10 Most Underrated 90s Indie Bands You Need To Listen To
6. The Boo Radleys
Taking their name from To Kill a Mockingbird, this English troupe spent the entire 1990s dishing out delectable fusions of indie pop, neo-psychedelia, shoegaze, and other related subgenres. Despite receiving a fair amount of acclaim from the press, the financial burden of keeping things going (which would’ve been lessened with more record and concert ticket sales) played a part in them splitting up in 1999.
Debut LP Ichabod and I provided a likably impassioned and raucous introduction before follow-up Everything’s Alright Forever saw them expand their horizons in every way (songwriting, production, style, etc.) They genuinely developed significantly in only a couple of years, and with 1993’s Giant Steps and 1995’s Wake Up! they’d both continued to grow musically and finally received the praise they long deserved from major outlets like NME.
Regrettably, purposefully unconventional successors C’mon Kids and Kingsize didn’t do as well in the UK Albums Charts, and by the end of the era, principal songwriter Martin Carr decided to split up the band.
Luckily, The Boo Radleys—sans Carr—returned in 2021 (with a new record, Keep On with Falling, set to release in March 2022), so now’s the perfect time to check out their earlier works.