2011 was a productive year for Indian indie, and a great year for guitar music. There were more music festivals celebrating music than before, more new live venues added and most importantly, more new music released than ever before. Music was recorded in studios, on live stages and in home studios. It’s also the year the country started asking the question: is Indian indie about to burst into the mainstream?

This then is our rundown of the top 10 Indian indie guitar albums that made our year. Critics might scoff at our list; we expect lots of opinions that some of the albums listed below didn’t even feature that much guitar playing, or that some of the guitar playing we cite doesn’t fire up the imaginations of guitar purists. Admittedly, our list is eclectic, but it’s also our most honest list. Just so you know, we’re listed our favourite albums in the order in which they were released this year. Also, since the music business is changing so rapidly around us, we’ve stretched our definition of albums to include EPs that were released this year as well.

As always, please feel free to jump in with comments, feedback, opinions or even general advice to strangle ourselves with our guitar strings!

1. Peter Cat Recording Co. – Sinema (January 2011)

2011 started off with the release of the year’s strangest (and possibly bravest) album. Mixing together elements of sepia-toned parlour music, rockabilly, gypsy rhythms and cabaret pop, Peter Cat Recording Co.’s debut album Sinema contained eight of the unlikeliest tracks to ever waft out of an Indian studio. Put together by the then-U.S.-based film student Suryakant Sawhney in 2008, PCRC’s current lineup came together in 2010 when Sawhney invited Rohan Kulsheshtra on bass, Anindya Shankar on lead guitar and keyboard and Karan Singh on drums to join him. Incidentally, the three were all members of a metal band called Lycanthropia. All jangly guitars, vintage keyboards and baroque rhythms, Sinema is the kind of album that showcases just how diverse and varied the Indian indie scene is.

In one line: Vintage punk love songs.

Standout tracks: “Love Demons”, “Tokyo Vijaya”.

 

2. Menwhopause – Easy (January 2011)

Easy, the second album from Delhi sonic perfectionists Menwhopause marks the year they decided to join the ranks of India’s finest indie acts. An album of slow burning beauty, Easy sees Menwhopause fine-tune their acoustic/electric alternative rock sound into a swirling amalgam of ’90s alternative and classic psychedelic that draws equally from Pink Floyd and The Doors.

Virtually every song on the album is constructed around a simple cyclical groove that the band locks into with military precision, as lead singer Sarabjit Chadha’s smoky vocals float in and out of the mix, eventually building into layers and layers of sonic textures. Anup Kutty’s minimalist electric guitar is balanced out by I.P. Singh’s throbbing acoustic strum, while Randeep Singh’s bass rounds things out.

In one line: Dreamy, spacey, winding rock for adults.

Standout tracks: “Sky Is Falling”, “Father Monologue”, and “Brimful”.

 

3. Pentagram – Bloodywood (March 2011)

According to frontman Vishal Dadlani, “our biggest influence on this record has been our city, our people, our surroundings our lives... the album is a sonic slice of the other side of Bombay, India, Or as we like to call it, Bloodywood”.

Trying to infuse an album of 14 songs with the spirit and soul of a city of 20 million people would seem an ambitious endeavour but Pentagram in their own brash, stubbornly indie way, make it happen. It’s hard to put your finger on why Bloodywood seems so “Bombay” but it just does. Does it have something to do with the fact that Pentagram have been around for so long that they are the sound of Bombay indie? Honestly, if there’s one band that can pull it off, Pentagram can.

The album is a snarling, shuddering, synth-infused guitar growler of an album. Randolph Correa’s production showcases why he’s Indian indie’s foremost progressive thinker. Not too many bands still make songs whose first five seconds can make a crowd of thousands jump in the air.

In one line: The album that proves to the world that there’s so much more to Indian music than Bollywood.

Standout tracks: “Nocturne”, “Lovedrug Climbdown”, “In My Head”.

 

4. The Lightyears Explode – The Lightyears Explode EP (March 2011)

With the release of their debut EP, Mumbai’s The Lightyears Explode unleashed a supercharged cocktail of manically energized garage punk riffs and super-hooky choruses on an unsuspecting public. The trio – Saurabh Roy on guitars and vocals, Shalom Benjamin on bass and Aaron Carvalho on drums – make music that is noisy, sweaty and frequently thumbing its nose at convention. Channelling punk’s elder statesmen like The Ramones, The Stooges, Rancid, Husker Dü and The Replacements alongside influences from the new wave of no-frills guitar bands like The White Stripes and the Arctic Monkeys, The Lightyears Explode’s debut EP is all raw riffs and electric energy. It’s a shame that live staples “Garam Dharam” and their distortion-ravaged cover of Kishore Kumar’s “Eena Meena Deeka” couldn’t make it onto the EP.

In one line: Irresistibly cheeky garage punk fuelled by the energy of a nuclear explosion.

Standout tracks: “She Probably Still Is”, “The Gay Song”.

 

5. Indian Ocean – 16/330 Khajoor Road (July 2011)

Named after the address of Indian Ocean’s jam pad and rehearsal space, 16/330 Khajoor Road is the band’s first album after the death of core member Asheem Chakravarty. The album sees the band move on to further refine and perfect the folk/rock fusion they’ve pioneered over the last two decades. The band decided to release the album as monthly track-by-track free downloads, starting in July 2010. After they released the individual songs, they eventually put out the album in its entirety on CD. But more important than the unconventional disregard for record labels and revenue models, it is the music on 16/330 Khajoor Road that showcases Indian Ocean as a band at the height of their powers. Perfectly in sync with each other, the trio of bassist/vocalist Rahul Ram, guitarist Susmit Sen and drummer/percussionist Amit Kilam, draw on the experience of every day of the last two decades to craft a sound and energy that is uniquely Indian Ocean. Susmit Sen’s sparse but melodic raag-based guitar playing is intrinsic to Indian Ocean’s signature sound and ensures that no other band will ever sound quite like them.

In one line: Vibrant, soul-stirring folk-rock by the band that invented the genre.

Standout tracks: “Bula Raha”, “Sone Ki”.

 

6. Dualist Inquiry - Dualism EP (July 2011)

Sure, Dualist Inquiry, known to his parents as Sahej Bakshi, is an electronic producer who counts his sampler and laptop as his main instruments. Ironically, that’s exactly why his debut EP Dualism makes it to our list of 2011’s best guitar albums. While Bakshi is easily one of the most formidably creative electronic producers on the Indian scene, a knob twiddler and laptop junkie who’s breathing new life into Indian EDM, he’s also a mean guitar player. Bakshi blends organic guitar playing with his futuristic electronic pop to produce some of the most exciting crossover dance music made this year. Easily the most jaw-droppingly creative output from one of the indie scene’s most dazzling talents, the Dualism EP bridges the two disparate worlds of rock and electronica, making sense to both camps and moving feet on dance floors and concert grounds across India.

In one line: Space-age electronic beats meet floaty, ethereal guitar licks on the most creatively inspiring indie release this year.

Standout tracks: “Qualia”, “Gravitat”.

 

7. Harsha Iyer – Curious Toys (September 2011)

Remember the first time you heard The Strokes? At first their disorganised, sloppy songs sounded like half-done sketches of songs instead of fully realised tunes. Of course, eventually you got the raw genius in their unpolished spontaneity. On first listen, Chennai-based Harsha Iyer elicits the same emotions. There’s squalling guitars thrown on top of mismatched beats, mid-song tempo changes and drifting backing vocals running under Iyer’s high-pitched yowl. It’s all a bit messy, but it’s brilliant in its daring and its disregard for convention. It’s like he put every musical idea he had into this record, not bothering to decide if one idea was better than the other.

Written, produced and performed entirely by the 19-year-old Iyer, Curious Toys is an album that sounds far more mature and musically dexterous than it has any right to be. This is the new wave of Indian indie – game changing music made entirely by a single artist, driven by passion, with no regard for commercial pressure. Indie at its purest.

In one line: A raw, warts and all avalanche of musical ideas pushed on by a stormy squall of the dirtiest guitar riffs of 2011.

Standout tracks: “Addiction”, “The Off Switch”, “On the Edge”, “Leader”.

 

8. Sidd Coutto – Sunny Side Up (October 2011)

The busiest man in Indian indie, multi-instrumentalist, singer and composer Sidd Coutto will be the first to admit that he’s not the greatest guitar player in the world. Why then does his debut solo album, recorded in his home studio with Coutto playing all the instruments (bar the cello and harp) himself make it to our list? Mainly because with Sunny Side Up, Coutto casts his acoustic guitar as the hero of the piece. It’s central to the plot, the engine that drives the entire album. Given the fact that Coutto has been a part of at least seven projects over the last decade and can play a lineup of instruments, it’s especially interesting that he decided to keep things sparse and basic for his solo debut. Sunny Side Up places the guitar right up front, letting it form the base for Coutto to sing his hooky songs of love and life over. With Coutto’s signature elements of soul, reggae and classic pop song writing thrown into the mix alongside trumpet blasts, harps, cellos and even Tibetan singing bowls, this is the album that marks out Coutto as one of Indian indie’s finest songsmiths.

In one line: Acoustic guitar-led campfire sing-alongs that make the world seem a better place.

Standout tracks: “Free”, “Royal Family”, “I Need You”.

 

9. Sifar – 1 (October 2011)

In an interview we did earlier this year with Amit Yadav, the band’s frontman and guitarist, he said, “My ideal sound would combine the style of Kurt Cobain and the sound of Billie Joe Armstrong”. Sifar’s debut album comes bursting with the kind of irresistible pop hooks and churning guitar riffs that Cobain and Armstrong would be proud to have written. Purpose-built to rouse crowds in stadiums across the country, Sifar’s songs are tailor-made to take over the world. Impressively tight production and superb song writing make this one of those albums that stays in your head for days after.

In one line: World-dominating guitar anthems from a band that understands the true meaning of the term “pop-rock”.

Standout tracks: “Gunaah”, “Raasta”, “Aakhri Din”.

 

10. Goddess Gagged – Resurfaces (November 2011)

2011 was the year Mumbai five-piece progressive metal act Goddess Gagged brought the melody back to Indian metal. Alongside Keshav Dhar’s Skyharbor project, Goddess Gagged’s debut album Resurfaces was the most awaited album of the year, with the band being talked about as the future of the new wave of Indian indie. In frontman Siddharth Basrur, the band probably has one of the finest lead vocalists in Indian indie. With a soaring voice that cuts through the thickly layered guitars of the Goddess Gagged sound, Basrur’s vocal signature immediately separates the band from its contemporaries. The Devesh Dayal-Arman Menzies twin guitar attack crafts layers of soaring, epic guitar riffs in contrast to the sludgy, angry guitar riffs that characterise so much of Indian metal. Produced and mixed by Zorran Mendonsa, Resurfaces is an album that stands apart for its euphoric, uplifting anthems rather than drowning in the angsty, doomsday sound so favoured by most other metal acts.

In one line: Seven tracks of metal with soul.

Standout tracks: “Visionary”, “Sink Or Swim”, “Preliminary”.