For years, a certain strain of indie rock had taken a nearly perverse satisfaction in making inscrutable jigsaw puzzles out of the old verse-chorus song form. Now, with ‘alternative music’ at the top of the charts, obscure lyrics and scrambled song structures came to the fore. It wasn’t long before Stephen Malkmus, who fronted the now-famous Pavement, was telling Spin that he wrote lyrics from ‘the perspective of a guy who, inebriated at a party, is saying a great many things he doesn’t mean.’ Groups like Sebadoh and The Mountain Goats began recording on cheap, low-fidelity equipment (think: a boombox), as though to make sure that even if some slick record executive took a shine to their music, it wouldn’t sound good enough for radio.