11. Dubstar - Stars (Food)
While I've been writing this blog, I've occasionally encountered tracks I haven't properly listened to for years, which give me an enormous proustian rush. Memories of places, times, drunken nights, and songs leaking out of Argos purchased clock radios in the morning in cheap rented rooms... these almost overpower the songs themselves. I was slightly surprised to find that "Stars", which was eventually Dubstar's biggest hit, was one of these tracks. It feels like something which was absolutely everywhere for six months, then nowhere at all, forever locking it to a specific time in my life.
The group's first LP "Disgraceful" was a steady and constant seller throughout 1995, peaking at number thirty in the album charts but hanging around forever. It attracted a diverse audience, with pop listeners, Dance music fans and indie kids alike having copies tucked away in their CD collections, and "Stars" did an enormous amount to help its status. Filled with the same dark, late night winter atmosphere as Sneaker Pimps "6 Overground", the track is subtle and slippery, and moody as fuck. Sarah Blackwood's vocals manage to be both sweet and bleakly agitated ("for my life, my God I'm singing") and it's actually a rather brilliant piece of pop music. The Pet Shop Boys at their most despondent are a better reference point for Dubstar here than any of their peers on the indie circuit.
Sarah Blackwood has been a continued presence on the music scene since thanks to her involvement with the cultishly successful Client, but I can't help but wonder if "Disgraceful" deserves a thorough reissue treatment. It was a constant, misty background presence throughout 1995 and deserves better than to sit in the cut-price CD section of Fopp Records.
12. The Charlatans - Just Lookin' (Beggars Banquet)
The Charlatans resurrection into the mainstream of British rock and pop continued with "Just Lookin", which was a modest hit in 1995. Most of their material at this time consisted of straight ahead groovers which could just have easily been recorded by The Rolling Stones or The Faces in the early seventies. All of these lacked the moody, psychedelic nature of their earliest material, but it was impossible not to be charmed by the force of it all. Tim Burgess's grinning visage in the video for "Just Lookin'" says it all - they were a group in love with the sounds they were making and the swagger of their ideas, and only too happy to jettison their darker side for awhile.
Within a year, they would be back in the top ten again, the only early nineties baggy band to actually gain ground during the Britpop era rather than drift away into cultdom or irrelevance.
13. The Verve - On Your Own (Hut)
By the point of their third album "A Northern Soul", The Verve's transformation from psychedelic warriors into a band producing records of epic, classic moodiness was complete. While huge critical acclaim was on their side, sales surprisingly weren't - this is astonishing, given that all the other components which eventually made them enormous seemed to be in place. In particular, "History" from the LP sounded like it should have been an easy top ten hit. It was due to these failings on Hut and Virgin's part that Liam Gallagher apparently swore at a Virgin executive at a corporate do, sneering at him that he "couldn't even fucking break The Verve".
I have to wonder if it was entirely Hut or their parent company Virgin's fault, or other forces were to blame. "On Your Own" was a minor hit at the time, but its threadbare moodiness sounds distinctly un-1995. At this point, the Britpop knees-up was still ongoing, and hadn't quite given way to the subtle, epic melancholy which would dominate the later part of the nineties. The Verve often sounded wonderful and worthy, and "On Your Own" is a prime example of how touching they could be, but it didn't really cut through to the public's consciousness amidst the noise and pandemonium. Soon, all that would change and "Urban Hymns" would go on to be one of the biggest selling albums of all time in Britain.
14. Ruby - Paraffin (Red Snapper Mix) (Creation)
Lesley Rankine has been on this blog once before, albeit under a different guise and making an incredibly different noise. Silverfish were snappy, squatty Camden punks who briefly bullied the indie scene in 1993. Ruby, on the other hand, were a trip-hop project who slipped out almost unnoticed, despite some airplay and unlikely appearances on programmes such as "Later With Jools Holland" (where Silverfish were almost certainly never going to end up).
The original version of "Paraffin" is an atmospheric and vaguely threatening piece of work. The Red Snapper mix included here is jazzy, complex, and unbelievably good. Jittering and winding its way around the original melody, it showed there was considerably more to Lesley Rankine than thrashed guitars and the Camden underground - this is sophisticated and fascinating work which really should have been appreciated more at the time than it was.
I wish I knew where my copy of the Ruby LP "Salt Peter" had disappeared to. I owned both that and the remix LP this stemmed from, and they seem to have gone walkabout in the countless house moves I've undergone since.
15. Belly - Seal My Fate (4AD)
While Belly's status had slipped somewhat since their LP "Stars" had reached number one on the album charts in 1993, they remained a much-loved group among those who hadn't quite abandoned all American alternative music at the height of Britpop.
The wonderful "Now They'll Sleep" became their biggest UK hit in 1995, reaching number 28, and "Seal My Fate" managed to worm its way into the Top 40 as well. Epic, sweeping and featuring one of Tanya Donnelly's most convincing vocal performances, it comes dangerously close to the kind of commercial rock peddled by Alanis Morissette later in the decade, without quite losing its rougher or more unusual edges. It was the group's last single before breaking up, and it's difficult not to regard this as being an odd decision - if they had chosen to taken a break and reconvened a couple of years later, there's every possibility Belly could have become a much bigger act.
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