After the collapse of Britpop's '90s heyday, there was a period of fragmentation. By the middle of the next decade, there would be a new generation of bratty, punk-inflected British rock bands of varying quality, from Kasabian to Libertines, Kaiser Chiefs to Arctic Monkeys. Before that, though, there was a moment where electronica was positioned as the absolute future, and the rock bands that did emerge immediately after the superstardom of Blur and Oasis and Pulp were of a distinctly different breed. Descended almost directly from Radiohead (as it seemed, at least), it was a group of artists that favored anthemic melodies atop atmospheric and rain-soaked instrumentation, inverting their pop sensibilities into a downtrodden meditativeness.