16. Stereolab - Ping Pong (Duophonic Ultra High Frequency Disks)
It's somewhat absurd yet fitting that Stereolab's most known single is a chirpy paean to the flaws of capitalism. To a series of almost easy listening organ chords and a skippy melody, Laetitia sings observations such as "It's alright 'cause the historical pattern has shown/ How the economical cycle tends to revolve/ In a round of decades three stages stand out in a loop/ A slump and war then peel back to square one and back for more". It's like a melody from "The Sound of Music" retooled to teach the kids about Marxist principles.
I have to confess that despite its ubiquity (certainly compared to other Stereolab tunes, anyway) it's not my favourite piece of work of theirs. Whereas other singles they issued were often pieces of sprawling minimalism with subtle details emerging listen after listen, the first impressions you get from "Ping Pong" are really all there is. That said, as a piece of subversive political pop, it's a deeply sarcastic and scathing piece of work, slowly burrowing Marxist earworms into the brains of innocent teens and children everywhere.
17. Drugstore - Starcrossed (Honey)
Drugstore were an astonishing live band I frequently caught live during this period. They were fronted by the strangely spacey, starry, charismatic singer Isabel Monteiro, who on one occasion mopped tears from her eyes while the audience applauded, and I wasn't entirely sure if she was joking for effect or not.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Drugstore's music was frequently slow, woozy and delicate, but her vocals ensured that every song packed an enormous punch too. "Starcrossed" is filled to the brim with fuzzy guitars, stripped back drum patterns, then topped off marvellously by her dreamy yet somehow piercing voice. On vinyl the intimate, emotional pull of what they managed to achieve as a live band could occasionally be lost, and I don't think this track is any exception - but it still feels like being smothered by a beautiful, soft sonic duvet. Albeit one whose colour scheme possibly makes your eyes go a bit funny.
Isabel relocated to her home country Brazil in early 2015, effectively finishing the band, who had otherwise remained a going concern until that point. However, she remains active as a singer and musician over there.
18. Cranes - Shining Road (Dedicated)
Portsmouth's finest returned with something which was as close as the group came to sounding full of beans. Filled with fuzzed up guitar lines and galloping rhythms, "Shining Road" sure as hell isn't Britpop, but it's closer to pop than the band usually stepped. The faint sense of unease that usually seeps through the band's music overpowering any other intentions is also gone, replaced by something almost optimistic.
Not quite, though. Alison Shaw's parting lines, after singing about seeking out bright city lights and travel, are "And is it all because of you?/ Every time I look at you/ If I look back never mind/ Just don't worry, I'll be fine". I lived in Australia for a year myself - leading the "blogosphere" to get very confused when I first launched "Left and to the Back" and assume I was Australian - and the people I met on the way were mostly a joyous bundle of drunken energy, but there were always a few who didn't like the question "What made you decide to come here?" I nearly caused a woman I met to burst into tears when I asked this innocent question, and after that, never asked anyone again.
The road is frequently a very tempting and, in the modern world, simple response to disappointment, mourning or heartache, the "shining" alternative to dealing with the immediate mess around you. In the novel "Billy Liar", the main character is warned by his mother "You can't run away from your problems, you know. You just pack them into your suitcase and take them with you". In the end, he chooses not to take that way out, although he has very little to lose. "Shining Road", though, is one of the few tracks I can think of that genuinely spells out the doubt and personal anguish behind that route taken and the dazzling fantasy of a relocated city life.
19. Pale Saints - Fine Friend (4AD)
Pale Saints purists tend to reject this era of the group as being almost an irrelevance. The original lead singer Ian Masters had upped sticks, and Meriel Barnham was now fully in the spotlight. Gone were Ian's frail choirboy vocals, and Meriel replaced them with something richer and more self-assured.
Not only did this did have an impact on the group's sound, but the psychedelia of their previous work had now been largely replaced by a much moodier, more organic sound. It hasn't escaped the ears of many listeners just how similar "Fine Friend" is melodically and stylistically to Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You", and that really can't be disputed. This sounds like the work of a group who had absorbed a lot of new influences and undergone a total reinvention.
Much as I do find this single genuinely haunting and beautiful, and perhaps unfairly overlooked as a result of the purists, I can't say that I prefer it to their earliest work. It's not surprising that they disintegrated not long afterwards, having moved on to something which failed to ignite the imaginations of most critics or indeed fans, nor resulted in any improved commercial standing.
20. Frente! - Bizarre Love Triangle (Mushroom)
Australia has always been filled to the brim with groups who have managed to make enormous waves in their home country and in New Zealand, but failed to create much of an impact further afield. Some are truly wondrous - the situationism and satire of TISM (aka This Is Serious, Mum) doesn't always translate easily to British shores, but is hilarious and effective. Then there's the likes of Master's Apprentices and their sixties/ seventies blues rock, or er, Lubricated Goat who released the album "People With Chairs Up Their Noses".
Anyway, Frente were something of an alternative folk-pop sensation in Australia in the nineties, producing one platinum LP over there in the form of "Marvin The Album" in 1992. We British were first introduced to them via the wonders of the soap opera "Home And Away", where they seemed to be crowbarred into the script for weeks on end, with endless declarations of "Heeeeey, are you guys going to see Frente toniiight?" while their latest single also played on the Summer Bay cafe radio, just to really hammer the point home about how hip and happening they were.
Asides from snatches of music on "Home And Away" and a guest appearance, most people in this country didn't really pay the group much heed until they issued this skeletal, quickie cover of New Order's single. It's brief, sweet and a pleasant listen, but really no more than that. Clearly not everyone agrees with me, however, as it reached number 76 in the UK charts and number 49 in the US Billboard Hot 100, a truly astonishing achievement for such a niche idea.
In retrospect, it's entirely possible to look at this cover of "Bizarre Love Triangle" and see it as pre-empting the acoustic or ukulele inflected covers which have saturated television advertising in the last 5-10 years. It's a very similar approach - take a known, credible track and turn it into something homespun and folksy with sweet, heartfelt vocals on top. Sadly for Frente, nobody wins any prizes in pop for being the first through the thicket, and the track didn't even break through in a significant way in their home country, remaining a fringe concern for sad indie kids.
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.
Another unusual track choice for "Indie Top 20", "Porpoise" was the second track off Pale Saints' "Flesh Balloon" EP. Far better known was their cover of Nancy Sinatra's "Kinky Love" which graced the same record and received rather more airplay than shoegazing bands were used to, bursting out of evening transistor radios and "The Chart Show". This shouldn't be altogether surprising, since it was a dreamy, rich and detailed cover which bought the original into the technicolour early nineties - a final number 72 chart position barely seems like a just reward for the band's efforts.
"Porpoise", on the other hand, is an atmospheric instrumental lead by an unexpectedly cheap Casio keyboard riff (my ears immediately identified that it's the same Casio keyboard we used to have cluttering the stock cupboard at my comprehensive school). If it sounds like it belongs anywhere at all, it's as part of the backing music that Channel 4 used to use on their testcards in the early eighties. That's not actually meant to be a cutting criticism, since some of the things they included were melodic but with very peculiar production flourishes and edges (Bob Morgan's "Fool In Love" is a fantastic example) but it feels out of kilter with the times. That beefy bassline and those shimmering guitars do give it a 1991 datestamp, but the rest seems to be begging for a home in a KPM library music vault somewhere.
Still, it makes for an interesting piece of music which showed Pale Saints could operate outside their shoegazing comfort zone very easily. As to whether it's the finest piece of music they've ever produced, well, obviously not. It's a likeable curiosity and little more.
2. Dodgy - Summer Fayre (Bostin)
Well, here we are. I'm going to stick my neck out and say that this is the first instance of Britpop on the "Indie Top 20" series. Of course, there are mitigating factors to my claim. Firstly, The Boo Radleys have already featured, but their music at this point is barely recognisable from what it became circa "Wake Up!". Secondly, of course, nobody was using "Britpop" as a description for any music at this point (And you could be doubly mean and try to engage me in a debate about whether St Etienne do or don't qualify).
Still, though, absolutely all the stereotypical ingredients, for better or worse, are in this 45, to the extent that it could almost be a parody. That chirpy, retro sixties chorus. Those shuffling, bouyant rhythms. The cheeky vocals which almost seem to come accompanied with a wink. The determined return of fussy basslines and twiddly guitar solos. It sounds as if it should have a brass section as well, but presumably the budget didn't stretch to that. It really is absolutely bloody uncanny.
My curiosity was tweaked by this song, and I went to see Dodgy live when they came to play my town around this time. The audience in the small club just seemed bemused in general, and the band struggled to connect despite their best efforts. My gig-going companion was moved to comment "Well, I quite like the elements of The Who they've incorporated into their sound" but therein lay the problem. Very, very few indie or alternative groups were mining classic rock and pop in quite the way Dodgy were at this point, and they were peculiar anomalies on the gig circuit. Neither fully-fledged Rock, nor ethereal indie, nor grunge, they seemed like "Your Dad's record collection" being pushed through the bodies of young men from Birmingham (not literally, that would be painful).
In time, this would work in their favour enormously, although it's notable that they've never been given much credit for being ahead of the pack. In 1991, however, it meant releasing records on their own label (Bostin) and waiting for everyone else to wake up to their charms.
3. Pierre Étoile - In The Sun (Rough Trade)
Following the demise of Galaxie 500, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang decided to release the last few songs they had written together on Rough Trade, with no real intentions of trying to turn the duo into an ongoing concern. "In The Sun" was the sole effort under the Pierre Étoile moniker, which is even more fragile than a lot of Galaxie 500's work. Stripped back to a basic drum backing, a strummed guitar, and hushed vocals, this has a decidedly demo quality about it, which obviously isn't unexpected given the circumstances.
The pair commanded enough of a cult following at this time that this release was relatively big news in indie circles, but it's been largely forgotten since. It's actually very pretty but unfinished sounding, as if we've been given permission to listen to a campfire session the pair were having - it's the kind of twee indie you feel an urge to listen to last thing while having a cheeky nightcap drink.
Shimmy Disc took over the reigns and persuaded the duo back into the studio after this release, and a vast number of records have followed under the more simplistic Damon & Naomi banner. Those works are a bit - though admittedly not enormously - fleshed out from this original low-key vision.
4. No-Man - Mahler (One Little Indian)
This is probably one of my favourite No-Man tracks, combining slowly looping Dance rhythms to hushed vocals and rather precious classical violin solos. Despite its quiet approach, it possesses a strange and slightly disturbing drama, as if relaying to the listener a distant memory of a doomed relationship. "I shouted out and called your name but you were hiding in the trees" could be a sweet childhood memory, or a metaphor for something altogether less reassuring. The song ends on the lines "The ascent to your heaven... I can't stand them laughing at us" before the tune collapses into ambient atmospherics, which also breaks the tranquility slightly and hints at an undisclosed darkness.
It's also deftly arranged, with the violin lines never once seeming unnecessary or overly flowery. In all, it's a beautiful soundscape which manages to create intrigue, drama and even bursts of elation across its six minutes. The problem is, it's also the sort of song you can't begin to write about without sounding truly pretentious - No-Man's sound and identity is actually slightly pompous, so as soon as you start to try and untangle all the various elements, you end up just getting trapped by the delicate, sticky web they've woven until you become part of their world. The bastards.
5. Cath Carroll - Moves Like You (Factory)
Cath Carroll was already an indie veteran by this point, having been the lead vocalist in Miaow, who featured on the C86 compilation and were later signed by Tony Wilson to Factory Records. Whereas Miaow's sound was skittish and almost jazzy at times, by this point Carroll had moved on to a slicker, more commercial sound.
"Moves Like You" has none-more-1991 pop dance beats as its backing, very subtle Acid House squelches, and Carroll's smooth, sultry vocals. It sounds like the airy, slick, celebratory pop you might hear on a commercial FM radio station on a late night cab ride home. Breathe deeply and you can almost smell the pine air freshener.
Despite this, it wasn't a hit, even though you suspect Tony Wilson had designs on its success. I also don't intend my descriptions of it above to be entirely negative. "Moves Like You" has a beautiful late night sassiness to it that makes it an effective and enjoyable slice of pop, albeit one that feels faintly jarring in the context of this LP. Should it have been a hit? No. I suspect it lacked enough of a powerful chorus or drive to really be a breakthrough single, sounding more like something an established artist would put out as the second or third single off a successful album. Cath Carroll's voice does a lot to suck you into the single, but it's not enough to push the track to the next level.
Cath Carroll works as a writer first and foremost these days, though has occasionally been enticed back into the studio to work with other bands on their projects, having recently worked with Trembling Blue Stars and The Hit Parade.
1. The Charlatans - Then (Dead Dead Good/ Situation Two)
"Excellent follow-up to their hit earlier in the year. Outstanding, a massive hit that should establish Northwich's finest as a major band".
It wouldn't have been illogical to expect another juddering piece of catchy organ-driven indie as a follow-up to the hugely successful "The Only One I Know", but "Then" took people by surprise in 1990. While it was still a bit of a smash by indie standards - number 12 in the national charts isn't really to be sniffed at - it has a despairing dream-like quality to it, sounding like the soundtrack to someone's slow-motion meltdown.
It is beautiful for all that, though, and the misty, blurry sound to this showed that there was far more to The Charlatans than foot-tapping retro pop. In "Then", they had also managed to create a piece of atmospheric indie which, while not being overly similar to the likes of Ride, Lush or Slowdive, certainly had a similar tripped-out, steadily building ethereal nature at its roots.
Frustratingly, despite the fact that it was a reasonably big seller at the time by indie standards, "Then" is very infrequently heard on the radio now, with programmers tending to skim past all the post-"Only One I Know" singles until they get closer to their more upbeat Britpop revival material ("Weirdo" occasionally excepted). This does the group a disservice, as they're much more versatile than they've generally been given credit for. Three singles down the line, and they'd already managed to show us three very unique sides to their personalities.
2. Teenage Fanclub - God Knows It's True (Paperhouse)
"Jack Black - it's good for singing, guitaring, and playing the drums." - Don Flemming
This remains one of my favourite Teenage Fanclub tracks. It sounds amazing from the first second - starting off with that buzzing guitar riff, then steadily building to a clattering, pissed off anthem of betrayal, it's the halfway house where the moody melodies of "April Skies" era Mary Chain meet with American underground rock and Big Star. From the sulking chorus right up to the basic but marvellous guitar outro, it feels oddly effortless and yet wonderfully constructed. If anyone had dismissed Teenage Fanclub as being a scratchy indie band, this was the point at which they would be proven wrong - and things would get better and more powerful over the coming years.
The group were about to up sticks and sign to Creation in the UK and Geffen in the US, and while they never quite achieved the commercial wonders many predicted (it's often forgotten that circa "Bandwagonesque", they really were regarded as possible future stars) a string of acclaimed albums and moderate hits would ensure that their legacy would be the envy of many of their peers. Staying respected and relevant twenty-five years down the line is arguably preferable to stadium success followed by rapid burn-out.
3. Pale Saints - Half Life Remembered (4AD)
"Gustav Holst is the horse's mouth in whose saliva we take our baths".
If "Sight Of You" had been maudlin, "Half Life Remembered" is disorientating and slightly frightening, from its strange video featuring dated psychedelic effects and an overload of custard, pasta and beans and dentistry related nightmares, to the track itself - airy vocals meeting a vaguely threatening and malevolent melody. "It's eating you away, and some will never know its taste" we're informed, while ambitious drum patterns smash around and angelic female vocals coo along.
To all intents and purposes, "Half Life Remembered" really is Pale Saint's equivalent of "White Rabbit", and is so obviously about hallucinogenic matters that it would have been banned in a less enlightened age. While psychedelic ideas were incredibly prevalent in this period through the noises of both the so-called Madchester bands and the shoegazing stars, this really was unbelievably explicit. When they're not twanging away in an early sixties style, even the guitar riffs veer close towards sitar-mimicking scales in places. Far out, man.
But it's unbelievably good. It could make the mistake of spanning ten minutes and repeating its best ideas endlessly, but instead, for four and a half minutes, it's an interesting and ever-evolving piece of wonky pop that explores every possible melodic nook and cranny.
The Pale Saints always were one of the more interesting and inventive groups in the so-called shoegazing movement, which makes it strange that they appear to be less raved about during the present revival.
"It's hopelessly sad, hopelessly lonely, probing, while always attempting optimism... but already I can feel tears pricking my eyelids, more of an emotion than a song".
A real oddity of the period, "Cry - Blood" mixed Gregorian monk chanting with a post-punk dub sensibility. While it was released slightly before Enigma's "Sadeness" which unexpectedly rose to Number One in the early part of 1991, its subsequent credibility has nonetheless probably been slightly damaged by the obvious similarities.
Nonetheless, it's an incredibly uncommercial slice of minimalism which finds its groove early on and remains firmly locked into it. The shuffling rhythm is pure 1990, it's only the deep dub basslines and faintly jazzy riffs which make it sound outside of anything else being produced at this point.
Welfare Heroine consisted of NME journalist Dele Fadele - so the fact the track earned an NME single of the week is slightly suspect, to be frank - Dave Egan and Ian Jones. Like their labelmates The Honey Smugglers, they were very quickly dropped from Fiction's slightly half-arsed Non-Fiction subsidiary label after a couple of singles and left to fend for themselves.
5. The Shamen - Oxygen Restriction (One Little Indian)
"A sub bass collision with techno pop minimalism... but Teutonic it ain't"
The Shamen's unbroken run of tracks on the "Indie Top 20" series starts at Volume Three and ends right here, and it's been possible to track their evolution right through that period, from politically outspoken psychedelic guitar noiseniks to disco biscuit spiritualists. Seldom has one band changed their style so much and so recognisably in such a short space of time.
By this point, the group were poised to take on the world. "Oxygen Restriction" was a track on their LP "Entact" and was not actually released as a single, so it's hard to hear the commercial chops they had developed; but if you were in any doubt, "Ebeneezer Goode" wasn't terribly far around the corner.
As for "Oxygen Restriction", it is indeed a stripped back and bare piece of techno which judders by at a mid-tempo without leaving an enormous impression. It seems to have been dropped on to "Volume Eleven" of this LP to take advantage of The Shamen's rapidly growing reputation at this point. And perhaps, of course, it would have been a horrible pity to have left them off the tracklisting, since they had been such mainstays until this point.
By Volume Twelve, however, we will find ourselves doing without them.
"Four, Five, Six, Seven... and Bjork suddenly bursts alight, trilling, preening, calling, beckoning, the scarlet ethereal voice hitting the topmost notes with a heart-stopping clarity, the jiggering rhythm folding across her shoulders" - Melody Maker.
The pop world hasn't been overburdened with songs penned in tribute to columnists who write for evening newspapers, but The Sugarcubes corrected that matter in 1989 with "Regina". Of course, being The Sugarcubes, the topic of the song was no ordinary woman, being an Icelandic columnist who mainly wrote about the achievements of her neighbours and said very little about the news at all, and their praise to her is occasionally eccentric and rather blurry in its aims. At one point Einar screams "I really don't like lobster!" in a manner usually reserved for political protest songs.
Business as usual back at the Bad Taste camp, then, although rather like the last time we met the group with "Deus", there's a slickness and poppiness to this track which barely matches the lyrics or indeed Einar's demented ramblings. The track clops along at an even pace, and the chorus is a simple, trilled refrain of "Oh oh, Regina!" which threatens never to end in the last minute of the track. The net result is that once the novelty of the sheer absurdity of the lyrics and the subject matter fades, you're left with very little to get excited about.
The album "Regina" stemmed from, "Here Today Tomorrow Next Week" is widely regarded to be a sophomore slump effort, and the fact that "Regina" acted as the lead single from it didn't bode well.
2. Kitchens of Distinction - Elephantine (One Little Indian)
"....hail from Tooting, South London, which is on direct route southwards to Timbuktu. Really. The band form two years ago after a chance encounter at the frozen food section of Safeway in Streatham!"
As the baggy movement began to gather pace and indie-kids started shaking their fringes and imaginary maracas on the dance floor to an assortment of Mancs singing to funky drummer beats in hushed tones, Kitchens of Dinstinction actually began to seem even more out of sorts than they were when they first arrived. For all that, "Elephantine" was possibly their biggest sounding single yet, with a huge yet disconcerting chorus. The track overall lacked their usual dependency on effects pedals and atmospherics and instead launches itself headlong into something approach a traditional tune, albeit one filtered through some peculiar prisms.
Perhaps due to the epic nature of the chorus, "Elephantine" did give the band their biggest indie chart hit yet, but their popularity would never rise much above cult indie appreciation.
3. Fatima Mansions - Only Losers Take The Bus (Kitchenware)
"Fatima Mansions is that very rare thing, a sound that sounds like nothing so much as itself" - 20/20 "The hungry, incredulous 'Only Losers Take The Bus' is perfect" - NME
Microdisney split up following the undeserved failure of their last album "39 Minutes", an unorthodox and astonishing album which featured fierce anti-Thatcherite lyrics backed with smooth Steely Dan styled arrangements and backing vocals from Londonbeat on session duties. The Londonbeat boys apparently sorely objected to getting in the studio to croon along to lines such as "There's nothing wrong with the young would-be rich/ That a head full of lead would not cure" but happily took their paycheque anyway. The record company Virgin didn't see the point of the entire affair, dropped Microdisney, and the group collapsed in disarray.
Lead singer and lyricist Cathal Coughlan wasted absolutely no time in forming a new band, and Fatima Mansions were the swift result. He was out of the traps so fast that, unfortunately, their first mini-LP "Against Nature" did still bear hallmarks of the Microdisney sound on a few tracks, containing familiarly brooding Scott Walker-ish ballads. Among those, however, were also pounding social rants ("The Prince of Caledonia he drives a diesel van/ When he's peddling skag in Hamilton/ He's a reality man!") and perhaps more unusually, Stock Aitken and Waterman styled indie-disco, slightly akin to Robert Lloyd. The group's lack of identity at this point confused more punters than it delighted, and their early work remains relatively overlooked to this day.
The first single "Only Losers Take The Bus" is most definitely remembered, however, being a thunderous, rattling juggernaut of a track, filled with Cathal spouting obtuse lyrics with a righteous fury and demanding, angular guitar riffs. Inspired by Margaret Thatcher's declaration that anyone aged 30 or over who still takes a bus has failed at life, some of the other lines - "Get these dead bodies off my race track!" in particular - hint towards a surreal attack on individualistic, self-centered Conservative values.
Musically it gave few clues about the fury the group were about to unleash on the world, instead hinting that their future lay in quirky indie rock - but nonetheless, it was far from ignored by the press, who were there to wave their flags enthusiastically from the sidelines.
4. Wire - In Vivo (Mute)
"Those masters of uncompromising melody do what they bloody well like (once more). Another slice of unholy Ecstacy on vinyl".
For all the talk of Wire being uncompromising, "In Vivo" really marks the final moment of an uncharacteristically poppy phase for the group. From the release of "A Bell Is A Cup" onwards, a clear sense was beginning to emerge that Wire were now a peculiar but faintly commercial group. "Eardrum Buzz" was proof positive that they could pen in an infuriatingly catchy track, and "Kidney Bingos" and "Silk Skin Paws" showed they could play their grown-up punk associates equally well at the "atmospheric adult pop" game. After this, though, Wire would become much more jarring and experimental.
"In Vivo" offers slick, catchy riffs sliding into an anthemic chorus, and while it never truly puffs its chest out, it's still a comparatively trad single by Wire's normal standards, with barely a sharp edge or unexpected twist or turn to be found. For those reasons, I find it possibly the least interesting of their Mute singles - and the fact it sold less well than many of them possibly indicates that the public felt the same way.
That's not to say it's bad, mind you. There very rarely ever was such a thing as a bad Wire single, and "In Vivo" is bold and shiny enough to be among the finer tracks on "Volume 8". It just doesn't excel.
The album this came from (provided you didn't own the vinyl copy) was "IBTABA", or "It's Beginning To And Back Again", which consisted almost entirely of reimaginings and reconstructions of other recent Wire songs, with the group often pulling the structures to pieces and building songs up again completely from their basic foundations. Frequently regarded as a substandard album in their catalogue, it was actually the first Wire long-player I ever bought, and I initially didn't understand what it was, believing all the tracks on it to be the original versions. When I backtracked later on, I actually thought the true original versions on "A Bell Is A Cup" were inferior, a view I've subsequently revised in some but absolutely not all cases. I still believe that (for example) the moody acoustic take of "Public Place" is the definitive version. "IBTABA" is definitely worth tracking down, but it may take a little bit of adjusting to get used to the parallel universe versions of the tunes on there.
5. Field Mice - If You Need Someone (Sarah)
"Taken from the double 7 inch EP 'The Autumn Store'".
While it's tempting to argue that The Field Mice were a huge cult band at the time, their subsequent influence on bands such as Belle and Sebastian means that their name is even more likely to be uttered by indie kids these days than it was in 1989. Indeed, a compilation of their work "Where'd You Learn To Kiss That Way?" released in 1999 sold more copies than anything released during the group's lifetime.
It would also be tempting to argue that the fey, ponderous approach "If You Need Someone" takes is typical of the group's output, but they actually played around with a wide variety of sounds, as future "Indie Top 20" appearances will prove. There's no question that it's something of a stereotypical Sarah Records release, however - dripping with wide-eyed teenage romance, sensitive promises, buttery guitar lines and plodding drum patterns, it's an indiepop Valentine's card to all women with duffle coats and cute bangs everywhere. And I actually have to confess that as a grown man, I find it slightly tough to get anything out of - this is a dream of a love affair written through the prism of boyish innocence, and it's a pretty listen, but not a very emotionally engaging or inspiring one. Unlike some of their other output, if you created an acoustic version of this and got a female vocalist to take the lead, nobody would really notice anything was up if you put it on a pet food advert in the present day. A strength or a weakness (or a sign that my true vocation lies in soundtracking adverts)? You decide.
6. Pale Saints - Sight Of You (4AD)
"This, the first to benefit from the band's jigsaw theory of song A songwriting pregnant with meaning".
WHAT?! Did "Indie Top 20" get that piece of blurb from a bad translation of a Hungarian music press review?
Anyway, "Sight Of You", from their "Barging Into The Presence Of God" EP, was such a huge track at the time that it hung around the Indie Top 10 seemingly forever, and featured in the final 10 of John Peel's 1989 Festive Fifty.
Along with the work of My Bloody Valentine, there's an arguable case to be made for it being one of the first "shoegazing" tracks as well. The droning organ, buried and cherubic vocals, and finally the sheer wall of guitars that hits you at the track's end seem to predict the emergence of sonic atmospherics rather than funky beats. That bassline, which almost appears to be leading the melody in places rather than anchoring it, obviously owed a bigger debt to Peter Hook, however.
Given the relative success of the track at the time, it's slightly surprising that it's heard so infrequently now, and also that Pale Saints failed to really build on it. Subsequent singles - more on those when we get to them - are actually much more adventurous and interesting in my opinion, but the group's appeal never did become as large as their early promise seemed to indicate. "Sight Of You" really should be regarded as one small element in their career rather than their crowning glory, but it's possible that the group paid the price for arriving with a certain type of noise far too early.
