Volume 15 Side Two - Verve, The Breeders, Kingmaker, Revolver, Spectrum

1. Verve - Man Called Sun (Hut)

"'The Stones at their most stoned' is a good point of entry as any to the wonderful world of Verve. 'There's an aura surrounding them, a real palpable bitch of an aura, that makes you feel like dogs in the presence of ghosts; you can feel it but you don't know what it is. Verve are gigantic'".

Verve - or The Verve, as we now know them due to a legal dispute with the jazz label of the same name, even though that still sounds utterly wrong to me - were a very big deal in 1992. They were the subject of frothing prose from almost every IPC inky magazine being printed, and there was tremendous pressure to acknowledge them as our new saviours.

By fluke rather than judgement, and just at the point where the hype began, I caught an early London gig of theirs at the Tufnell Park Dome, prior to their debut single "All In The Mind" being released. I noted that a critic being quoted on the flyer declared they had an "enormous" sound - "Like God falling down the stairs" - and waited excitedly for them to take the stage, preparing myself for a transcendental musical moment. Inevitably, it never came. The band crashed, thundered and noodled away while Richard Ashcroft fell to his knees and lifted himself up again with his arms raised multiple times over. An exhausted gig-going companion of mine found a chair by a table, and literally fell asleep during their set.

A minor freelance music journalist cornered us outside after the gig. "What did you think of that, eh?!" he asked, smiling from ear to ear, daring us to say anything negative. Another friend of mine, without batting an eyelid, said "Shit. Tedious hippy shit. I was close to falling asleep".
The journalist stormed off, went over to a crowd of young and pretty people he knew, pointed at us and could be heard to say "You know, it makes me SICK to the stomach when people can't recognise genius EVEN when they're in the same room as it".
We laughed at him. His friends sneered at us.

In retrospect, were Verve as bad on the night as we seemed to state? No. Problematically, though, they weren't as colossal as the press claimed, and I think we were reacting against the early hype. It was a bad time to be a long-haired dreamer in an indie group. We had Terry Bickers, Spiritualized, lots of shoegazing bands, and more droning crusty groups than the circuit could cope with, so there was plenty of competition. Indeed, I was very much a devotee of Spiritualized at this point in my life, catching all the live shows of theirs that I could - what struck me at the Dome was that the Verve didn't seem as if they'd earned their critical plaudits. By comparison, they didn't make you feel transported. They just seemed like a bunch of cocksure hairies who had taken some mushrooms once. Note - the key word here is "seemed". First impressions count for a lot and linger for a long time.

Debut single "All In The Mind" landed and really wasn't worth getting your knickers in a twist about. "I was born to flyyyy - flyyyy - pretty high!" sang Ashcroft. "Oh, fuck off, move out and take your wind chimes with you", I replied. Nestling on the flip, however, was "Man Called Sun" which perhaps showed another side to the band I might not have been aware of at first. Sitting somewhere between Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun" and a Jim Morrison meditation, it's a soft, gentle, 3am car journey through life's B roads, filled with gentle swells of sound and jazzy riffs. It's like a heavy swig of codeine infused cough mixture, and really rather good. Genius? The sound of the future? No. Just rather good. If I hadn't felt bullied into liking Verve when they debuted, chances are I might have been more charitable towards them initially.



2. The Breeders - Do You Love Me Now? (4AD)

"Sex, astral projection, abortion, television, human nature, God and magic. These were just some of the themes handled in a jaggedly explosive anti-fashion on 'Pod', the 1990 debut album from The Breeders. Eighteen months on, The Breeders have taken time out from their globe-trotting rock 'n' roll careers to assemble some more garuulous guitar graffiti in the shape of an EP 'Safari'. 'Do You Love Me Now?' is one of the four tracks featured on the EP which reached number one in the British independent chart."

"Do You Love Me Now?" is a strange blip in The Breeders catalogue. Rather than being a slab of jagged aggression, it awkwardly sways along pleadingly, a drunken ballad to a departed loved one. "Come back to me right now!" begs Kim Deal. "Come on, come on, come on, you loved me before!" If it resembles anything at all, it's a slow grungey garage stagger through a Motown styled track - which is probably exactly what it was designed to sound like. The Breeders weren't a "girl band" in the traditional Doo wop/ Supremes (or even, heaven forfend, Bananarama) sense of the word, but this is the closest they got to sounding like one.

It's as human and imperfect as you'd expect. The drunken sounding distorted bass fuzz shows they weren't going for anything polished, but the yearning nature of the track is still very effective. It's actually a very strong piece of songwriting dragged down a back alley and scuffed up a bit. If you were told that it had been penned as a minor hit in the mid-sixties and The Breeders were merely covering it, it would be very easy to believe. In fact, even at the time I checked the songwriting credits for this very carefully indeed.

If anything, I suspect that the "Safari" EP made people realise that Pixies were far from solely dependant on Frank Black's talent - Kim Deal had bags to spare of her own.



3. Kingmaker - Celebrated Working Man (Sacred Heart)

"Outspoken, different, arrogant, spoiling for a fight, Kingmaker although signed to a major, represent an independent teen spirit so often squeezed mercilessly out of a young band in the industry's clutches. Expect a brace of foot-tapping, ear-burning, government-popping, mind altering EPs throughout '92 and beyond. These monarchs ain't abdicating just yet!" 

Kingmaker were indeed touted as an enormous band with a big attitude and a hugely promising future in 1992. Interesting, as they occasionally sounded like little more than an amalgamation of the ideas of all the alternative bands around them, with Miles Hunt's sneer and his snappier melodies pushed to the forefront. For as much as they sounded like a major label's idea of a hit indie band, however, they did show occasional sparks of an uncommercial racket early on. Their debut major label EP "Two Headed Yellow Bellied Hole Digger" featured a live track called "Pockets of St. Malachi" which rattled, screeched and bawled its way to a raucous conclusion. It sounded semi-improvised and furious.

Those kinds of ideas very rarely found themselves pushed to the forefront of Kingmaker's promotional campaigns, though, and what you tended to hear the most of - especially after their first LP - was swaggering early nineties styled indie-pop, with Loz Hardy's finger wagging proclamations on the state of modern Britain at the forefront. Their debut single "Celebrated Working Man" showcases some of this, but with its skiffle styled shuffling rhythms and its basic sloganeering, it's nothing ground-breaking or especially exciting. Chrysalis Records obviously thought otherwise, and signed the band not long afterwards.

[Sadly, "Celebrated Working Man" is unavailable online anywhere at present, being the subject of numerous copyright takedowns - so you may have to dig around a bit to actually hear it.]

4. Revolver - Venice (Hut)

"Revolver are back with their Ralph Jezzard produced 'Venice' which has a much harder edge to it than any of their previous work. All the tracks featured on 'Venice' highlight the fact that the band are moving in a progressive direction, they even bring a flash of inspiration to the old Strawberry Switchblade 'Since Yesterday'. All of Revolver's previous singles are now available on the import album 'Baby's Angry'. However, look out for their debut album which will be with us very shortly".

"Venice" is probably one of the most likeable of Revolver's songs, driven by an Eastern sounding guitar riff, pounding, crashing drums and throbbing basslines. While it does admittedly sound rather too close to Ride for its own good, it's certainly the most impressive Revolver track on the "Indie Top 20" series.

In similar with a lot of their other work, however, it does sound like one very simple idea stretched to four minutes - there's no verse/ chorus structure here at all, just the bare simplicity of one pleasing riff wandered around and prodded at with angry sticks.



5. Spectrum - How You Satisfy Me (Silvertone)

"'How You Satisfy Me' is the debut single from Sonic Boom's new band Spectrum. It achieved the coveted single of the week position in The Melody Maker and was described a 'a triumph of low fidelity'. Spectrum's debut album 'Soul Kiss' on Silvertone is Sonic's seventh, in one form of another".

Talking of simplicity, though, Sonic Boom really leans on a rough, honking keyboard garage riff for this one, which sounds like a fluttering piece of late-sixties pop on a small regional American label. If overlong - certainly longer than most singles of that era, anyway - it does do a lot with very little, though. Whooshing, phasing and roaring its way down the psychedelic highway, "How You Satisfy Me" is one part Archies styled candy-pop, another part acid-addled haze.

Unsurprisingly, the straightforward nature of this single failed to illicit as much as excitement as the activities of his old bandmate Jason Pierce in Spiritualized, but it did show that many of the elements of the old Spacemen 3 sound had worked their way into both groups.

Indie Top 20 Vol 14 - Lush, Moose, Revolver, Mercury Rev, Throwing Muses

Format: Double LP (plus bonus 12" single), CD, Cassette
Year of Release: 1992

This was the beginning of a very brief revamp for the "Indie Top 20" series, which saw it rebadged as "Independent 20". The volume number was not specified on the sleeve (a quick look at the spine and the TT014 catalogue number was the only way you would know if you'd been out of the country or in a coma for some time). We were instead treated to a random and seemingly unrelated image to tell the volumes apart - in this case, some pelicans. Later volumes would include a water slide, and a picture of some smiling children on a day out. Don't ask me why. Presumably this was some kind of attempt to go a bit 4AD/ Factory with the series design and present some sleeves which were a little artier.

The sleevenotes returned too, and were a little less half-arsed this time around.

On vinyl this was a hugely expensive purchase at the time. It came with glossy inner sleeves and a "free" bonus twelve inch single (which mostly consisted of demos and studio doodles, and I honestly don't want to review separately) but I winced at the price tag which was far higher than usual.

The volume also coincided with British independent music hitting a creative and commercial trough. I had a friend at this time who would regularly correct my statement "This has been such a bad year for music" with the answer "Dave, every year is a good year for music". His logic was simple. Whether I knew it or not, good music was being released or played all the time, and even if one year was a particularly fallow period for new sounds, there would still be plenty of brilliant old music I hadn't discovered yet. Fair points all, but for the purposes of this blog, Volume 14 really coincides with a period where the alternative scene seemed to mostly slink back apologetically to the underground.  Bands playing in small bars and groups issuing singles with wrap-around Xeroxed sleeves in polythene bags got more press and late-night airplay than they could have seriously imagined possible. Unlike C86, though, many of the groups were underground punk dinmakers. Nothing wrong with that, and there are some fine noises to be had here - but in many cases, some of these groups we'll be discussing were one-trick ponies who will never feature on the series again.

It's a peculiar LP and I must admit, probably one of my least favourites in the series. It's a very, very good snapshot of the kind of bands you would hear performing in dingy venues with overflowing urinals in late 1991 and 1992, but perhaps inevitably, lots of it fails to stand up to repeated listens.

1. Lush - For Love (4AD)

"Since their formation in 1988 and the release of the first mini-LP "Scar" in 1989, Lush have had to develop under the spotlight of the nation's music media. The 'For Love' EP and the recent Guthrie produced album 'Spooky' have proved beyond a doubt that Lush have been worthy of the attention which has been paid to them over the past three years".

In many respects, Lush kicking off the LP creates the impression that little has moved on since Volume 13. "For Love", though, is a peculiarly fragile little record, with a delicate wind-up music box melody and frail vocals. Here, Miki Berenyi's voice veers strangely close to that of the woman who sang the theme tune to the sit-com "Dear John" - an absurd style, but the high-pitched hushiness of them is well-suited to a song about the naiveté of adolescent romance.

Of all Lush's singles, even the later "Britpop" efforts, "For Love" feels strangely unrepresentative of the group. It's gently reflective and faintly satirical, and presents itself as a piece of fey contemplation on teenage love while biting hard with a noticeably feminist angle if you listen hard enough. "Happy just to be a prize/ Happy just to see his smile" suggests servitude, and choosing the role of the "girlfriend" as a secure badge of identity rather than genuine romance. It's easy to miss that through the chiming prettiness of it all, though.

"For Love" is a rather strange moment in Lush's catalogue, but not an unlikeable one.



2. Moose - Last Night I Fell Again (Hut)

"Moose shot out of musical obscurity in the early part of '91 with the release of their 'Jack' EP on the Hut label. 'Cool Breeze', their second EP, quickly followed and established Moose still further as an important and exciting new band. 'Lsat Night I Fell Again' is featured on their third EP 'Reprise' which sees Moose in a more melancholic mood. Do keep an eye on Moose as they have the talent to produce something rather remarkable in the future".

With its incessant shimmering backing and despairing, hungover sounding vocals, "Last Night I Fell Again" does indeed catch Moose at their moodiest, with their usual love for psychedelic effects pedal twiddling sidelined slightly for a lovelorn feel. While it was tempting for many critics at the time to write the group off as being another shoegazing band, time and more releases would prove that they actually had considerably more talent than that. Also tucked away on the "Reprise" EP is a track many consider to be their finest moment, the heartfelt ballad "This River Will Never Run Dry" - a full six minutes of jangly guitars, and fragile vocals singing of romantic commitment. "I wanna marry in the morning/ with the sunlight in our eyes/ I'm always near/ This river never will run dry" Russell Moose declares to a steadily building, innocent melody. It's one of those moments indie bands excel at where conventional mainstream groups often fail - sometimes you need imperfection, a cheap sounding guitar, and a wobbled vocal note to bring home how cracked but special the blessed ordinariness of life can be.



3. Revolver - Don't Ever Leave (Hut)

"Revolver emerged in '91 as the torch bearers of new order in independent music. They soon signed to Hut and have released two critically acclaimed singles to date. The first, 'Heaven Sent An Angel', silenced those journalists who claimed the band were just hype. The following 'Crimson' EP which 'Don't Ever Leave' is taken from, is a collection of tender tracks which prove that Revolver will definitely be a force to be reckoned with in the months and years to come".

Whatever. To be honest, few things fill me with less hope than the declaration "Here's something from a Revolver EP which isn't the lead track", and in this case that wouldn't be remotely unreasonable of me. "Don't Ever Leave" is four minutes of heavily distorted bass noises, DIY wooden box drum patterns, and woe-filled vocals. Full credit to the group for taking things in a much less obvious direction and experimenting with the possibilities of sound in an unpredictable way, but the song itself is so simplistic that no amount of lo-fi sonic shenanigans can save it. The initial, elephant-thudding, mocking three-note riff dominates throughout, making for a deeply dreary listening experience, and it's a blessed relief when the damn thing is finally over.



4. Mercury Rev - Car Wash Hair (the bee's chasing me) Full Pull (Mint Films/ Jungle)

"Mercury Rev are a six-piece from Buffalo, New York who took the independent music scene by storm in '91 with the release of their 'Yerself Is Steam' LP. They have been compared to various bands such as Sonic Youth, Pink Floyd, Jane's Addiction and Butthole Surfers. 'Car Wash Hair' was their debut single which earned Mercury Rev a Melody Maker single of the week".

"Car Wash Hair" had the distinct advantage of sounding very little like any of the other bands being thrown at us in late 1991. Simultaneously psychedelic, mellow, ponderous and preposterous, it recalled the post-summer of love comedown noises of obscure sixties American psychedelic bands. Few bands had ever entered the fray with such a damaged sounding record - "Car Wash Hair" sounds like the product of a group who have already enjoyed their fair share of hallucinogenic drugs and are now freaking out in Studio Three trying to record their final flop album in a fried and tragic state. The pinging radar noise throughout sounds like a hint that the group are looking for life - something, anything tangible to cling on to.

It's a fine piece of work, obviously. A fluttering, steadily building piece of soft beauty which never quite falls over into total chaos, however much it threatens to. Mercury Rev would eventually reach success with a more conventionally epic sound, but this single indicates that their beginnings were almost entirely grounded in a frail and occasionally frightening kind of psychedelia. There was a slight sense that they didn't quite know what they were doing, but the whole thing worked out fine anyway. It's a thrill to hear the group walk the tightrope successfully.



5. Throwing Muses - Not Too Soon (4AD)

"Over the past six years Throwing Muses have been one of the most consistent bands to have come out of America. Signed to 4AD in '86, they have released a total of four EPs, one mini LP and four full length albums. 'Not Too Soon', taken from '91's "Real Ramona" LP, was written by Tanya Donelly who has since left the group. Both Tanya and the Muses are currently recording LPs for release this autumn".

Perhaps inevitably, "Not Too Soon" ends up sounding more like Tanya Donelly than most Throwing Muses tracks here, and - intentionally or otherwise - appeared to act as a showcase for her forthcoming work with the group Belly. While Hersh was always popularly regarded as the eccentric and creative genius within the group, her stepsister Donelly was often left to flounder somewhere in the background - doubtless a frustrating situation for someone with bags of talent of her own (and a very separate personality with an arguably more conventional charisma attached).

"Not Too Soon" is immediate evidence that Donelly could cope by herself. A killer riff is matched by her growling vocal force, and the tracks bursts into life from the first split second, Tanya snapping the track wide open with the words "She... colourblind, tired eyes..." while the Muses weave their magic behind her. The pounding drums and somewhat absurd, inarticulate chorus reveal that we're still very much in their territory, but this is nonetheless an oddly catchy and compelling single.

With Belly, Donelly would go on to become a mainstream media figure for awhile, and scored a number one LP in the British Charts with her debut LP "Star". Seldom have individuals breaking away from groups had so much success and acclaim so quickly on their own.

Volume 13 Side One - Stone Roses, Teenage Fanclub, Revolver, Chapterhouse, Slowdive

Year of Release: 1991
Formats: Double LP/ Cassette/ CD

We're about to enter a brief period of thin gruel for the Indie Top 20 series, and I'm unsure how much of that could be blamed on the series new compiler Tim Millington, or the state of the British music scene at the time.

For make no mistake, the spotlight was largely off British guitar based music at this point, even here at home. Grunge was beginning to slowly pull itself out of its mouldy cigarette butt infested bed, and within a matter of moments it would become the dominant alternative cultural force in the UK. But it's not as if our homegrown bands were putting up any kind of a fight - our assortment of uncharismatic shoegazing bands and faintly miffed indie pub bands just didn't carry the same alienated cultural message. Indie Dance could realistically have promised us some more goodness, but The Stone Roses were embroiled in a long-lasting legal dispute and unable to record, and the Mondays had largely gone to seed. Without those two lynchpins being active, the scene buckled and weakened.

There are some fantastic tracks on "Volume 13", but there's also more to criticise than usual, and I'm afraid the contents do accurately reflect my memories of this period. Things started to get interesting again quite quickly - though it felt like an age to live through it - but for the next couple of LPs, we're going to find ourselves struggling slightly.

Also, it's hardly an important point, but this is possibly also one of the worst sleeves for any LP in the series. It looks more like a flyer advertising the opening of a new local organic greengrocers than anything else. As Tony Barron of Reeves and Mortimer's "The Club" sketches might have said: "Pears are irrelevant to concept of indie hits".

1. Stone Roses - I Wanna Be Adored (Silvertone)

The first track, straight off the bat, is from a group who had been inactive for some time at this point, embroiled in a legal battle with Silvertone Records which would ensure they didn't release any new product until 1994. Putting this two year old track right at the front of the LP rather than an exciting new band or a big sound from an established indie group does, it has to be said, feel a bit desperate.

Still, it wasn't as if it hadn't only recently charted. "I Wanna Be Adored" was the first single released without the Roses permission, plundered from their debut LP in the hope that Silvertone could make some more money out of the group while they "relaxed". At the time, we had no idea whatsoever that it would be the first of many plundering missions the label undertook, and within months "Waterfall" and a shockingly bad edit of "I Am The Resurrection" (where the group sounded as if Reni had been replaced by a toddler thumping on some shortbread tins and a cowbell) would also be singles, followed by remixes of "Fools Gold", a B-sides compilation, an A and B-sides collection, a Remix album, and on and on it went. Given that they were only on Silvertone Records for one LP and a small brace of singles, it's staggering just how much the label managed to stretch and repackage the contents of their vaults.

Of all the releases, "I Wanna Be Adored" felt the most excusable, partly because it had already been issued as a 45 in the USA, and partly because the UK B-side "Where Angels Play" had never been officially released until this point. So for our money, we got a very pretty, delicate B-side in return for not terribly much money, and few people had any gripes about it.

We're not here to discuss "Where Angels Play", however, but its evergreen A-side which has become something of an alternative FM anthem in the years since. It was actually the oldest Stone Roses song to find a place on their debut LP, having been a feature of the group's live set since their earliest days, and as such is slightly uncharacteristic of the rest of the contents. As a first track it's a bold bark of intent and its slow, steady build does an exciting job of preparing you for the rush of the rest of the first side, but it's hard to imagine it being anywhere else on the album and fitting in comfortably. The dark, echoing basslines it opens with still have an epic gothy tone to them, and feel like something The Mission could have written. John Squire's chopping and chiming guitar spins things back into a more Roses orientated direction, but even then there's a strange, echoing, rockist darkness to the track the rest of the LP largely avoids. Even "Shoot You Down" is brighter and bolder sounding than this, and altogether less cavernous.

Still, it was and remains one of the group's more appreciated tracks, and crossed over to audiences they may not otherwise have reached. In Essex, I noted with interest that stray bar-dwelling goths could be persuaded to sway about a bit to "I Wanna Be Adored" in a way they wouldn't do for "Waterfall" and certainly not "Fools Gold".
"I do like that track of theirs," an older Siouxsie and the Banshees fan said to me once. "You know, 'I Wanna Be A Dog'".



2. Teenage Fanclub - Star Sign (Creation)

Teenage Fanclub had by this point established themselves as the Great Hopes of British Alternative Rock, which was a pity as the group lacked the hunger and ambition to really compete on the global stage. When the group also signed with Geffen in America, they could probably have celebrated in any location they chose - in reality, they signed the contract in their local fish and chip shop. And so it would continue.

One listen to "Star Sign" is enough evidence for why everyone was getting so excited, though. It's a pounding, punching piece of rock music with a Byrdsian melody upfront and Big Star styled guitar lines behind, sounding as bright and hopeful as Slade at their most optimistic and as heavy and hard as the US grunge bands rising up at this point. In fact, it sounds as if it should have been an enormous hit outside the indie charts, so rammed is it with chiming hooks - but for some reason it only settled at number 44.

The B-side was a bizarre and popular cover of "Like A Virgin", and mutterings emerged from critics and label bosses alike about a huge album the band were about to release. By the end of the year, "Bandwagonesque" would become a much-wanted Christmas gift for indie kids everywhere. My copy got played to death and still sits on my shelf today, occasionally pulled down for relistening, and I can recall visiting the houses of friends and acquaintances and seeing their copies sat by the side of the stereo as well. For an LP which only climbed as high as Number 22 on the national charts, it seemed to be everywhere in my social group for awhile. Sadly, while the group have sustained moderate success to this day, a release of theirs would never be greeted with that kind of mania again.



3. Revolver - Heaven Sent An Angel (Hut)

Revolver had it all. Press. Endless features on "The Chart Show" and evening radio. A contract with Hut, who were essentially just a boutique label reporting to Virgin Records. And yet not a single one of their records, to the best of my knowledge, entered the national Top 100.

This either has to be considered extremely unfortunate or a symptom of the group's mediocrity, and I'm afraid in my opinion it's the latter. Revolver looked and sounded the part, being a bunch of cute kids big on atmospheric guitar soundscapes. They had the major label backing. What they lacked were tunes which stood out from the pack in any way whatsoever.

Debut "Heaven Sent An Angel" is probably their finest effort, yet still sounds like something which consists entirely of an admittedly good guitar riff the group were clearly in love with, vocals which follow the guitar line very closely, some atmospheric meandering, and nothing else. It's early nineties indie at its laziest and most generic, and it's staggering that anyone took it seriously. It's also absurdly tough to write about - there's so little of interest actually going on here that it's impossible to find much to say at all. I can only conclude that Revolver were a jammy bunch of buggers in the right place at the right time who failed to capitalise successfully on their luck.



4. Chapterhouse - Precious One (Dedicated)

That said, Chapterhouse were responsible for one of the worst gigs I attended during the period - 45 minutes of men flicking and thrashing their long hair around to bits of effects pedal fiddling as they desperately struggled to approximate the sounds they had created on vinyl. They came back out for an encore even though nobody was much enthused about them doing one.

Fortunately, they're not so bad on your stereo, and in fairness to them they were playing at a club with  a horrible PA the one time I saw them. Somewhat bafflingly, though, "Precious One" is taken from the popular "Mesmerise" EP, whose lead track provided them with their largest hit. Presumably the rights to obtain that were too expensive?

"Precious One" is a soft and buttery track which has a similar blissful quality to their club staple sound "Pearl" without having the same amount of drive. It does sound like a quintessential example of the shoegazing sound in retrospect, being filled with layers of intricate detail and a distinctly foggy, hallucinogenic feel. It's never going to be hailed as the group's defining moment, but as a mere B-side it proved that some of the early hype Chapterhouse experienced wasn't totally unreasonable. After all, if they were throwing songs away which were this luxurious, they must have had moments of pure genius up their sleeves.



5. Slowdive - Catch The Breeze (Creation)

In case you were wondering, Volume 13 really proves that mid-1991 was Peak Shoegaze - the scene was utterly overrun with pie-eyed groups singing about being hypnotised, or watching dolphins, or flying about, or feeling the breeze against their faces. Honestly, anyone would have thought there was a huge fucking Donovan festival going on that year or something.

Slowdive were highly inspired by My Bloody Valentine and were also signed to Creation Records alongside them. Unlike MBV, though, Slowdive didn't experiment on their audiences to ascertain the psychological effects of extreme decibels, or record anything as occasionally terrifying as "Loveless". Most of their music was ponderous, deeply stoned sounding, and rich on atmospherics. "Catch The Breeze" isn't their finest single in my view - we'll catch up with that later - but does give a firm impression of where the group were at stylistically. Tumbling Nick Mason-esque drum patterns meet gentle melodies, Rachel Goswell's angelic, breathy vocals, and a closing melody which constantly reaches for some kind of blissed euphoria.

If you were being unkind, you could argue that (here in particular) they were an indiefied Clannad at best. Then again, if you were the Manic Street Preachers, you would argue that they were "worse than Hitler", which is harsher still. Certainly, there was something slightly retrograde and lacking in modernity about Slowdive - interviews revealed a band from comfortable backgrounds who had very little to say for themselves, and musically they sounded like a cosy, fuzzy sonic duvet at a time when Britain was a somewhat troubled country. If you're wondering why shoegazing bands from very middle class backgrounds were so frequently derided at the time, you have to understand their position in the context of the times, and also the backgrounds of many of the music journalists criticising them. Against the Poll Tax riots and a decade of seemingly unending and occasionally outright spiteful Conservative rule, they seemed docile and complacent, content with their position in the world. While they were hardly all emerging from the Thames Valley and other Home Counties areas to soundtrack some kind of enforced medication time, to many music journalists who had been versed on punk rebellion, they seemed uncomfortably close to an indulgent hippy past we were supposed to have been "saved" from. These all seem like ridiculous reasons to criticise a group's music in retrospect, possibly because they are.

In reality, a lot of material they recorded has stood the test of time extraordinary well, and perhaps sits more comfortably in the present day than it did in 1991. "Catch The Breeze" may not have been asking much of the listener other than to take a chill pill, but that's hardly much of a sin, and it still sounds sumptuous in places, which is what actually matters. We can hardly be expected to spend every minute of our waking lives being furious at the world, can we? (Cut to: Rik the People's Poet glaring furiously at my words on a computer screen and hissing "Hippy!").