Arcade Fire for fear of liking the indie band that made it big. They're lying.
6. Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica
Year: 2000
Long before we had "Float On," there was The Moon & Antarctica, and it's one beaming example of an indie band transitioning to a major label debut without sacrificing their creativity. Instead of cleaning up their sound and going for a more straightforward, anthemic rock album (which they've always seemed perfectly capable of doing), Modest Mouse took some weird turns, and kept those beloved unhinged vocals and jagged backdrops in tact. Really authentic, original hipsters (OG hipsters?) might claim The Lonesome Crowded West, but it was The Moon & Antarctica that remains one of those nostalgia-inducing albums in every hipster collection.
7. Daft Punk - Homework
Year: 1997
The duo that made it okay to like "techno," Daft Punk had their breakthrough on 2001's Discovery (and, really, their 2006 tour and subsequent Alive), but everyone who knows anything knows that Homework is the one to love. It's a perfect marriage between dance music and organic instruments, combining house rhythms with funk bass, R&B vocals, and a ton of experimentation. It was the last album the French duo released before they became the superstar mystery duo we know Daft Punk as today, and if you pick "One More Time" over "Around The World" you're probably not very good at being a hipster.
8. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
Year: 2009
In 2008 Grizzly Bear were chosen to open for Radiohead on the U.S. leg of their tour, and guitarist Johnny Greenwood even came on stage to proclaim that they were his favourite band. High praise indeed from an key member of one of the giants of modern alternative rock, and this was even before the release of Veckatimest, the first Grizzly Bear album that was both a critical and commercial success. It was also the first album that the band wrote from scratch as a four-piece, and the vocal harmonies of Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen, as well as the intricately arranged instrumentation, marked this out as the work of a band who had matured and perfected their craft. Although the average hipster would be uncomfortable that the joyfully bouncy "Two Weeks" achieved such crossover success (see; Volkswagen advert, Gossip Girl intro), they can rest easy in the fact that this album was released on experimental electronic label Warp, and is often deliciously off-kilter and wistfully inventive.
9. The Strokes - Is This It
Year: 2001
Is This It is an important record, of that there can be no doubt. It brought melodic garage-rock back in to favor and introduced us to a sneeringly disinterested, devilishly handsome rockstar named Julian Casablancas, not to mention ushering in the era of skinny jeans and boys with the guitars being cool. While The Strokes have garnered more and more mainstream attention and popularity with each successive album, having this records' classic black and white cover lying about somewhere in your appartment is a sure fire way to announce your hipster credentials.
10. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Year: 2007
It only takes one song. "All My Friends," the centerpiece of Sound of Silver and James Murphy's career as LCD Soundsystem, is that song. Murphy spent his young adult life being, quite literally, the perfect hipster, and when the time came to head his own project he took up the role again convincingly, albeit with a healthy amount of weariness and an unhealthy amount of regret. While a lot of LCD Soundsystem's output is sharp, oublique and sarcastic, "All My Friends" is where any pretenses are dropped. It's the retrospective over a perfect piano line that doesn't bullshit you; advice from the guy who's been through it all and can say, with confidence, that you "won't change one stupid decision, for another five years of life." So hipsters, be hipsters: James Murphy says you won't regret it.
11. Aphex Twin - ...I Care Because You Do
Year: 1995
Richard James has been at the vangaurd of experimental electronic music since 1991, and released landmarks in techno, acid and ambient electronic with his two Selected Ambient Works... albums in 1992 and 1994, both classics in their own right. This album though, which sees a fusion of the harsh, hardcore sounds of James' early techno with the smoother, sometimes orchestral arrangements of his ambient works is a mind-meddling masterpiece that is his most powerful, wide-ranging single album.
12. Bright Eyes - Fevers & Mirrors
Year: 2000
At the tender age of 20, Conor Oberst, as Bright Eyes, released a wordy, personal, youthful, uncertain, wise-beyond-his-years album called Fevers & Mirrors. His imperfect singing, sometimes stragled, sometimes almost whiny conveys a whole range of emotions, and the produciton of Mike Mogis provides an intimate, log-cabin backdrop. All this helps to explain why this record resonates so deeply with so many people, and won Bright Eyes so many loyal fans, and if you haven't ever fallen in love with this album, or spent hours trying to decipher the meanings of Oberst's lyrics, you've missed out on somewhat of a rite of passage
13. Portishead - Dummy
Year: 1994
The trio of Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibons and Adrian Utley helped popularize the "Bristol sound" with Dummy, their 1994 debut album, and one of the key works in the trip hop cannon along with Massive Attack's 1991 masterpiece Blue Lines and Tricky's dark opus Maxinquaye (released in 1995). A stunningly cohesive, atmospheric album, Dummy saw traditional hip-hop produdction styles adapted by Barrow and Utley to serve as the backdrop for Beth Gibbons haunting, soulful voice. With only three studio albums to their name, Portishead's debut remains their best release, and a necessary listen for any hipster claiming to know anything about experimental British music from the '90s.
14. Postal Service - Give Up
Year: 2003
Let's be honest, most hipsters are pussies. This album is for them. Pretty cool, airy synth beats with lead vocals so sincere and sensitive that it's almost embarrassing to listen to. Over time, Give Up got adopted by college girls and lost some of its indie cred, but for a while it was one of the most forward-thinking and hipster-beloved albums out, and we suspect every hipster who ever had a moment with Give Up revisits this one regularly.
15. The Knife - Silent Shout
Year: 2006
The Knife are hipster as fuck. Weird, fierce and unbowed, the Swedish sibling duo has done things entirely on their own terms with a trailblazing image backed up by some trailblazing music. Silent Shout is the best thing they've released to date; a powerhouse of an album condensed to a single point, punching through the divide between electronic and vocal music and creating a twisted lane all for itself. The tracks are dark and danceable, violent, and often frighteningly welcoming. It's pop music for the best kind of hipsters: adventurous, idiosyncratic, and not giving a fuck.
16. Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
Year: 1988
When you're ranked as the No. 1 album of the '80s by Pitchfork, you know the hipsters love you. Sonic Youth has become an iconic symbol of cooler-than-you-without-even-trying, and with their fifth studio album, they made something that shaped much of what hipster culture was molded by. Not liking Sonic Youth in the indie/hipster world is like calling Illmatic overrated to a hip-hop head.
