It wasn't too many years ago that the Archers of Loaf opened an album with a song called "Step Into the Light," and the timing of the sentiment was more than apt. What the world considered "indie rock"-- essentially the Pavement paradigm: skinny white guys with guitars and graduate degrees singing poorly about nothing in particular-- suddenly seemed like the best trend-oriented bet since Madonna's Maverick label ran off a batch of Seattle clones called Candlebox and milked them for many, many power-ballad bucks. After all, independent music (so long as it involved pop songs and staring at your shoes) was dissonant and cock-eyed like all that grungy rock the kids were into, but with the benefits of being wan and sometimes funny. And if Alice in Chains could parlay their cultural moment to platinumism, imagine what a bunch of guys with actual melodies could do with a major-label push.

Fast forward: the closest thing Pavement got to a major hit was Blur's "Song 2," Matador signed deals with a couple majors before taking the money and running, and Royal Trux became the goddamn Rolling Stones. Hell, even those perennial also-rans in Spoon got a shot at the big time. In short, the miners all moved out west, but the gold rush never came.

The reasons why are pretty obvious. Independent rock records are nurtured in an atmosphere of patently solipsistic invention: since most of these bands, ticcy and full of idiosyncrasy, are pretty used to the idea of a miniscule audience, they aren't prone to the grand, magnanimous rock star gestures that typically convince the masses to pay attention. Necessarily, the audiences for such oddball music will remain small. The culture fair's moved elsewhere, and rock-based indie pop was declared DOA. At this point, it looks pretty evident that the only game in town nowadays is hip-hop-oriented music, and all that geeky whining is a little embarrassing in the cold light of day.

Which is why records like Build Your Own Radio are so encouraging. Though all the preceding airy exposition is a little excessive when the album at hand is a modest compilation of bands who range in status from marginal to pretty much anonymous, the very humility of the collection is what drives its pleasantness. Nothing on the compilation is particularly innovative, of course. In fact, reverse-engineering back to the artists' record collections is hardly a science-- Elephant 6 seems the obvious influence. Most of the stuff hovers around the meditative, semi-folky pop espoused by Kindercore and, in the past, K Records.

All recorded quite cheaply and featuring borderline-inept musicianship, Radio could have been released six years ago. It even features a couple of bands-- like Six Cents and Natalie-- that would have been on it then. Aside from a perhaps ill-advised sojourn towards the punkish (French's "Narcomania"), everything here is winning in a quite low-key way. Many of the songs seem to be about building, listening to, and, in one strange case (the Emily Rock Group's "Sister Transistor"), talking with radios; there's even a completely unhelpful diagram to show the listener how to make one of their own.

There are loads of gems here: Boys' Star Library spike "A (Very) Short History of the Radio" has a killer chorus; Bello Lamb play Unrest-related strum-rock that bursts into fearsome fuzz-guitar midway through; the Emily Rock Group channel Gram Parsons; Mike Skinner tortures guitars and drums into something resembling an anthem. And while not exactly innovative, Build Your Own Radio is chockablock with fun listening moments; it's not unlike a really great radio station.

The modesty of the collection, in itself, offers an interesting future for independent rock music. Though it'll never take over the world as was once believed, it has remained (and maybe improved) as a haven and home for singers and songwriters to pursue their personal muses. The message here is clear: build your own radio and listen to what you want. Better yet, build your own radio station. Best of all, sing whatever you've got over its airwaves. These guys did.

-Sam Eccleston