The 15 Best Indie Waltzes

Album: Hail To The Thief
Year: 2003

It's not surprising that Radiohead has done a waltz. Throughout their entire career, they've remained one of the most creative forces in music, and experimenting with timing and song structure seems to be something they're almost incapable of not doing with each new project. "Wolf at the Door" and the traditional waltz live on different planets, but Radiohead's paranoid, dramatic twist is an excellent update to an old style.

Album: Perfect From Now On
Year: 1997

If this one didn't have "waltz" in the title, it wouldn't be an easily identified waltz. Even though the drums break from the typical 1-2-3-1-2-3 beat, but the electric guitar and drums take turns faithfully keeping the timing througout. It's a subtle waltz, but the expansive, driving song uravels itself for over 8 minutes and gives "Velvet Waltz" the respectable feeling of importance it deserves. It's a different kind of waltz, but a powerful one.

Album: The Letting Go

Year: 2006

Will Oldham has remianed eccentric, unpredictable and ever inventive throughout his long career, and "Cursed Sleep," from his 2006 album Letting Go is actually a comparitively straightforward bit of folk-rock, albeit one adorned with quite a variety of instrumental flourishes. Oldham's warmly gravelly vocals are joined at various points by backing singer Dawn McCarthy, the flourishes of an orchestra, clean cut classic American rock guitar, and other aural accoutrements, whilst the the soft 1-2-3, 1-2-3 of the percussion is only evident fleetingly throught the song. However quiet it may be, the time signature is the one thing that stops the arrangement falling apart under the weight of Bonnie Prince Billy's sonic experimentation in this subtle but beautiful waltz.

Album: Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

Year: 2002

Most vintage Bright Eyes is about as far as you can get from the immediate connotations associated with a waltz. The waltz is often thought of as a formal affair, rigid in its structure and popularized by the dance style that accompanies it. And nobody was trying to waltz to vintage Bright Eyes. His emotionally charged, unhinged style makes "False Advertising" one of his most interesting songs, because it's unlike anything he's ever done, even in his later years when he opened up to plenty of different styles from electronic to alt-country. Somehow, he managed to slide in a waltz, and he did it his way.

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Album: Challengers

Year: 2007

From the excellent Challengers, "Go Places" has Neko Case at her finest, sounding strong and confident over the sparsely accompanied beggining of the song. Over a minute in, the drums kick in, and from that point on, "Go Places" just gets bigger and more waltzy. Neko kicks the waltz like a proud traditional folk song, weaves in a Celtic feel, and if you threw some bagpipes in there, "Go Places" would undoubtedly be the best waltz + bagpipes combo song of all time, probably.

Album: Feast of Wire

Year: 2003

The lilting Americana of Calexico's "Sunken Waltz," a tale of the rejection of corporate, industrialised America for the freedom and simple pleasures of the countryside, is imbued with a stately timelessness by the waltzes' gentle shuffle. Combine this with the occasional use of Mariachi-esque Latin guitar, and you have instrumentation that reflects the dusty grandeur of the band's home-state of Arizona, whilst providing an inviting backdrop for Joey Burn's deceptively simple, but hugely cinematic lyrics.

Album: Tramp

Year: 2012

Sharon Van Etten's third studio album, Tramp, is a fairly dark affair, dealing with broken relationships and wounded hearts in a unpretentious manner that is both relatable and powerful. Her subject matter is timeless, and on the delicate ukelele led "Leonard," it is the timelessness of the waltz that provides a home for the painful but cathatrtic confession: "I am bad at loving you."

Album: Franks Wild Years

Year: 1987

The guttaral, cigarette and alcohol soaked vocal chords of Tom Waits provide a brilliant counterpoint to the bright, welcoming sounds of the accordion which drives this song forward. There's an almost childlike simplicity to the backing of accordion, horns and occasional very quiet xylophone, and together with the opening lines of "The bats are in the belfry," Waits subtly draws attention away from this song's emotional depth, making repeated listens essential, and resulting in a greater final payoff.

Album: Since I Left You

Year: 2000

Aren't The Avalanches great? Masters of the bizarre blend, their debut album Since I Left You, on which "Two Hearts In 3/4 Time" appears, is apparently made up of over 3500 vinyl samples, and is a wild, trippy ride through styles and emotions that is beloved by everyone from the Beastie Boys to ?uestlove. As on many of their tracks, this one starts with a weird and wonderful collection of vocal samples, before settling into a gentle rhythym which finally gives way slowly to a cacophany of noise leading into the album's brief next track "Avalanche Rock."

Album: The Shepherd's Dog

Year: 2007

When you think of a waltz, you may think of big drums leading the way for a dramatic and full-bodied accompaniment, but Samuel Beam keeps it pretty mellow to start "Flightless Bird, American Mouth."

But here's a thing about the waltz: the waltz has a mind of its own.

That steady pace is like a building tension, and even if you think you're just going to carry on with this mellow little waltz, things can get out of hand quickly. The tendency is to keep adding elements as the song goes on, and you can just picture Samuel Beam sitting in a rocking chair, barefoot, trying to keep things breezy. Then he drops a little waltz and all of a sudden there's a man with a timpani behind him and an army full of string instrument players are rushing in. Unfortunately, "Flightless Bird" doesn't feature a timpani, but there is a nice build-up on here and for an Iron & Wine song, things get surprisingly loud.

Album: The Flying Club Cup

Year: 2007

The waltz was a popular dance in 16th century Europe, and Beirut is no stranger to incorporating traditional European elements into his music. Other indie bands have dabbled with worldy sounds, but few have made these sounds a core part of their style like Beirut, so it makes the vacillating "A Sunday Smile" a natural fit for Zach Condon.

Album: Catacombs

Year: 2009

If you want an example of how airily beautiful the off-kilter rhythm of a waltz can get, Cass McCombs might be your guy. "You Saved My Life" has one of those melodies that never quits, matched perfectly with the 3/4 bounce of the time signature and the good sense to take its time, building and pausing and expanding over the course of the song. The result is the kind of indie song that's going to stand the test of time through its earnest simplicity.

Album: Picaresque

Year: 2005

Ah, "The Mariner's Revenge." The song serves as one small slice of a large body of evidence pointing to the fact that The Decemberists were born in the wrong century. It's is an epic folkloric tale of a boy who seeks revenge after his mother's death. He finds the man he's seeking out at sea, and in a surprising turn of events, the two end up in the belly of a whale. In the middle of all this chaos, there is a—you guessed it—a motherfucking waltz. It's a short waltz, but it comes at just the right point (kind of like Outkast's hoedown in "Rosa Parks").

This particular waltz signifies the passing of time as the now grown boy sets out to sea to seek his revenge, and it adds another exciting element to this rollercoaster of a song. As the waltz marches forward, you can just picture an old wooden boat bobbing up and down in a choppy ocean, out for blood. There is nothing in the world like a well-placed waltz, and The Decemberists nailed it. Hear it at the 4:55 mark.

Album: In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

Year: 1998

The most glaring characteristic of Neutral Milk Hotel is Jeff Mangum's voice. It jumps out at you and stays with you forever, and once you've listened to Neutral Milk Hotel, you know that voice. But there are other elements at play that make Neutral Milk Hotel what they are. The music of NMH lives in a world of its own, separate from pop and rock and any other scene it could be associated with. It's the kind of music that sounds like it was crafted on a fishing boat back when they still used old, faded maps to navigate the waters. With a swaying melody, meandering vocals, and a touch of brass, "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" is a Neutral Milk Hotel masterpiece, and it's all done in waltz timing.

Album: XO

Year: 1998

Elliott Smith wrote several songs in waltz time, but "Waltz #2" takes the cake. The fact that he chose to name it simply "Waltz #2" is interesting, but with plenty of unnamed songs it seems like he might have just settled on this because he didn't have anything else in mind. Even though the name seems a little lazy, it's certainly not just another waltz. Lyrically, it's one of his most moving songs. Thought to be about Elliott's mother and stepfather, the track takes on a complicated meaning, but the chorus, "I'm never gonna know you now / But I'm gonna love you anyhow" probably means something different to everybody.

So much of Elliott's music is lo-fi and uncut, but the clarity and polished nature of songs like "Waltz #2" made it so easy to appreciate his talents as a composer. Layers of guitar, drums, and piano bring this song to life, and it all starts with that single 1-2-3 beat kicking off the waltz.

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