Volume 16 Side Two - Inspiral Carpets, Adorable, Throwing Muses, Stereolab, The Sugarcubes

1. Inspiral Carpets - Bitches Brew (Mute)

For reasons clear only to Beechwood, the career of Inspiral Carpets was completely ignored since "She Comes In The Fall" on Volume Ten until this point, meaning we've skipped past the critically mauled but actually damn bloody fine second album "The Beast Inside", the moody "Island Head" EP, and most of the third album "Revenge Of The Goldfish".

But for the lack of time (and the fact that we do have other things to talk about today, and - I'm sure - places to be and people to see) I'd love to write in more depth about these periods of the Inspirals career, as they saw the group move from producing a bouyant, punchy take on sixties garage pop to something much more nuanced and sophisticated. This moved one NME critic to disgustedly comment that "It's like they've gone from the first album to their twentieth overnight!" and to allege the band had developed an interest in Emerson, Lake and Palmer. This showed quite spectacular ignorance. "Beast Inside" probably owes a debt to The Stranglers and late sixties psychedelia far more than it does progressive rock, and would have been given a much fairer hearing at almost any other point in pop history; but with Baggy considered to be yesterday's news, it appeared that the ageing punks in IPC towers were looking for reasons to carp and whine.

"Revenge of the Goldfish" saw the group returning to poppier sensibilities, but this time their sound had become infused with world-weary experience. "Dragging Me Down" was their most convincing hit since "This Is How It Feels", but the slightly naive, pondersome "Why is the world such an unfair and brutal place, Mum?" musing of the latter had been replaced with stabbing melody lines and a sharp aggression. "Two Worlds Collide" reprised the dark moodiness of the "Beast Inside" tracks slightly, whereas "Generations" was a snarling, distorted and catchy animal of a three minute single with some suspiciously Big Country styled bagpipe guitar work (but it managed to stay on the right side of the line to remain acceptable).

Fourth and final single off the LP, "Bitches Brew", was a very minor hit which saw the group meandering down dark melodic alleyways again. Opening with a riff which sounds rather similar to elements of Carly Simon's "Coming Around Again", it then turns into a brooding sulk with driving beats and demonic organ work. Of all the singles from the LP, it's probably the least radio friendly 45, but it stands up well in its own right. The only aspect I'm unsure about is the ending, where the abandoned and solitary guitar line ends inconclusively on an awkward hanging note - it's probably meant to sound dramatic, and represent an unresolved situation or argument, but it also sounds as if the group weren't quite sure how to wrap up the loose strands at the end of the song.

Whatever, I personally think the Inspirals were at the absolute height of their creative prowess at the point of their second and third LPs, and if you believed the critics and didn't fully investigate their work at this point, track back and listen again. There are some wonderful thrills to be had.



2. Adorable - I'll Be Your Saint (Creation)

I think it was possibly around this point that we all realised that whatever Adorable were, the "future of British music" probably wasn't it. If "I'll Be Your Saint" sounds like anything at all, it's the Next Psychedelic Furs rather than The Next Big Thing. Nothing wrong with that, necessarily, but it's the first time the group sound like a pure post-punk throwback rather than anything that was going to define where music might be headed to.

Opening with a simple riff which dominates throughout the whole track, this single has plenty of attitude but mooches along to the point where you get the hang of all their ideas within the first minute. It's like a pouting but empty James Dean character leaning against the wall at a house party - the striking opening impressions you get are literally all there is on offer. The sheer arrogance on display here, encapsulated most obviously perhaps by the very practice of calling the song "I'll Be Your Saint" and telling the object of the singer's desires "I'll be your God", did act as a precursor to some of the coke-addled sneers of Britpop, but there the comparisons end.



3. Throwing Muses - Firepile (4AD)

The loss of Tanya Donnelly might have inspired The Muses to return with a much more stripped back, bluesy single. "Firepile" actually sounds like a take on early sixties rock and roll, with distorted (and quite amazing sounding) drums, simple, sandpaper rough guitar lines and plenty of abrasion. The echo on Hersh's voice also adds to a slight Joe Meek feel, and the band sound as if they've bashed the whole thing out in a session in a cupboard somewhere.

It sounds lovely for that, though - the group had slowly been working their way towards a certain kind of radio-friendly quirkiness prior to "Firepile", and this would have sounded like a vicious attack on a transistor's speakers by comparison in late 1992. Crashing and thundering its way into your living room, "Firepile" proved that Throwing Muses were weathering their line-up changes very well indeed.



4. Stereolab - Low Fi (Too Pure)

Talking of "rough around the edges", I'm afraid to say that this, by comparison, is something I never really "got". A buzzing minimalist drone of a single which is clearly very inspired by "Sister Ray", you either fall into a trance bewitched by its magic, or feel dumbfounded... and while I love a lot of Stereolab's work,  I've always felt completely cold-shouldered by this one. Deliberately cheap sounding and proudly standing apart from just about any other noise that was occurring at the time, this is interesting but too threadbare to hold my attention. The trilling vocals and chiming piano lines rub up pleasingly against the buzzing static of those rusty guitar lines, but that's all I can find to enjoy.

It's also worth noting just how baffling Stereolab were at first to McCarthy fans like myself, who anticipated that Tim Gane would return with a new band who had very similar ideas. Instead, Stereolab were a complete dive into unknown territories and waters for us - nothing about McCarthy's work had given any hints that one of the group's key members would become immersed in the world of sixties and seventies drone music and electronic sound experimentation. Yet here we were. Perhaps if we'd paid more attention, we might have realised that the pre-McCarthy roots of his musical career were based on this kind of sonic experimentation rather than relatively straightforward left-wing indiepop.



5. The Sugarcubes - Birthday (William & Jim Reid Christmas Eve Mix) (One Little Indian)

The Sugarcubes were no more, with Bjork headed off to the glossy covers of magazines like The Face and ID for her new career in Dance music, and the others off to run pretty much all official Icelandic artistic and cultural affairs for the national Government (this might be an exaggeration, on the other hand it may not).

Their final LP wasn't a new studio effort, but a compilation of remixes entitled "It's It" - possibly helping fans get used to the idea of Bjork's future as a Dance diva, possibly as a contractual obligation effort, or maybe a bit of both. This, the Jesus and Mary Chain remix of "Birthday", doesn't find a place on that LP but was included as part of a double EP consisting entirely of remixes of their British debut single.

It's a stark effort, to be honest, which strips away the intricate wooziness of the original and replaces it with feedback, skeletal guitar lines and sledgehammer drumbeats. For me, it just doesn't work, and feels like someone has sanded down the original recording to tatters. I suspect it was supposed to sound haunting and eerie and slightly dangerous, but it utterly fails on every level. Whereas the original version put the fear of God into me on first listen, this - remixed by a group who at one point were renowned (in the tabloid press at least) for being dangerous riot-inciting hooligans - somehow manages to make the track feel like a matter-of-fact demo. It's not without its fans, but it's something I suspect most people have forgotten (including everyone involved with it).

Anyone wondering what I made of the original version can go here to read me musing about what a strange and disturbing sound it was in 1987. And yes, I think this is the only single to appear on the "Indie Top 20" series twice in different guises (bafflingly, The Beloved's "Forever Dancing" appeared the most frequently overall, on "Volume Two", "CD88" and "The Best of Indie Top 20 Volume One". You would have thought it was some sort of in-demand stone-cold lost classic rather than a quaint obscurity...)

Volume 15 Side One - Curve, Boo Radleys, Pale Saints, Adorable, Suede

Format: Double LP (Plus bonus 7" single), CD, Cassette
Year of Release: 1992

For better or worse, Volume 14 of the "Indie Top 20" series seemed to exist, for the most part, to remind us that the trashy, noisy edges of the underground punk movement and C86 had gone absolutely nowhere, and were in fact ever-present and always waiting to bob up to the surface whenever little else was happening in British independent music. Also, I suspect that during the closing months of 1991 and the first few months of '92, there was a temptation to prove to the USA that while they had grunge, we had a healthy punk and rock underground subculture of our own too.

Fair enough. "Volume 15", though, is an interesting one. While the harder edges continue to be present, we also witness - perhaps surprisingly early - the green shoots of English alternative pop (dare I say it, Britpop) beginning to poke through the fallow land. There are two artists on this compilation who would eventually influence and dominate British alternative rock, for better or worse, to unexpected degrees. Indeed, a slender but notable percentage of the new indie bands I get recommended by other music blogs still appear to owe a debt to one or other of them. Other groups appear here who tried to reintroduce glamour and chiming, euphoric melodies but failed, arriving too early for their own good (or perhaps, if you're being unkind, just not being competent enough for the task in hand) while you can hear slight transitions in the sounds other bands were making.

In all, "Volume 15" is a more rounded listen, focussing on the every nook and cranny of the indie scene. As such, it's less of an exhausting, intense journey, and all the better for it.

1. Curve - Fait Accompli (Extended, Extended, Extended Mix) (Anxious)

"...the single that preceded Curve's debut album 'Doppelganger' is so seductively heavy, one critic was moved to remark that it sounds like 'Deborah Harry colliding with Motorhead in a demolition derby'. As another critic said ten months ago, 'Curve are theoretical perfection come true'".

Is it just me, or is that "Deborah Harry colliding with Motorhead" line not particularly clever, and also hopelessly inaccurate? I can understand someone trying to claim that some elements of Blondie's sound had worked their way into Curve's cocktail, it's the rest of the analysis I struggle enormously with.

Anyway... "Fait Accompli" was Curve's "Top of the Pops" moment, and arguably the only real moment in their catalogue that sounded like it could have survived on daytime radio. The finely sculpted guitar noises and rumbling basslines continue, but there's a powerful Sisters of Mercy styled chanting chorus here, a rather traditional guitar riff acting as a memorable hook, and by their normal standards it's almost close to three-chord garage punk ("by their usual standards" is the key sentence there). Of all the early Curve singles, though, that makes it one of the easiest to tire of once the initial rush of excitement dies down. It's not as subtle or as slowly seductive as their other work.

The inclusion of the "Extended, Extended, Extended mix" here is also baffling, as like most extended mixes, it pads the idea out unnecessarily. The eighties and early nineties suffered from a record company obsession with padding out A-sides to breaking point on twelve inch singles, which on some very rare occasions - Robert Lloyd's "Something Nice", for example - was marvellous and added to the appeal, whereas on most others felt like an exercise in musical waffling. There's something genuinely thrilling about a three or four minute single packed to burst with ideas, so that each different element has only a few seconds to introduce itself and surprise you. Dean Garcia seemed to be a bit of a master of this most of the time. Ideas that are given eight or nine minutes to express themselves, however, tend to stretch and slob around lazily all over the place and outstay their welcome, and "Fait" is far too hooky and punchy to survive the treatment. The elongated instrumental sections are pure repetition and add little to the track.

As for the "proper" seven inch mix of "Fait Accompli", it did pull off the trick of making Curve sound like a group who could adapt their sound just enough so that it would be regularly heard on Mark Goodier's Sunday Top 40 rundown. Really though, it was a red herring, and a trick that would never be pulled off again.



2. The Boo Radleys - Lazy Day (Creation)

"1990 was the year in which Boo Radleys came stormin' out of their hometown in Liverpool with their debut mini LP 'Ichabod and I'. Within the blink of an eye the band were signed by Rough Trade and went on to release three EPs before leaving Rough Trade for Creation. Their first release for Creation was the 'Adrenalin' EP which the 90 second pop burst 'Lazy Day' is taken from. The stunning 'Everything's Alright Forever' album quickly followed which established The Boo Radleys as the inventive leaders of the post Valentine era".

Taking the polar opposite tack to Curve, then, The Boo Radleys take the Wire approach to songwriting and decide to give their ideas here only as much time as they need; ninety seconds, to be precise.

Beyond its brevity, "Lazy Day" doesn't on the surface display a great deal of progression. The vocals remain buried under a sonic duvet, the guitars buzz and thunder around like wasps trapped tightly under panes of glass, and it sounds like the usual MBV inspired lower league indie sound. It's the central guitar hook which essentially forms the chorus that hints towards a new movement in their sound, though - chiming, bright, optimistic and insistent, its like a small burst of sunshine burning off the fog of the rest of the song. It's not much to go on, but it proved that the band had other tricks up their sleeves and were diversifying both their listening habits and their approach. This would act very much in their favour over the coming years.



3. Pale Saints - Throwing Back The Apple (4AD)

"Pale Saints stand resolutely alone, indefinite, indefatigable, making strange and unforgettable noise in a sphere of their own creation. They're a mix of apparent contradictions, the bleak and the ravishing, but in their hands, it sounds as natural as breathing. Godsends with electric guitars".

"Throwing Back The Apple", too, is actually one of the Pale Saint's brightest and most immediate moments, throwing the angst and psychedelic disorientation overboard for a piece of laidback and slightly stoned but nonetheless peppy pop. Blissed out vocals meet elaborate webs of bright guitar noise, and the song has a brilliant ending where the guitar riffs rise higher and higher, making it sound as if the track is finally lifting off into orbit.

This turned out to be something of a last hurrah for the band, however, certainly in terms of media visibility. Following this single, they took a break of over two years, and by the time they returned the musical landscape, and their line-up, had altered so utterly that they struggled to be perceived as relevant by the music press. While "Apple" hints at far better things to come, in reality they were waving us a fond farewell - or certainly the original singer Ian Masters was, who departed during their quiet period.



4. Adorable - Sunshine Smile (Creation)

"After a handful of impressive gigs and an out of this world demo, Coventry's Adorable were signed up by the ever expanding Creation label. 'Sunshine Smile' became their debut single in May '92 and is a perfect illustration of the group's theory about the perfect song being somwehere between the sound (crystalline guitar lines collapsing into chaos) and the melody (simple but subtle)".

Ah, Adorable. Only the band Suede could have been. Famously, of course, Alan McGee saw Adorable supporting Brett Anderson's then unsigned band at a live gig, and against all expectations gave them a contract instead of the headlining act. He was briefly, therefore, the early nineties equivalent of the Decca A&R man who turned down The Beatles.

"Sunshine Smile" did present McGee's case incredibly convincingly, though, to the extent that it's possibly one the era's most under-appreciated singles. Opening with a clean, chiming guitar riff akin to The Stone Roses at their most powerful, then introducing a high-ended, hooky bassline before Pete Fijalkowski's groaning, post-punk vocals creep through, it takes the listener on a raging, twisting detour-riddled journey of joyous, sweeping psychedelia, full throttle distorted post-punk rock, and mellow romanticism. Rammed to the brim with ideas without ever once seeming difficult or inaccessible, it made the group seem like something British music had been missing since The Stone Roses went away for a long lie-down - arrogant, threatening, but soft and smooth around the edges too, as well as showing incredible songwriting prowess.

The group even looked cute, sneery, big-eyed and big-haired, and I felt fairly sure - correction, I had no reason to doubt - that they were going to be absolutely massive. Imagine being eighteen years old, having sat through a long period of American bands in jeans and plaid shirts telling you how depressed and screwed up they are, and suddenly this emerges. A record which tuned into the same ecstacy-addled euphoria as the Roses, but channeled it through furiously thrashed guitars, and spiky post-punk obsessions? It sounded like the best bits of my recent past and possibly a more forgiving, happier future. Even listening to it again now, I'm forced to find myself thinking "How is this NOT the debut single of an incredibly important, era-defining new band?"

But it wasn't. Sure enough, "Sunshine Smile" sold relatively well by indie standards, and generated enormous excitement in most media quarters, but the group really did never manage to top it, and once the initial hubris died down it became apparent that the group would even struggle to maintain cult popularity. Members of the group observed that by the time of the release of their debut LP "Against Perfection", which climbed to a disappointing number 70 in the charts, there weren't even any posters of the band on the walls of their record company. Adorable's career trajectory represents one of the most rapid rise-and-fall shots of all-time.

And that's deeply unfortunate, because "Sunshine Smile" deserves a place in most people's record collections and memories as an incredibly powerful pop nugget from the period. Irrespective of what they did next, or how effective their other material was, it felt as welcome as the the first bursts of sunlight on your arms on a Spring day.



5. Suede - My Insatiable One (Nude)

"The NME recently described Suede as 'a band worth becoming obsessed with'. They were totally correct in their assessment of a band who have exploded upon the UK music scene in a manner fitting to the new messiahs. 'Suede are truly a one-off; they defy current convention and through self-belief and songwriting genius they are redrawing the boundaries".

Suede, of course, were also lionised and deified by the IPC media within seconds of being signed to a label, but my immediate response was one of suspicion. Initially at least, while I enjoyed "The Drowners", I didn't - and still don't - regard it to be a truly exceptional single, and felt that something about the group was tremendously contrived. If that sounds judgemental and ridiculous now, I was probably just behaving like any well-trained teenager of my era. The kind of flamboyant theatricality Suede revelled in had been mysteriously absent from British guitar pop for years, and by this point seemed unnatural. I had grown up during a time where bands drew on earthy punk traditions to communicate their ideas, and didn't generally elevate themselves too highly above their audiences (baggy, in particular, had been filled to the brim with the idea that everyone was on the same trip at the same level together, though how true this actually was in reality is a big question). Suede, on the other hand, swept in like pre-punk Rainbow Theatre glam superstars, and I felt uneasy.

When "The Drowners" appeared on "The Chart Show", my Dad - not a Melody Maker reader, nor a keen listener of night-time Radio One - put his paper down, and loudly said "Who are these?! They're brilliant! They're really unique!"
Nervously, and actually fearing a repeat of the arguments I'd already had with friends, I replied "Well... they do sound a bit like Cockney Rebel, don't you think?"
"Only a bit!" he spluttered irritatedly and tutted. "I mean, they're clearly not Cockney Rebel, are they?"

I was even being lectured dismissively by my Dad about Suede. Fucking hell.

Suddenly I started to wonder if maybe I was wrong. This clearly wasn't just another piece of IPC hype, and the group clearly had the ideas, the influences and enough of a clue about how to assemble them together to both sound unique and appeal to a far broader audience. People at my college began travelling up to London and missing night trains home to see Suede in tiny venues. One of my friends returned, triumphant, with a tattered shred of one of Brett Anderson's shirts, which he had torn off after it had been thrown into the audience.

"Don't you wish you'd bothered to come with me?" he said smugly.

So I held back with Suede for awhile before throwing my pocket money behind them, and I do regret that now. I missed out on the frenzied nature of the earliest period of their rise to fame, which probably would have been astounding to witness.

"My Insatiable One" here is a B-side, but manages to sound totally unlike another cheap cast-off thrown in Beechwood's direction. In fact, it's more powerful than a number of the tracks that earned a place on the band's debut LP, with some brilliantly inventive, wonky, tragi-surreal lyrics ("On the escalataaa-h/ You shit paracetamol/ as the ridiculous world goes by" is one of my particular favourites) a classic, anthemic chorus, and some beautiful guitar lines wrapped in a rather plain package - the production here is rushed and hasty, but the song holds its own well enough to shine through spectacularly. The buzzing, abrupt ending was probably meant to sound edgy, but actually feels rather clumsy, and that's honestly the only thing I can find to criticise.

Suede and Adorable were both, in their own ways, signposts for possible directions British music could have taken after the American onslaught subsided, with Adorable having one foot in the very recent past while Suede had long arms reaching far beyond young memories. While Suede won the argument in the short-term, and rightly so, they didn't really persuade a posse of Butler and Anderson clones to rush through in their wake. More than that, they reignited arguments and ideas about what areas of inspiration British alternative rock could draw from, and how they could be twisted, styled and shaped into something that sounded modern and beyond the sum of its parts. Suede had broad and impeccable record collections, taking in everything from Bowie and The Smiths to Scott Walker and The Fall, not being afraid to co-opt ideas that had partly fallen out of favour and perhaps wouldn't commonly be regarded as working well together. That they mastered this approach so early on is actually nothing short of incredible.