Having missed the chance to see Sigur Rós live, only to hear that they were going on “indefinite hiatus,” we spent a reasonable amount of the last couple of years cursing ourselves for our foolishness. But happily, the band sent word earlier this year that it was reuniting, and this week sees the release of the new album Valtari. It seems that wishing really hard can make your dreams come true, because apart from Sigur Rós, some of our other favorite ’00s bands — namely At the Drive-In, Death from Above 1979, and Grandaddy — have all announced in recent months that they’re getting back together. This has all put a sizable dent (albeit a very welcome one) in our list of dream ’00s reunions. But there are still plenty more that we can fantasize about, so here’s a selections of 10 such daydreams — let’s all hold hands and pray together, eh?
Le Tigre
When we looked at ’90s bands we’d love to see reunite, we mentioned Bikini Kill — and although that’s realistically almost certainly never gonna happen, we haven’t given up hope of at least seeing one more Le Tigre show. If we get to hear “Deceptacon” live again, our lives will be substantially better.
mclusky
For all that we love Future of the Left — and believe us, we really, really do — we can’t help but feel a nagging regret that we only got to see mclusky once. In a way, we don’t want to tarnish their memory, but for all that FOTL break out the likes of “Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues” every so often, we’d sell several family members for a chance to see another complete set of mclusky songs. Judging by the glorious smackdown he administered to Pitchfork’s Ian Cohen yesterday, Andy Falkous isn’t exactly buying into the mclusky nostalgia… but still, we can dream, can’t we?
The White Stripes
With the degree of ubiquity they attained, it’s easy to forget how exciting the White Stripes were when they first emerged, before Jack White started wearing capes and showing more interest in his side projects than his ostensible “real” band. While we’re pretty sure that they ran their course and broke up at the right time, we can’t help but miss early-2000s vintage Jack and Meg — if we could somehow magically bring that incarnation of the band back, we’d jump at the chance to do so.
Junior Senior
What even happened to Junior Senior, anyway? For a moment they were poised to rival their contemporaries Scissor Sisters for the title of World’s Most Enjoyably Camp Party Band, and then… nothing. (Well, OK, one more album… but still, we haven’t heard from Junior Senior since at least 2005.)
JJ72
Also on the “whatever happened to…” front, behold JJ72, one of many bands briefly anointed by the NME in the early 2000s as the saviors of guitar music. Unlike the likes of My Vitriol and The Darkness, however, JJ72 were actually, y’know, good. In baby-faced frontman Mark Greaney, they had a singer possessed of a voice that posed a danger to china sets everywhere, and also a songwriter with an uncanny knack for capturing adolescent angst in all its shrieky glory. (The above video for “October Swimmer” is admittedly a bit silly, but what to do?)
Mansun
Bands just don’t make weird prog concept albums that feature narration by Tom Baker of Doctor Who fame anymore. More’s the pity. (And yes, quibblers, we know Six was recorded in 1998, but we reckon the band’s career stretched far enough into the ’00s to qualify them for this list.)
Q and Not U
Sitting firmly in the “way ahead of their time” file, Washington, DC band Q and Not U’s work explored post-punk and post-hardcore well before it was fashionable to do so. Their music drew on a disparate set of influences — everything from the proto-dance punk of bands like Orange Juice, a sound that’d later be mined to great effect by the likes of Franz Ferdinand, to hardcore luminaries like Fugazi and Minor Threat. They split in 2005 after releasing three great records — we’d love to see them get together again.
My Computer
One of the great lost ’00s bands, My Computer are still criminally overlooked a decade after releasing their 2002 masterpiece Vulnerabilia, a record that trod similar conceptual paths to Radiohead’s OK Computer, exploring isolation and alienation in post-millennial Britain (although My Computer’s work was more grounded in cheap drugs and council flats than in clinical white office buildings and hyper-modern transit lines). According to this Guardian article, they did in fact reunite in 2009 — but sadly, we’ve heard little of them since, and their perpetually un-Googleable name doesn’t help any.
The Moldy Peaches
While Kimya Dawson has gone on to twee Juno-soundtrackin’ success, and Adam Green continues to raise hell around the world, it’s a shame that they never work together anymore. As a duo, they struck a fragile but effective balance, generally managing to be endearingly strange without veering into irritatingly kooky territory (although it was a close-run thing at times).
St Helens
Y’know that awful sinking feeling you get when it becomes clear that your favorite band isn’t going to make another record? So it was for us with St Helens, the sadly short-lived band who flared out after one fantastic record in 2009. Songwriter Jarrod Quarrell has gone on to make another great album as Lost Animal, but it’s a shame he never explored St Helens’ unique sound — sparse, guitar-based arrangements, along with male and female vocalists singing in exactly the same register — further.
LCD Soundsystem
No, we didn’t go to their final show. Yes, we regret it.