I was immediately impressed with Such Great Heights when I saw each chapter began with a playlist. As I started each chapter, I went to Spotify and saved each song. I loved listening to old favorites and discovering bands I wasn’t familiar with. Take your time reading and listening to enhance this experience!

Chris Deville documents how indie music changed and grew through 12 distinct chapters. He starts with the late 80s stretching to 2023, dissecting each evolution. Deville has a genuine love of indie music and so much of his experience discovering different bands was reminiscent of mine. He brought back so much nostalgia and a longing to get back to the days of waiting for a new CMJ magazine to come out. To discover new indie music would cause you to feel special and superior because it wasn’t what was being played on TRL. The joy of finding someone who enjoyed it as much as you is found within these pages. The late 90s/early 2000s was such a pocket in time and this book takes me right back to listening to Boston’s WFNX.

Such Great Heights unpacks how the genre found its way to popularity through The OC, details the beginning of Vampire Weekend, unpacks The Postal Service’s only album, reminds us of a time when file sharing opened doors to finding new music for free and documents the genre’s evolution through dance, hiphop, pop and even Taylor Swift. It’s a journey! But Deville makes it all make sense. He does such an incredible job with the details. It’s not just about the music, it’s about the scene, the blogs, MP3 sharing, and the culture. I wasn’t familiar with his music reviews but I’ll be searching for them going forward.

If you attended The Postal Service/Death Cab 20th anniversary tour, this book’s for you. What’s so great about Indie is it spans so many genres, there is something for everyone and no need to gatekeep. Such Great Heights will bring you back to a time when you heard Rilo Kiley for the first time and knew it was something special. I loved this book so much, my review just won’t do it justice.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for this ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book will give all the 90s and early aughts teenagers a dose of nostalgia they need to remember the indie rock bands of their youth.

A slow but thorough read. This book took me back to my younger years, and I grew up in the early 2000s, so I knew of most of these bands as I was growing up, or came to know them as I got older. I grew up on the staples of Death Cab for Cutie, The Postal Service, The White Stripes, The Killers etc, and it was really interesting to see how indie music has evolved into what it is now. There were some things that surprised me about the inner workings of music that I had never known, like how Since U Been Gone would never have existed without The Yeah Yeah Yeah's 'Maps'. Really good stuff.

Not just an overview of Indie Rock but also the mechanisms behind the scenes that determine the success or failure of individual bands and releases. I love how the author weaves his own experiences writing and exploring Indie Rock bands throughout the narrative. It is an accessibly comfortable writing style that belies all the well researched details included throughout the book. it was fascinating to read about the impact of various forms of media including file sharing and online streaming from My Space to Facebook to YouTube and Tik-Tok, and especially the transition from CDs to MP3s via iPods and iTunes. Highly worthwhile read

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an advanced reader copy.

Thank you SMP for the advanced copy via Netgalley! This publishes 8/26.

I took my time with this, as I do with non-fiction. I didn't love it enough to devour it, but I did end up enjoying the majority of this - maybe because I'm an angsty emo kid at heart. I was in junior high 2000-2004 and I graduated high school in 2007, so I feel like I essentially grew up during this era. I may not have understood it fully because I was young, but indie rock was all I listened to. It was really interesting reading the history of it all and how former genres influenced the music of the aughts.

The playlists at the beginning of each chapter are the perfect touch - book playlists are amongst my favorite things. If you were a teenager in the aughts (2000-2009), I highly recommend picking this up.. that is, if you care about the history of music. If not, skip it and go listen to the OC soundtrack. :)

If you're an indie music fan and a millenial, this book is for you. It's more of a walk through the early 2000s than anything insightful about any of the bands or the scene. Honestly, this is just a suburban white boy's trip down memory lane. To be honest, I wasn't interested in any of these bands. I don't really remember what I was listening to in the Aughts, but it wasn't any of this. I aged out of this book. Too white, too righteous, not for me.

This was such an engaging and, dare I say, fun book! This is my favorite type of music (I'm a little emo kid who never fully grew out of this phase) and while I didn't know all the artists and bands I still found it really interesting!!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this complementary ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Such Great Heights, named after The Postal Service song, takes the reader though the indie rock explosion from the early 2000s to current times. I absolutely loved the early chapters which mentioned so many bands from my youth and inspired me to re-listen to a lot of music that I hadn't listened to in awhile. This book really needs an accompanying Spotify playlist to go along with it.

I actually wasn't super familiar with Pitchfork (maybe it wasn't as popular in Canada?) so I found the chapters about how their reviews influenced popularity super interesting. I also loved how TV shows drove songs to the forefront of pop culture - would be hard for kids now to believe that The OC made bands huge.

Strong recommend to anyone interested in this time period of music!

It’s not a perfect book, but it’s definitely a five star read because it was fully engaging the entire time and I learned a lot. Deville is a fine writer who maintains an engaging tone and is able to laugh a bit at himself and some of the guilty pleasures that were to be had with music from the 2000s.

I’m an old Gen X person who kind of backed off of music in 1994 with the death of Kurt Cobain. This filled in a lot of gaps for me and helped me understand the music that my children were listening to on a deeper level. While I certainly don’t have the same fondness for a lot of these bands that the author does, It’s very useful to put them into context and see how Indie music morphed over time.

As an old school post punk fan, it is good to see that the stuff that killed all the lousy post grunge music brought us some truly amazing art. If only the playlists were easy to export to my Apple Music account, I’d give the book an extra star.

I loved this. This was a fantastic recounting of my favorite music!

Going thru the years, and building the connections between bands was really appreciated. This was a walk thru memory lane, with additional details and stories that helped pinpoint the whole scene.

If you love indie music, and some would label piano rock, this book really was a deep dive into a man’s perspective of a unique music scene that has withstood the test of time (I went to 3 of the Transatlanticism 20th anniversary tour, with Postal service!)

Chris DeVille has written the mixtape of a book that every indie fan did not know they needed. This is not just a nostalgia trip. It is a thoughtful and sharp dive into the rise of a movement that shaped taste, fashion, and feelings for a whole generation.

The book hits the sweet spot between music journalism and cultural commentary. DeVille connects the dots from blog buzz to festival headliners with ease and a real love for the scene. You can feel the energy of crowded basement shows and the magic of discovering a track before it went viral.

It can lean a bit encyclopedic in parts, but that is part of the charm. Like digging through crates in a record store, there is joy in the depth. A must read for fans of Pitchfork era cool, skinny jeans sincerity, and bands that made you feel like you were in on something secret.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC.

Just okay. I guess I was expecting a bit more in depth discussion on my fave artists of that era, but I understand that they could only cover so much in one book. The writing was a bit too dry for me, though.

4.5 stars rounded up

This is both a history of the evolution of indie music and a study of how the meaning of “indie” changed over time. As someone who hit their twenties just as indie rock was really popping off, this was a very nostalgic read for me, especially the chapters detailing the earlier years. It was also super informative, since when you’re busy living through a cultural movement, you don’t always see the bigger picture.

I was fascinated by the outsized influence Pitchfork had on music and what that meant for the artists they praised and/or criticized. I read Pitchfork back then, but didn’t realize the impact it had. I also had no idea how important The OC was to indie music, as I never watched it.

I will admit that I wasn’t as excited about the few chapters detailing genres I find less appealing, but really, that is a “me” problem, as they are still an important part of the overall history. I did learn from them and gained context I didn’t previously have.

I absolutely loved that each chapter began with its own suggested soundtrack! I noticed that the first four of them are on Spotify, and I hope they are all up by the time this book is published in August 2025. (Just in case, I saved the lists for myself, so my next roadtrip playlist is going to be pretty sweet!)

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC!

My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an advance copy of this new look at the music of the early 2000s, the sounds, the scene, the rise of hipster culture, the Internet, blogs gatekeepers and the labels and bands that gave us all of this.

The early 2000's is sort of a black hole to me entertainment wise. I was working for a magazine, that had little hopes of going anywhere, the world was a mess, and things just weren't clicking. I had drifted away from movies, and except for a few soundtracks and a few bands, didn't really follow much in the way of music. Nothing was grabbing me, and nothing was interesting me. Then I discovered music blogs. Places with a few words about a new song, why they should be popular, and something to click on to download. Sort of like getting CMG with its music disc, but a few times a week. Slowly I began to hear songs that really drew me in. Small bands, on tiny labels, a few even with cassettes and vinyl. A lot of people, including people I worked with complained music wasn't as good as it had been. Yet I was hearing stuff that was fresh, retro, derivative, bland, great, body moving and more. Chris DeVille was there at the beginning, and got to see some amazing shows as he watched a genre grow, get accepted, get over, get awards and more. Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion is a book about not just the sounds but about the scene, the hipsters, the music fans, the television executives and the gatekeepers who all added to the Indie scene in many different ways.

The book begins with a look at music before the 2000s, the fading out of grunge, the glimmer of independent labels, how people segregated music in so many different ways. DeVille, was gong to school at the time, liked the kind of music he liked. Until one day a song hit him, and suddenly he was looking for more. DeVille grew up at a time when Napster was making it easier to find music, the Internet was full of people making blogs about their favorite bands, and the music industry was going through one of their weird times, where everything was changing by nobody knew it. DeVille covers the rise of independent bands, on small labels, but using word of mouth, and the Internet to widen their reach. The rise of Pitchfork with its constant stream of music reviews almost deciding by themselves what is cool and what is not. The choice of tv showrunners to feature bands on TV, shows that began to sell more albums than the stars of the day. Bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Shins, the Strokes, The National, TV on Radio and much more are discussed, as well as many of the various controversies that seem to come up about the music, the bands, the people listening, even the reviewers and labels.

I love books that take me so long to read because I keep stopping to see if I have the CD or the album for bands mentioned. Yes I can probably Spotify it, but I like to know if I need to buy it, or where it is. And did I do a lot of looking and listening. I didn't know I needed this book, reminding me of difficult times and songs that got me through, even remembering forgotten concerts and shows. The book is more than music, but looks at the culture that sprung up around Indie music, the gatekeepers who decided on bands, the fake outrage of reviewers, the culturally borrowing of bands like Vampire Weekend. How the music industry changed. And the shock of Arcade Fire winning a Grammy, which I hadn't remembered. DeVille is a very good writer, bringing together a lot of themes, and making it all work well. I learned a lot and remembered even more, which I enjoyed.

I've read a few books about bands in this period, this is one of the first that looks at everything that was going on, and what followed. A perfect book for fans, people who like to read about music, and people like me who missed a lot at the time, and still have some catching up to do.

Really comprehensive analysis of such a loaded word. The shifting musical, cultural and technological landscape has altered the meaning of 'indie" and this book does a great job breaking down a term that's had infinite permutations over the last 30 years. As someone who was entrenched in the scene I appreciated the thoughtful insights this book had to offer.

As someone who came of age in the mid-2000s, and cut their teeth on a steady diet of Blalok's Indie Rock Playlist torrents, Tumblr reblogs and Alex Patsavas's extensive oevre of soundtracking teen media, I am 3000% the target audience for this book!

That being said, it's a tough one to review. It's a steady wave of nostalgia, from the barrage of deep cut references to the surprising reminders of songs long gone, to the writing which is at once both earnest and self-aggrandizing. It is truly like reading a 250-page pitchfork article, in the best and worst way.

I appreciate the thematic approach that DeVille took, especially considering the huge amount of genre-shifting he had to cover in such a short space of time (wow, we really did it all!). However it did lead to inadvertent repetition and generally dense prose that I often felt like I was wading through in search of the thesis. I'm a linear guy, so I would've loved it more if it was a year-by-year approach. There are some absolutely VICIOUS reads that I cackled at with glee, and then some inevitable hot takes that I staunchly disagree with. The final few chapters turn to the grey area between the indie scene and top 40 hits, but as a reformed indie kid I have to say there was too much Kanye and Taylor Swift talk for my taste. My eyes were rolling, but it's all in the spirit of the game.

To summarise in one sentence (from DeVille himself, no less) "Indie meant so many things that it came to mean nothing."

Buy this for the 30-something record collector in your life. They'll thank you for it, and then chew your ear off about how wrong it is about X, Y and Z.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher St. Martin's Press for the advance read.

This is a tough one. I have often enjoyed Mr DeVille's byline in stories/news features on Stereogum and have admired his writing. This book is somewhat frustrating, but also extremely well thought out and researched, as well as written and organized creatively. The "problem" is I love the sections on microgenres that I like, but absolutely resent all the pop-skewing music that is covered in the back 1/3 of the book.

I honestly suspect that only voracious pop culture obsessives can possibly enjoy this entire book. By embracing and TELLING the stories of artists I couldn't care less about, DeVille alienated me and made me question his witty placement of Pavement references. Who is this book for? I wish the fringe "indie-qualifying" sections were lopped out and the book solely focused on the traditional Pitchfork aesthetic. I wanted to love this book more, but it's bringing me down.

Whether you’re an Arcade Fire loyalist or someone who just found Phoebe Bridgers on a Spotify playlist, this is a must-read. It’s a love letter to the scene, the sound, and the stubborn belief that music will always matter.