How Nigel Godrich Shaped the Sound of 2000s Indie Rock
British outlet Far Out Magazine has published a retrospective on producer Nigel Godrich, tracing his work in the decade following Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer. Godrich, a Londoner in his mid-twenties at the time, quickly became a benchmark for a new generation of engineers, and through a string of collaborations helped push spaciousness, density and texture into the mainstream vocabulary of British indie rock.
First collaborations after OK Computer
The success of OK Computer put Godrich in demand. First to land him was Beck, fresh off the commercial breakthrough of 1996's Odelay, who brought Godrich to Hollywood for the darker, more disoriented Mutations. Beck told Australian newspaper The Age at the time that Godrich could handle sentimental material without tipping into schmaltz, producing what he called "an emotional sound."
In summer 1998, Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus worked with Godrich for the first time on what became the band's final studio album, Terror Twilight. Malkmus said on the Talkhouse Music Podcast in 2017 that it was the only time Pavement ever used a producer, calling Godrich "the alpha of the new generation of producers" — while also describing the record as a "classic-rock, overproduced" hundred-thousand-dollar album that didn't turn out as hoped.
Around the same period, Neil Finn and REM also brought Godrich in, for mixing work on Try Whistling This and Up respectively. Commercially, none of this immediate post-OK Computer run performed especially well: Beck's album fell well short of Odelay's numbers, and REM's Up hit a commercial wall.
The Man Who and a blueprint for British indie
The turning point was Godrich's work on Scottish band Travis's second album, 1999's The Man Who. It became an unexpected hit, sanding down the sharper edges of the Radiohead approach and wrapping melody in dense, detailed layers — a record widely regarded as the template for British indie for the following five years. Travis frontman Fran Healy told NME in 2000 that Godrich's producing was as strong as his engineering, and that he had a knack for drawing good performances out of a band.
Into the 2000s, bands including Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol made records in a similar register without ever actually working with Godrich directly.
Long-term partnerships over chasing trends
Godrich himself didn't chase the wave of Radiohead- and Travis-adjacent bands springing up across Britain, instead sticking with the same artists across multiple albums. In the early 2000s he produced several records for The Divine Comedy, reunited with Beck for the breakup-themed Sea Change, and worked on Air's Talkie Walkie — records that helped define the chillout and dream-pop sounds of the era.