"Given the way audiences and tastes have shifted since, there will probably never again be a musical year as iconic — recognizable to everyone for a handful of undeniable reference points — as the Summer of Love [in 1967] or the year punk broke [in 1977]. But to many enthusiasts of indie rock, 1997 established a kind of high-water mark. And it really is stunning to see what a single 12-month period produced: Sleater-Kinney’s Dig Me Out, Built to Spill’s Perfect From Now On, Pavement’s Brighten the Corners, Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, and numerous others. To those who lived through the period, it seemed like it would last forever. But youth, like cultural history, rarely signals when it is about to disappear. For a series of reasons that would have been hard to discern at the time, 1997 stands as both Peak Indie and the beginning of the end for the style’s heyday."