Before iTunes meta tags and Spotify algorithms reduced "indie rock" to a catch-all term for "music with guitars", the genre was a cultural force to be reckoned with. Forming the template for the guitar-bass-drums bands we still cling to today, its emergence in the late 80s took pop music and rock 'n' roll and forced the two to settle their differences in a flurry of emotion and headphone-filling guitarwork.

Two prominent bands of the genre, Death Cab For Cutie and Teenage Fanclub, were born a decade apart: Teenage Fanclub were the Scottish darlings of the early 90s' jangly indie boom, while Death Cab rode the slipstream of the 00s' first indie "revival" to arenas and iconic guest spots on The OC. Look, if you didn't at some point shout-sing along to either at an 00s indie night idk what you were up to. Despite their difference in age however, both frontmen share a similarly rich tone of songwriting, making it little surprise to hear Death Cab's Ben Gibbard was heavily influenced by Norman Blake's Teenage Fanclub.

Earlier this year Gibbard released his self-produced take on Teenage Fanclub' Bandwagonesque, his favourite album by his favourite band. So, as Death Cab enter the studio to record their ninth (!) full-length and Teenage Fanclub ride their 11th into the sunset, there has surely never been a better time to bring these two musicians together for one giant DIY conversation about their indie rock past, present and future. Read on below.

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THE BANDWAGON DEPARTS

Ben Gibbard: I was a kid, 13 or 14, living in this little town across the water from Seattle called Bremerton. Everybody listened to Southern Cal punk-rock, like Bad Religion and Circle Jerks. That stuff's fine, but it wasn't my music – I wasn't a punk rock kid, I wasn't an angsty kid; my dad brought me up on The Beatles and the Stones. Hearing Bandwagonesque, it not only scratched that itch of like, 'This is familiar to me: melodically familiar, structurally familiar, the harmonies feel familiar', but at the same time, it has this energy to it. The production is kinda gritty and dirty, but within that production are some really beautiful love songs; really dense lyrical material. I fell in love with it. I don't know if I've ever told you this, Norman, but I had a photo of you and Raymond [McGinley, Teenage Fanclub guitarist] from a guitar magazine in my locker in high school! Everyone would open up their lockers and there'd be picture of women, and punk bands, and metal bands, and I had a photo of Norman and Raymond in my locker. I was learning to play guitar when I was 12, 13, and [in those magazines] it was all Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, the guy from Extreme, all that shit! It was funny, after 1991, they had to begrudgingly acknowledge bands that didn't play ripping guitar solos.