It's been discussed surprisingly infrequently since, but The Boo Radleys' "Giant Steps" was a monstrously critically acclaimed album in 1993, sometimes seeming to be spoken about in the same breath as the work of Brian Wilson or Miles Davis. From apparently nowhere, the Do Badlys had risen in stature to become Gods of slightly experimental indie rock.
As I've mentioned before, there were clear signs in their earlier releases that changes were brewing in the band, and a new-found maturity was already apparent by the point of the "Boo Up" EP. While I've always been a fence-sitter where "Giant Steps" is concerned - I seem to remember being one of the only people in one of my social groups at the time who was slightly agnostic about it, which was a bit awkward - there's no question that it was one of 1993's most interesting (if uneven and slightly bloated) releases. It's the sound of young men knee-deep in their record collections, taking psychedelic drugs and having a creative spree, and occasionally hitting the bullseye.
"Wish I Was Skinny" isn't especially representative of the rest of the album, being a spindly and simple sounding release about male insecurity, with its ponderous plucked guitar lines and mournful trumpet adding to the subject's mood well. Like Brian Wilson, whose "Don't Worry Baby" was one of the earliest songs about a man needing reassurance from a woman, the Radleys were taking steps here which struck chords with lots of ordinary, podgy, spotty young men who were never going to be considered macho or glamorous. I used to actually have a couple of friends who considered this to be their anthem, one even playing it at his birthday party (Yeah, we really knew how to have fun in those days).
It's simple, pretty and very effective, and the video was actually filmed in the Radleys old comprehensive school and showed them being kicked around and bullied. They seemed to be representing themselves very honestly as complete outsiders, ugly ducklings who loved music and wanted to share their ideas with us. In a world filled with preening peacocks, their straightforwardness was welcome to everyone who probably enjoyed hanging around the local record shops on a Saturday more than they did a night at the club later that evening. Later on, their schtick could on occasion be slightly cloying - we won't get to discuss "From The Bench At Belvedere", but that's just as well, as it's an exercise in self-indulgent sentimentality - but for now, it was finely measured.
2. Delicious Monster - Big Love (Flute)
If "Snuggle" on the last LP was brief and rip-roaring, "Big Love" really shows off the songwriting chops the group had by this point. "Big Love" is a luxurious sprawl with chiming guitars, sensuous vocals and a considered arrangement. Rachel Mayfield appears to be suggesting that she can't get no satisfaction, and this is one part pean to love and lust, another part subtle comment on the role of women as objects of desire in society - at least, that is, if I'm reading it correctly.
It's a very yearning track, though, and even if it was possibly a bit too subtle to be a breakout mainstream hit, it was certainly critically acclaimed and performed well on the Indie Chart. It also proved that Delicious Monster were a multi-faceted band who could cope with subtlety and weave intricate melodies just as much as they could deliver raucous indie sounds.
More on them soon, hopefully.
3. Chapterhouse - We Are The Beautiful (Dedicated)
The old shoegazing scene was largely dead by this point. The groups had either proven their creative superiority and been elevated above and beyond the tag (My Bloody Valentine, The Boo Radleys) or they were now being mocked or, worse still, ignored. Chapterhouse returned in 1993 with a strange new determination, though. Their comeback single "She's A Vision" exuded an adult poppiness which had been lacking from their previous efforts, sounding strangely close to a "Seeds of Love" era Tears For Fears. At the time, the record label claimed that it had actually been a proper Top Five hit in Portugal, but I've found nothing online to verify that claim (press releases really should be verifiable sources, but over the years I've found they're often the stuff of wild exaggeration and fantasy).
"We Are The Beautiful" bares a bit more of a resemblance to the Chapterhouse of old, but is still a polished, shining, sleek Ferrari gliding along the psychedelic pop highway. None of that slick production can really hide the fact that the song itself is a bit uninspiring, though, offering nothing of any real substance. Even the chorus, which is presumably supposed to be a rallying cry, sounds limp. This would be their final single, and there would be silence from the band until they briefly reformed again in the late noughties.
4. Curve - Missing Link (Anxious)
That said, lots of groups seemed to be dropping like flies at this point. Our dear friends Curve, once the future of British Alternative Rock, were beginning to seem emotionally fragile. Their tour to support their second studio album "Cuckoo" was apparently beset with personal problems, and by the time it was over, so were the band. A split was announced, and the only single to be released from the platter was "Missing Link" (unless we count the extremely rare and barely promoted "Superblaster").
For a band who had a very clear, solid identifiable sound of their own in the build-up to their first album, Curve were now starting to blend in a little. "Cuckoo" is actually a much better LP than critics gave it credit for at the time, but nonetheless the buzzing synthesiser sounds of "Missing Link" resemble numerous Euro-industrial bands who were doing the rounds at this point, and the dramatic, urgent delivery of the chorus resembles Annie Lennox more than ever. Curve were still producing compelling material, but they were losing their own unique aura.
The split wouldn't be permanent and they would be back in 1998 with the album "Come Clean" - but certainly from the point of view of our timeline, it's all over for them. Of all the groups we've discussed, they're one of the main ones I feel possibly could have achieved something enormous if only a few slightly different turns had been taken. The fact that Garbage, who we'll come on to eventually, clearly owed a small debt to their sound showed that what they were producing wasn't in itself uncommercial.
5. Sugar - Tilted (Creation)
Frantic and psychotic sounding, "Tilted" gets the bit between its teeth and never lets go, thrashing and pounding away until the neurotic chorus arrives, which utilises a similar rising, stretching chord pattern to Magazine's "Shot By Both Sides". It's an exhausting listen, this, but one which featured in a wide variety of year-end "best of" polls (even if that seems unlikely now).
Sugar had recently returned with their mini-LP "Beaster", which was highly acclaimed and shot the band straight into the National Top Ten. It caused Bob Mould to apparently ring his friends in America and brag about how high he was in the British charts. It was an unfortunately short-lived period of mainstream success, and within a year Sugar would return to being a largely cultish concern, but it felt justified at the time. Husker Du had spent years dealing with disinterested record labels and low sales, becoming key influences on grunge without much in the way of financial reward. Sugar righted that wrong for a brief period, and gave Bob Mould commercial recognition he had never previously enjoyed. It certainly didn't hurt that he was also writing some of his finest material too.
Format: Double LP, Cassette, CD Year of Release: 1993
Volume 16 felt like any other "Indie Top 20" release at the time, albeit one which had an unusually good track listing compared to more recent efforts. In retrospect, though, there are signs of the shape of things to come here. Two more huge Britpop bands are buried under the rubble of more commercially popular tracks here. They're given slightly hidden and cautious places in the tracklisting, but in time they would come to shape large swathes of the scene.
Beyond that, this is a pleasingly varied album which reflected the shifting sands of the scene very well. There are still some mighty howls of underground rock here, but slowly shuffling into their place were considered pieces of pop songwriting and lyrical character portraits, as well as the invention and eccentricity the indie scene was generally celebrated for.
Beechwood also seemed to have given up on the idea that baggy bands were all dead in the water, and Inspiral Carpets emerge again for the first time since Volume Ten. The atom bomb that was grunge didn't destroy all life on Planet Madchester as we knew it, and the strongest and least "troubled" groups began to scuttle out of the wreckage with tunes that actually fitted the emerging new aesthetic very well.
Another minor development in the series is the fact that they ditched the sleeve notes for this volume, meaning I'll waste less time typing them up for you all. And thank God for that, to be honest.
1. Sugar - Changes (Creation)
One of the most cheering results of late 1992 was the reemergence and critical and commercial resurgence of Bob Mould of Husker Du. There had been a widespread belief that Husker had been dealt some particularly unfortunate cards in their career, including signing to a major label (Warners) who didn't seem to know what to do with them. As a result, they were heaped with critical garlands but very little in terms of sales either here or their native US.
A quick listen to any Husker Du tracks now shows how much they managed not just to lay the foundations for some of the poppier elements of grunge, but also influence some of the bands in the Scottish underground. Hard, snappy and punkish, but with a clear sense of classic pop and rock song structures, it's somewhat surprising that bands like The Soup Dragons managed to command magazine covers in Britain in the mid-eighties while they remained confined to the black and white sections of the press (albeit talked about with colourful, florid praise). One suspects that their distance from the press and promotions department of the UK branch of their record company did them little favours here.
When Husker Du split, with members of the band going different ways due to their changing lifestyles, Bob Mould carried on as a solo artist for a period with releases which fell somewhat under the radar, then returned with a fully-fledged band in Sugar, who were signed to Creation. "Changes" was their debut single, and it startled the underwear off many listeners in 1992. You can also say what you want about Alan McGee, but there's little doubt in my mind that Creation Records managed to get Mould more press and radio exposure in the UK than Warner Brothers would ever have been bothered to.
It's not that "Changes" is a significant development in style, but it is a shockingly good track. This is lovelorn alternative rock at its most growling and ensnared, with Mould underlining his predicament clearly: "Change for the better/ change for the worse/ changes with summer and fall/ Now you're a stranger/ spare me some change/ so I can find someone to call my own" he snaps, before a high pitched, wire-on-the-nerve guitar solo chips in.
"Changes" is the perfect bridge between the nowheresville angst of early nineties grunge and the lonely bedsit romance of classic indie. For something that appears so simple on first listen, it's also - appropriately enough - shot through with changes of its own, from the track's simple and addictive refrain for the first two-and-a-half minutes, through to the sudden change of gear for the rest of the song into a more scuzzed up piece of shit-kicking rock and roll.
In the UK at least, "Changes" changed Mould's life, to the extent that he would soon be bragging to his US friends on the phone "I'm in the charts in Britain - the PROPER charts!" It would be a comparatively short-lived period of success, but it's fantastic that at least one particularly grand dog got to have his day.
2. Curve - Horror Head (Remix) (Anxious)
The second and final single off Curve's "Doppelganger" possibly wasn't the best choice in the world, to be honest. The band seemed to be leaning on tracks with repetitive refrains to launch themselves towards that "all-important" Sunday Top 40 rundown, when in fact now might have been a good moment to try a track like "Already Yours" or "Lillies Dying" - something with more atmosphere and meat on its bones.
Whatever, it mattered not, really. The fans had already bought the LP anyway, the floating voters had made their decisions, and the single climbed to number 31 but was largely forgotten about the following week. "Horror Head" is not Curve's strongest single, being repetitive and mantra-like and doggedly stuck on the central riff and its own chugging groove for four minutes. The main aspects acting in its favour are Halliday's particularly confident and occasionally bewitching vocal performance, which is at some moments breathy and seductive, at other times snarling and deranged. That's the aspect that lifts the single and retains my interest - the sheer commanding drama of her performance. She had established herself as an extraordinarily good frontwoman.
3. Suede - He's Dead (Nude)
Another Suede B-side, this time from their breakthrough single "Metal Mickey". Unlike "My Insatiable One", though, I've never been wholly convinced by "He's Dead". Suede are a band who have written so many exceptional B-sides that the compilation LP covering their work in this area, "Sci-Fi Lullabies", is a bloody fine album in its own right. "He's Dead", though, is not a high point, being a spindly, skinny, scratchy little thing which feels rather overlong - that distorted, chaotic breakdown at the end could do with having at least a minute shaved off it - and underproduced.
Not that it mattered a jot. Suede's career was going berserk at this stage, with fans of theirs swarming gig venues up and down the UK for a chance to see the band, and their reputation as the "Saviours of British music" was beginning to gain traction. And even if we are being petty and weighing up B-sides, "Metal Mickey" also featured the gorgeous "Where The Pigs Don't Fly", acting as further proof that Anderson and Butler were one of the key songwriting forces to be reckoned with in 1992. This was material most bands would never toss away on flipsides, but the duo had songs to spare.
4. Pavement - Trigger Cut (Big Cat)
Just as Britpop would allow unlikely figures like Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Tiger to get media exposure in the mid-nineties, the high water mark of grunge seemed to wash up a number of very tangentially related American underground acts - the kind your greasy young long-haired cousin Rob probably wouldn't have liked because "you can't mosh to them", but your more enlightened Peel listener would.
Pavement are the quintessential cult US band of this period, dwarfing the likes of the Archers of Loaf and even (at the time) Mercury Rev. From the press and late-night radio exposure they received, you would assume they were a mighty force to be reckoned with, but in reality their singles sold to selective audiences who were just very, very noisy about how good they thought they were. And that's understandable. "Trigger Cut" is brilliantly simple and simply brilliant - a sharp, insistent chorus is surrounded by post-punk riffing and an uncertain, lopsided style.
Whereas the track prior to this, "He's Dead", is slightly hampered by its sketchiness and simplicity, "Trigger Cut" needs nothing more than the slight sum of its parts. Comparisons to The Fall have been rather overstated where Pavement are concerned, but they do share that group's love of unusual and often quite ambitious ideas approached with the minimum of fuss. Like being slapped around the cheeks with a refrigerated table tennis bat, "Trigger Cut" is direct and leaves a firm impression, but it's not quite what you expected to happen. It's something I still regularly return to and listen to, and while I can't claim to be surprised by it anymore, I still find myself sucked into its angular little world with incredible ease.
5. Drop Nineteens - Winona (Hut)
Shoegazing groups weren't really much of a "thing" initially in America, so the music press leapt on the arrival of Boston's Drop Nineteens as vindication that British music did still have an audience outside of our borders after all - something we really needed to convince ourselves of during those particularly dark times. And lo and behold, shoegazing did eventually become a North American sound and movement too, but it took the Internet age to really spread the word beyond the glacially slow process of cassette swaps among Anglophilic US music fans.
What "Winona" resembles most, though, is probably the early work of Dandy Warhols, who became a mainstream group at the height of Britpop. For all the possibilities it might have opened up, "Winona" and the follow-up single "My Aquarium" were probably Drop Nineteen's only significant single releases in the UK, however, and internal bickering lead to an unstable line-up and some rather limp-sounding later work. In spite of that, for this track at least we have to doff our collective caps to the group.
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.
"To date Curve have released three EPs on Dave Stewart's Anxious label. The first two, 'Blindfold' and 'Frozen' proved that Curve were without a doubt a very exciting proposition for the future. 'Die Like A Dog' is taken from their third EP 'Cherry' which was released in December '91 and reached the Gallup Top 40. Their debut album 'Doppelganger' will further establish Curve as one of the most important bands to have emerged out of the British independent scene in the last few years."
If I was going to pick a track from the "Cherry" EP to put on a compilation album, I'd have opted for the lead track "Clipped" and its haunting, sinister mantras. That said, track two "Die Like A Dog" is something of a favourite among many Curve fans, so it's not as unusual a choice as some of the flipsides and buried EP tracks "Indie Top 20" have opted for over the years.
Beginning with airy industrial synth noises and a growling bass line, Toni Halliday's cooing vocals soon enter the fray, then the wall of guitars, then the rattling rhythms, and frankly, it's all business as usual. By this point Curve had issued three EPs with lead tracks which promised an astonishing, possibly even classic debut LP. By the time "Doppelganger" emerged, however, none of those tracks were present, and the record sagged slightly under the weight of Dean Garcia's samey soundscapes. "Doppelganger" contains some marvellous tracks if you cherry-pick (no pun intended) the best moments for stand-alone listening, but as an LP it was sequenced somewhat questionably, and felt weighty, chrome plated and unforgiving, arguably costing the band their mainstream breakthrough moment. Creating an alternative tracklisting and running order for the LP out of other material they had recorded during the same period must surely be something of a Curve fan's hobby horse.
The NME also joked that one of the reasons "Doppelganger" sold less well than anticipated was that Toni Halliday wasn't anywhere on the cover, and the sleeve instead consisted of lots of dismembered child's dolls. It was an off-the-cuff comment which wasn't meant to be taken as a serious criticism, but there's nonetheless possibly some truth to it. Actually, just about anything would probably have been preferable to the teen-goth student art project of the final sleeve.
2. The God Machine - Home (Eve)
"The God Machine arrived in Camden from California and released their debut EP 'Purity' on Eve Recordings in November 1991. 'Home' is one of three tracks featured on the EP which has been hailed in some quarters as the finest debut of '91. Now signed to Fiction, The God Machine are an exciting prospect".
Few American bands were misguided enough to base themselves in Britain during the early nineties. Why bother when you could remain in the country where everything was happening musically? Certainly where rock music was concerned, the world's eyes were on the USA, not Britain, and anyone moving to smelly shared accommodation in Camden risked costing themselves riper global opportunities.
Hats off to San Diego's God Machine for making the trip and gracing us with their presence, then, and releasing this heaving bit of sledgehammer rock in 1991. On its re-release in 1993 it managed to tickle the Top 75, and it's possibly surprising it didn't do better still. While it's not the kind of single that floated my particular boat at the time, it's a fine piece of doomy, dark and forceful alternative rock entirely in keeping with the 1992/3 zeitgeist.
When I first bought this LP, "Home" was very much a track I preferred to skip, but my 2017 relisten has revealed a wealth of surprises. It's an absolutely unforgiving noise, like metal grinding and crashing against itself, with a nagging dominating riff which never really gets boring. There's some furious, bloody-minded drumming throughout which adds to the air of viciousness, and effects-laden vocals which make the singer sound at war with the machinery around him.
The God Machine went on to have some cult success in the UK, and are still occasionally referred to as one of the great lost rock bands of the nineties. Perhaps it would all have been different if they'd just caught a flight to Seattle instead...
3. Silverfish - Jimmy (Creation)
"Silverfish were formed in North London at the end of '88. Before signing to Creation they had released two singles, both of which received 'The Single of the Week Treatment'. In January '90 the first real Silverfish album 'Fat Axl' came out - 'The title comes from a particularly scathing NME review'. Their first 45 for Creation was the 'F***in' Drivin' Or What' EP which reached the Gallup Top 100. 'Jimmy' is taken from their January '92 'Silverfish with Scrambled Egg' EP which is indeed Silverfish at their finest".
It's easy to forget what a big deal Silverfish were for a brief period. An indie-punk outfit featuring the snarling, snapping Lesley Rankine on vocals, they were actually strangely prescient of the Riot Grrrl movement without being mentioned much when that scene briefly went overground. Rankine's chant of "Hips, Lips, Tits, Power" on the track "Big Fat Baby Pig Squeal" ended up on T-shirts and was inked across the pages of feminist fanzines, while slowly losing its original attribution as the band became an increasingly distant memory. Their single "Damn Fine Woman" also highlighted Rankine's feminist views.
Scrappy and thrashy, most of Silverfish's singles pinned you up against the wall with their force of volume and wouldn't let go until you'd listened to their ideas. They were one of the most brattish and threatening of the Camden bands, and "Jimmy" is no exception to the rule. Each moment of relative silence is a mere split second long before they begin pushing and shoving you on the shoulders again.
Their success peaked in 1992 with the "Organ Fan" LP which reached the National Top 75, but by 1993 the group had split, with Lesley Rankine later claiming that she grew to realise that spending all her life surrounded by other human beings in a group simply wouldn't work for her. The trip-hop duo Ruby were the end result of this eureka moment, and revealed a very different creative side to her work. More on them much, much, much later.
4. Leatherface - I Want The Moon (Roughneck)
"'I Want The Moon' is the second single to have been released from Leatherface's titanic 'Mush' album. It earned the band an NME single of the week in November '91. Look out for their next release which will be a ten inch EP, 'Compact & Bijou' which should be available from May onwards".
You know what Leatherface wanted, don't you? The moon on a stick! Oh, just the moon, then. OK.
Often likened (not unfairly) to a punked up version of Motorhead, Sunderland's Leatherface were apparently a thrilling and energising experience live. "I Want The Moon" gives a strong impression of that, being three minutes of high-throttle guitars, throat-shredding vocals and chugging riffola. It had been done before, and would be done again many times again until the present day, but there's no way you can fault the execution here. Leatherface sound menacing and dangerously high on adrenaline.
The group would split at the tail end of 1993, and the lead singer Frankie Stubbs now mainly focuses his time as a producer for various indie bands.
5. Midway Still - Wish (Roughneck)
"Midway Still formed at the tail end of '90 out of the ashes of a couple of anonymous grunge bands. Signed to the Roughneck Recording Co, their debut EP 'I Won't Try' received huge critical acclaim. 'Wish' is the title track from their follow up EP which also features an outstanding cover of My Bloody Valentine's 'You Made Me Realise'. Their Don Fleming produced album is set for an April release".
Midway Still sound completely melancholy here, surrounding "Wish" with a mournful blue note. It's the noise of lovelorn young hairy men stuck in smelly bedrooms surrounded by the remains of half-smoked spliffs, which had been hastily rolled on the sleeves of American grunge imports.
There's a bright poppiness to "Wish" in places too, especially in the run-up towards the instrumental break - but once again, it's staggering how damn unEnglish the group sound. Those drawled vocals, brash guitar licks and bluesy lyrics are such a solid impersonation of early nineties American alternative rock that it's hard to believe they were one of ours. If that kind of noise is your particular idea of heaven, and you haven't explored the group's catalogue before, you may find much to love.
While Curve emerged on the music scene seemingly from nowhere in 1991, both Toni Halliday and Dean Garcia had a long history. Both had previously played in the group State of Play together, who ran up a £100,000 debt producing two flop singles and a flop album for Virgin. Toni Halliday went off to attempt a solo career, which had a slightly higher media profile (though Record Mirror somewhat sniffily referred to her as "another pretty blonde in a leather jacket") but didn't really catch the public's imagination either. While her solo records weren't awful, they were also distinctly unmemorable, slick late eighties pop fare.
Given all the above, when Garcia and Halliday reunited for Curve in December 1989, nobody expected fireworks. Both had enormous talent, but neither had really successfully utilised it outside of a "session musician/ voice for hire" context, and certainly neither had managed to produce anything of particular note while working together. At the time, then, Curve were a huge shock. Toni Halliday re-emerged with jet black hair, pale shining foundation and thick mascara, fronting a rumbling juggernaut of Garcia's soundscapes. There were those who suspected the entire situation was contrived - a last-ditch attempt by two flop musicians in their late twenties to obtain credibility and a mainstream career by stealth. The fact they were signed to Dave Stewart's Anxious label did little to assuage these critics.
The first single "Ten Little Girls" doesn't sound as if it could possibly have been created in a cynical way, though. Garcia clearly took to the foundations of the track with an acute precision. It feels like a finely sculpted piece of industrial noise, smoothed and sanded into softer and more peculiar shapes. While other groups of the era tried to jar the listener with an onslaught of noise, "Ten Little Girls" contains a richness of detail. From the howls of feedback to the rattling rhythm track and rumbling basslines, to Halliday's varied and evolving lyrics and vocal contributions, it manages to feel aggressive and urgent without losing its impact forty or fifty listens down the line. Halliday's voice is also being used to brilliant effect here. Outside of a pop context, it's softness can be made to sound dangerous and threatening. Even the added rap, which was normally a horrible early nineties mistake on indie records, works well here, contributing an added aggression.
Curve became music press icons very quickly, appearing on numerous front covers, aided partly by the fact that Toni Halliday was (let's be honest) not unattractive. My teenage self was fascinated by her looks and neurotic lyricisms, as indeed was just about every heterosexual and bisexual boy at college.
Given all the above, the world should have been their oyster, but as we'll go on to discover, Curve's sound, while sounding fantastically new and startling at first, rapidly became familiar. And while they made frequently marvellous records, all were niche sounds which lacked obvious pop melodies and didn't sit easily on "Top of the Pops"; although they would eventually appear on that show.
2. Throwing Muses - Counting Backwards (4AD)
Next to Curve, Throwing Muses sounded almost conventional in this track sequencing, but obviously they're not. "Counting Backwards" is yet another example of them weaving a hook-ridden pop tune around a quirky and unusual structure. There are moments around the chorus where it almost finds a Talking Heads styled groove, only for the track to slide back into a tumbling rhythm pattern and peculiar howling guitar lines.
With each progressive LP release, the group were steadily reaching more people. When we first met them on Volume Three of this series with "Cry Baby Cry", they were a seriously cult concern, sounding rough around the edges and faintly out of step with the era. As time progressed, however, their eccentricity became a beacon for numerous fans who recognised that Kristin Hersh occupied an intelligent and uninhibited arthouse approach not easily found in late eighties and early nineties alternative music (outside of Sugarcubes records, anyway). They had few rivals, and "Counting Backwards" is an example of an immediately memorable single with beautiful spikes and angles attached. They were now moving away from the world of inky fanzines and into the glossy pages of Q magazine.
3. Kitchens of Distinction - Drive That Fast (One Little Indian) - vinyl and cassette only
With lyrics seemingly taking on the topic of the early stages of a love affair where the conditions and seriousness have yet to fully establish themselves, "Drive That Fast" is simultaneously joyous and paranoid sounding. Whooshing past in a giddy rush, it's elated one minute then cautious the next ("I would never wish this much on you") and the group are asked to keep up with Patrick Fitzgerald's dual emotional state.
It's a lovely take on those early feelings, and utilises a similar roar of guitar effects pedals and multi-tracked ideas to Curve on track one - meaning that this could have more ideally sat as track two. By the end, you're still not quite sure what the romantic conclusion is. The outro is giddy sounding, but sounds equally drunkenly paranoid as loved-up and excited. Fitzgerald sounds as if he has stepped on to a merry-go-round without really giving the option any forethought, and now it's spinning far faster than he expected - a thrilling ride, but if it stops suddenly, he'll be face-first into the gutter with cuts and bruises, and possibly worse if the landing is particularly poor. The thrill wouldn't exist without the danger, but the danger can never be completely eliminated from the thought processes.
While the lyrics are also a simple series of thoughts rather than philosophical musings on the condition, they do have a unique quality by considering the dangers faced by the other half. Quite unusually and generously for pop music, they recognise that two people are facing peril by another possible failed and demanding relationship, not just the singer. The concern expressed is distinctly un-rock and roll and lacking in decadence, and offers to protect the partner rather than view them as a complication.
4. Buffalo Tom - Fortune Teller (Situation Two)
Following the epic sludge of "Birdbrain", "Fortune Teller" was actually something of a let down. A piece of countrified lo-fi, it stumbles along its own particular dirt track occasionally bumping into grungey bits of fury and distortion on the way - but never once really making a coherent case for itself. It's only charm seems to lie in its slightly rugged innocence. Without much in the way of direction, a chorus, or an easily relatable theme, it lurches drunkenly from one segment to the next as if they're inconvenient obstacles and arguments. Frankly, a single it ain't. It's barely even a B side.
Future efforts would be considerably more rounded, and "Fortune Teller" seems to have been the moment Buffalo Tom waved goodbye to any underground roots they had to create better crafted records - and by the sounds of it, that wasn't a bad thing at all.
5. Manic Street Preachers - You Love Us (Heavenly)
"You Love Us" takes the thrilling rush of "Motown Junk" and marries it to a much poppier melody, edging the group that bit closer to the mainstream American rock sounds they admired. Still, while those fiddly, flashy guitar lines did initially seem irksome, "You Love Us" is almost the equal of their Heavenly debut, marrying ridiculous arrogance - whoever heard of a band demanding "You Love Us" in such a direct and obvious way and expecting to be taken seriously? - with an energy which sounds as if it tore the recording studio walls down.
While The Manics seemed surprised by the levels of vitriol spat at them from some quarters, they were clearly doing everything to create a clear dividing line between those who would these days be called "haters" and their fans. "You Love Us" acknowledges both their problem and their attraction with the hasty line "You love us like a holocaust!" and dares listeners to step forward into their camp. It seems like a spectacularly silly gesture, of course, because it is - but then it's tapping into the roots of rock and roll rebellion, only this time the "squares" were the university educated stoners listening to bands like Slowdive, while the hip Manics fans were teenage kids in search of something, anything, remotely glamorous which articulated their frustrations.
To cap it all off, the track finishes with an unashamed steal of Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" riff, before spluttering suddenly into feedback and confusion and finally nothingness.
This is the last time we'll meet them for the purposes of this blog. After such a shameless display, they promptly signed on the dotted line with Columbia and got ready for superstardom. Far from achieving overnight multi-platinum success, though, the group would embark on a long and wearisome journey which destroyed one member and left the others sounding prematurely haggard and world-beaten by the time they reached the summit. Whether you prefer the young, spunky Manics, the early Columbia era Manics or the sombre but successful and well-fed Manics is, of course, a debate which has kept the group's forums aflame for many a moon, and one which is too complex to go into here... though I may as well add my ha'penny opinion into the mix by briefly saying that "Generation Terrorists" is one of the most disappointing LPs I've ever bought (even containing a neutered and inferior version of this track) and stacked up next to that, "Everything Must Go" is an absolute masterpiece, even if it reached a broader audience Manics fans felt less comfortable sharing air with.
