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

1. Inspiral Carpets - Bitches Brew (Mute)

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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



3. Throwing Muses - Firepile (4AD)

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

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



4. Stereolab - Low Fi (Too Pure)

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

Volume 14 Side Two - Dr Phibes & The House of Wax Equations, The Sugarcubes, Catwalk, Wonky Alice, Th'Faith Healers

1. Dr Phibes and The House of Wax Equations: Hazy Lazy Hologram (50 Seel Street)

"Dr Phibes and The House of Wax Equations are based in Liverpool and signed to 50 Seel Street records. Fronted by Howard King Jr, Dr Phibes will go a long way. Do not be surprised if they soon get scooped up by a major record company and go on to have enormous commercial and critical success".

How unfortunate, but not unusual. The music press really were all a little mad for this psychedelic group in the early nineties, and there's no question at all that a lot of their work had a searing, almost frightening power to it other groups simply couldn't manage. "Hazy Lazy Hologram" is like being stoned and disorientated at a party while someone (Howard King Jr) forcefully lays matters on the line to you, wide eyed and dictatorial. It's not, if the truth be told, much of a song in the traditional sense of the word - the entire track is held together by sheer force of atmosphere, energy and personality. No easy feat, and something a lot of the shoegazing bands of the period were really missing; a dark and magnetic force at their hearts.

The major labels really didn't come knocking, though, perhaps realising that there was a limited market for this kind of thing, and the group never really did manage to build on the profile this high-climbing indie chart track afforded them. By 1995 they had split, and in 1997 Howard King Jr was charged with the murder of his mother and sentenced to life imprisonment at Caernarfon Crown Court. In other words, a swift reunion to capitalise on the presently burgeoning indie nostalgia circuit may be rather unlikely.



2. The Sugarcubes - Hit (One Little Indian)

"'Hit' is The Sugarcubes seventh single for One Little Indian and is featured on their third album 'Stick Around For Joy' which is their best collection of tunes since the release of their 1988 million selling debut album 'Life's Too Good'. The Sugarcubes are one of the most refreshingly innovative bands around at the moment".

First off, I find it slightly unbelievable that "Life's Too Good" sold a million copies globally, but I suppose the group did have a cult following across a large number of countries, and anything is possible. I'm surprised that stat isn't paraded around more frequently if it is true, though.

As for "Hit", it was the subject of much mockery from unimaginative and witless music critics at the time, all of whom seemed to say "Given their track record, the title seems like wishful thinking, eh readers?!" Needless to say, the group had the last laugh, and it did turn out to be their solitary British chart hit. While I doubt it was designed to be such - you got the impression that The Sugarcubes never really gave a shit about storming up the singles chart - "Hit" has a neatness, catchiness and fluidity to it most Sugarcubes singles lack. Even Einar's interjections are kept to a bare minimum.  With its funky guitar backing, taut rhythms and Bjork's pleading, imploring vocals, it's one of the group's strongest pieces of 45rpm work, and its dancefloor friendly nature hinted that their lead singer's future  potentially lay in other areas. Her work with 808 State ("Oops") showed that she could sound dazzlingly brilliant against electronic and dancefloor backdrops, and clearly lightbulbs began flashing above her head. The Sugarcubes were not long for this world.

In truth, there was a widespread perception that the group hadn't completely fulfilled their initial promise anyway, and by the time of their final album "Stick Around For Joy", public interest was waning despite the fact that "Hit" was their "breakthrough" moment (and still seems to be the only Sugarcubes song any UK radio station is actually interested in playing). The smell of fresh new pastures must have been tempting for everyone involved.



3. Catwalk - Damascus (Dedicated)

"Catwalk is made up of Chris Roberts and a shifting nucleus of contributing musicians. After winning the GLR demo clash for a record number of consecutive weeks, they were signed by Dedicated. 'Damascus' is 'a pulsating passion play about love, hate, revelation and mermaids', which is featured on Catwalk's debut 45 which came out in January".

Ah, Gary Crowley's demo clash and the good old days of Greater London Radio (one of the country's most under-rated radio stations at the time). You can almost imagine Crowley falling off his chair with excitement at all the new sounds flooding into the station, talking on air at high speed in block caps and buzzing his nut off at the possibility of finding the next big thing. For some of us in the early nineties, Crowley was the closest we got to a religious evangelist, except he was pushing lots of scratchy Camden indie bands rather than God.

For all their apparent popularity with London radio listeners, though, Catwalk were a short-lived proposition who only managed one more single after this one ("Ballerina") before Dedicated gave them the heave-ho. It's not massively surprising. "Damascus" is slick and smooth, with the kind of pulsating backing Depeche Mode wouldn't have deemed inappropriate a few years prior to its release - but it clings on to that central riff for dear life, relying on it to pull the entire song through. It's polished and accomplished, and a bit dirty and sassy with it, but lacks spark, personality or surprises. It actually sounds like a song built around an improvised studio jam performed by very competent and able musicians, closer to a U2/ Eno joint session than alternative rock. I can't hate it or object to it, but for me it's completely inessential.



4. Wonky Alice - Caterpillars (Pomona)

"Wonky Alice are a four piece who are causing quite a stir in the North West at the moment. 'Caterpillars' is taken from their debut EP for the Pomona label 'Insects and Astronauts'. The band recently recorded a Radio 5 session for Mark Radcliffe and have supported World of Twist. Wonky Alice are definitely a band to watch out for in future".

Stop with these inaccurate predictions, please! Do you see how much we were all scrabbling around in pop's great lucky dip barrel desperately looking for our new saviours at this point, readers? For verily, we lived in a time where our hopes and dreams were placed with such characters as Dr Phibes, Wonky Alice, Russell out of Moose and Loz from Kingmaker, and yea, they did not deliver, for Miles Hunt was the chosen one and so he would be crowned until Britpop came to our sacred isle.

Rochdale's Wonky Alice were a truly eccentric bunch to place any faith in, though, with perhaps the most appropriate band name of them all. Wobbly, ske-wiff riffs rambled around dispassionate vocals and elastic basslines, creating a noise which was utterly uncommercial but which nonetheless hinted towards an inventive and possibly bright future for the band. This was like the more angular moments from the C86 years returning with a vengeance - but in reality, and perhaps entirely predictably, the group could only manage a small cult following.

"Caterpillars" is odd, sharp and interesting, but very difficult to actually love.



5. Th'Faith Healers - Reptile Smile (Too Pure) - vinyl and cassette only

[I own the CD having sold my vinyl copy of this album some years ago, so unfortunately don't have the sleevenotes that went with this track.]

There again, Th'Faith Healers really up the ante. With rumbling basslines, spiralling, spindly riffs, taunting, irritated vocals and screeches of feedback, "Reptile Smile" is threatening without actually being aggressive. It's a jittery, impish screech of a record, underproduced as hell, and couldn't give a fig whether you like it or not.

The group had a sizeable cult following around London at the time, and were renowned for powerful live performances which some friends of mine still speak about today. I didn't witness them live, but on record it's possible to get a sense of that energy and unpredictability - "Reptile Smile" is ragged and pithy, and difficult to ignore.

The group would eventually split in 1993 after two LPs, and Tom Cullinan would later go on to be a key player in Quickspace.

Volume 8 Side 3 - Sugarcubes, Kitchens of Distinction, Fatima Mansions, Wire, Field Mice, Pale Saints

1. The Sugarcubes - Regina (One Little Indian)

"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.

Indie Top 20 Vol 5 Side 4 - Darling Buds, Talulah Gosh, Sugarcubes, Another Sunny Day, Swans

1. Darling Buds - Shame On You (Native)

Ah memories, misty water coloured memories, of the way we were... it sounds almost unfathomable now, but The Darling Buds were an incredibly big deal around this time, featuring in the "Great Hopes for 1989" section of many a music magazine at 1988's tail end. Bursting out of Newport way before Cool Cymru was dreamt up, and fronted by the very blonde and pretty Andrea Lewis with the moody, smouldering Harley Farr on guitar, they looked the part, sounded spiky and could clearly pen a catchy ditty. Whatever could go wrong?

As always with this question, it's difficult to give a precise answer, really, but they never quite hit the same heights as the rather similar Primitives, never mind The Stone Roses or even The Wonder Stuff. "Shame On You" makes some hints as to why - sharp and sparky the whole affair might be, but there's actually very little to set the band apart from their indiepop compatriots apart from presentation. It zips along in one big rush but doesn't sound in any way significant, cheeky, snappy little lines like "Of all the things you could have said/ you had to say 'let's go to bed'" aside.

Away from all the hype, though, it is possible to admire the track's sheer driving force and sassiness. And in fairness to the band, they had better tracks up their sleeves, albeit none strong enough to really push them into the frontline of pop.

Overall, though, another group for the "Not quite as good as The Flatmates" file. And once The Darling Buds of May became a major hit television series, their name became faintly absurd too, rather than them seeming like another indie band named after an old tome.



2. Talulah Gosh - Bringing Up Baby (53rd & 3rd)

Some unintentionally cruel track sequencing here. 1989's great hopes are followed by a group who had largely fallen into irrelevance in the music press by this point. At one particularly fruitful, fresh post-C86 point, you couldn't even pick up a copy of the glossy Record Mirror without reading about Talulah Gosh, but by the end of 1988 eyes had turned elsewhere.

It's not overly surprising, really, because while the music press love to champion fresh new faces and underdogs for a year or two, they tend to lose patience and wander off if the act either remains resolutely underground or just plain doesn't break through. Talulah Gosh were clearly in the former camp - despite the enormous strides they had made by the time we last caught up with them on Volume Two, they remained on a tiny indie, always sounded charmingly amateurish (or irritatingly so, depending on your point of view) and continued writing songs about subject matters which were never going to resonate with the broader public. "Bringing Up Baby", for example, seems to be partly based on a 1938 Katherine Hepburn film of the same name. I've never seen it, but it's apparently a "screwball comedy", which makes the slightly melancholic air and detachment of the song feel rather strange. It seems more likely that this is about an ordinary couple desperately imagining themselves to be like Hepburn and Cary Grant in the film.

It's a sweet, lonely, fragile little song which sounds like the band beginning to explore more interesting depths, but their final single "Testcard Girl" was just around the corner, and that would be the end of that. Like The Flatmates before them, there would be no album, although Amelia Fletcher, Mathew Fletcher and Peter Montchiloff would re-emerge in Heavenly, who became full-on indiepop legends with a much more rounded, tougher style. "Atta Girl" in particular highlights how much their lyrical and musical approach would build on the Gosh foundations.

Fun Indiepop fact - In 2014 Amelia Fletcher was awarded with an OBE for her services to Competition and Consumer Economics.



3. The Sugarcubes - Deus (One Little Indian)

"Birthday" was such a beguiling single that there was a period spent wondering how on earth The Sugarcubes would follow it up. Most journalists predicted a Cocteau Twins styled career, consisting of atmospheric, wobbly songs with disorientating lyrical content. It didn't happen. "Birthday" was a complete one-off, and the follow-up single "Cold Sweat" was an aggressive, almost threatening single about sexual intercourse.

We won't get a chance to discuss that one here - a shame, because it's probably one of the more under-rated singles in their catalogue, forever referred to as a "disappointing follow-up" for not being another "Birthday". Third single, "Deus", on the other hand, did get space on "Indie Top 20" and is different yet again, being a piece of laidback, loping funkiness about a God figure who forces people to have baths upon meeting them. "He was not white and fluffy!" complains Einar about the deity before him. "He just had sideburns and a quiff!"

Musically, the track has chiming guitars and a polished finish - it sounds like laidback, FM, adult pop, with only Bjork's vocal acrobatics and Einar's bizarre interjections skewing it in stranger directions. The group once claimed in an interview that it had been designed to be a French pop hit, in what was widely regarded to be a slightly sarcastic comment to a typically parochial British journalist who enquired about when they were going to have a "proper" hit in the UK charts. However, it may have had some truth behind it. From my parent's house in sub-suburban Southend, you could clearly pick up French and Belgian radio, and "Deus" definitely got on there alongside all the middle-of-the-road pop hits of the day.

In the end, though, it had to content itself with a number 51 placing in the UK and not a great deal anywhere else (apart from, presumably, their home country). I'd also argue it's not the finest single in the band's catalogue - it's enjoyable but the inventiveness begins and ends with the lyrics, and the band were at their best when they all really pushed the boat out. You could imagine elements of "Deus" being given to The Police to use as a backing track, which isn't something you could easily say of most of their other output. Still, if nothing else it showed they had baffling versatility.



4. Another Sunny Day - I'm In Love With A Girl Who Doesn't Know I Exist (Sarah)

Whenever a music journalist seeks to skewer the output of Sarah Records with their case for the prosecution, "I'm In Love With A Girl Who Doesn't Know I Exist" is normally first on the list. And why in hell not, I suppose? This, really, is a mere minute-and-a-half of sparsely recorded guitar plucking and musing on unrequited love, the musical template for weak, fragile young souls with tea-stained Sartre books from the library in their satchels that they're never actually going to read. AmIrite?

Not really. While I can't get geared up for this single in the manner that a lot of Sarah aficionados can, its economy of style and folksy melody are significant plus points. There's an awful lot going on within not much time, in a manner that the best sixties folk rockers managed but very few cult indie figures did.

Lyrically, of course, it's as simplistic as anything ever produced by a hair metal band, if not more so - it has delicate sensitivity in buckets, but Harvey Williams (the main driving force behind ASD) despairs "I could speak to you, you could speak to me/ Oh but it will never happen, what will be will be", which besides being startlingly lazy writing also underlines adolescent romantic idealism. He's in love with a girl who doesn't know he exists, purely because her dialogue with him has been non-existent. All she's aware of is that occasional intense gaze across the playground, which is getting more and MORE intense and uncomfortable by the day... pack it in, Harvey. She probably fancies a boy in the year above anyway.

As I pointed out in my entry about The Razorcuts, though, swap the gender roles around in the song to the more traditional "I'm In Love With A Boy Who Doesn't Know I Exist", and the creepiness and hopelessness somehow fades away. Which is maybe at least half the point.



5. Swans - Love Will Tear Us Apart (Jarboe vocal) (Product Inc)

New Yorkers Swans are usually known for piercing, grinding experimental rock, and tend to repulse as many people as they attract. Their 1988 cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" marks a sudden and surprising change of style. Rather than overload the song with harsh, eardrum threatening guitar noises, they handled it with respect and care, recording two versions. One, the Michael Gira sung version, was so close to the original as to be of questionable worth. This, sung by their keyboardist and co-vocalist Jarboe, takes a different tack.

Jarboe seems to interpret the song as a spiritual, hollering the words to a minimal keyboard backing. It sounds at times agonised, other times resigned, sweeping upwards before falling earthbound moments later.

It's ambitious despite its simplicity, and is a worthy reinterpretation, but it's not something I return to very often. It certainly showed that "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was a powerful piece of songwriting which could stand up to all manner of arrangements, but nothing new unveils itself after the first listen here. It does, however, act as a downbeat, sombre and calm resolution to Volume 5.

Indie Top 20 Volume 3 Side 4 - Sugarcubes, Throwing Muses, My Bloody Valentine, Wedding Present, Joy Division

1. The Sugarcubes - Birthday (Icelandic Version) (One Little Indian)

When this was released in 1987, the initial response could only be described as enthusiastic bewilderment. It wasn't that anyone in the position to promote it (music journalists or late night DJs) disliked it, more that they didn't understand how to describe it or put it neatly into context with anything else that was happening at the time.

Partly for that reason, I suspect, The Sugarcubes ended up becoming a band-come-tourism-campaign-for-Iceland, with almost every announcement, review, interview and Chart Show fact box referring to the fact that they came from a remote, frozen island with the same "population as Camden Town". A place hardly anyone visited, where music made strange ethereal noises and television only broadcast for three hours every day. The only way to describe "Birthday" in a way that might have made it saleable or caused it to make any sense to the time-pressed observer was to make it sound like an exotic cultural phenomenon occurring in some strange, faraway place.

Trouble is, as anyone who has become acquainted with Iceland or its music scene since fully understands, "Birthday" isn't really typical of anything happening there, or indeed anywhere else. Sure, music journalists compared the band to the Cocteau Twins at this point, and there's no question that there's an influence at play, but even so... those whining, weeping guitars, chiming bells, ponderous percussive elements, and Bjork's echoing, sky-reaching howling combine to create something actually really very creepy. The word "beautiful" has been occasionally used to describe the single, but it's not a well sounding record to my ears; it reaches, it surges, it staggers, it collapses like a yearning ballad being played from a vinyl record on a boat at choppy seas.

The video, screened on "The Chart Show" more times than I can sensibly count, adds to the sense of unease. The background picture is Bjork dancing and singing in an empty room with a darkened window. The foreground shot zooms in and out of Bjork's face, and as it zooms in she becomes pixellated like a Crimewatch video of a witness talking about a heinous murder. It's cheap and basic, but it again gives the impression of something slightly more sinister.

Bjork later referred to this as a "tasteless pop song", clarifying: "It’s a story about a love affair between a five year old girl, a secret and a man who lives next door. The song’s called Birthday because it’s his fiftieth birthday... I was always changing my mind about what the lyrics should be about. I had the atmosphere right from the start but not the facts. It finally ended up concentrating on this experience I remembered having as a little girl, among many other little girls’ experiences. It’s like huge men, about fifty or so, affect little girls very erotically but nothing happens . . . nothing is done, just this very strong feeling. I picked on this subject to show that anything can affect you erotically; material, a tree, anything.”

Which doesn't really clarify anything concretely, except to say that from the foundations up (the premise, the overall sound, the delivery) "Birthday" is consciously awkward, naive and confused, reaching for past emotions it can't get to or explain, and seems to want to unnerve the listener with its ideas.

I have my own particular memories of being five years old which relate tangentially to this record: My parents used to have an old 1960s stacking record player in the corner of our front room which was as big as a cupboard and contained a large number of old singles in its compartments. I used to regularly plough through the singles and stack them on the central spindle, spinning Fats Domino, The Beatles, The Animals, Ray Charles and other classic records of that era. On occasion, the stacking process wouldn't work, and a record would drop and as it span, would slip and slide against the label of the one beneath it, causing the melody to create a slightly discordant, wobbly noise. I hated this. It caused me to run from the room crying out to get help, I found it so unsettling.

To this day, I still have a stronger gag reflex than most around music which feels unsettled and faintly discordant (and not, crucially, heavily discordant) in a similar way (so it's lucky we won't have to discuss My Bloody Valentine much). It causes me to admire the way "Birthday" was put together rather than actually outright enjoy it.

But whatever I think, or reflexively feel - this single launched Bjork outside of Iceland and created a fascinating and unique pop star who remains an inspiration to many, and you could argue it was even the first pivotal step towards putting Iceland on the tourist map, giving the country more glossy magazine and newspaper coverage in Britain and beyond than it had enjoyed since the Cod Wars. If The Sugarcubes caused you to pull the Atlas from your parent's bookshelf and look further north than usual, you weren't alone. Maybe it was the start of the nation being patronised as being weird, quirky and out-there, when in reality it's no weirder or quirkier than any island nation - but that's the price everyone paid.

"Birthday" itself was never a conventional hit, but hung around the bottom of the National Top 100 across the whole of Autumn 1987, and ended up selling 50,000 copies - more than many "proper" chart hits.



2. Throwing Muses - Cry Baby Cry (4AD)

"Cry Baby Cry", on the other hand, isn't much more settled than "Birthday", sounding like an agonised country record performed in sheer panic by some musicians held at gunpoint. "He moved me and the chains changed!" yelps Kirsten Hirsch in a way that's one part joy, the other part total fear, while the band chug along rapidly behind her.

It's a deranged sounding single which has a rawness later Throwing Muses releases wouldn't necessarily possess. As the years rolled on, they discovered ways to decant their angular sound into more poppy structures, whereas "Cry Baby Cry" is almost all sharp edges. As an introduction to the band, it's interesting but not particularly accessible.

As a teenager, I actually thought this was probably what a band would have sounded like if Sylvia Plath had been a lead musician rather than a poet. Full marks for being a pretentious boy, then, but I'm going to put that comment here anyway because there's still a slight ring of truth about it for me. It has the same driving energy combined with disquieting ideas.

"You're wrong, Dave, and you're a pseud. Comparing bands to Sylvia Plath, honestly, you're not 14 anymore".
You're probably right, but I can't help it.



3. My Bloody Valentine - Strawberry Wine (Lazy)

And after all that, we get My Bloody Valentine at probably their most "normal". In their earliest days, MBV were usually regarded as being a sideshow in Indiepop quarters, a fey, merry group with some syrupy sixties ideas in their veins. That's an undeservingly simplistic view, as you can actually hear some of what would eventually make them significant here - the mix is much more interesting than anything, for example, The Pastels would be bothered to create. Feeling set on one constant droning mid-point, with the coo-ing backing vocals dominating and faintly buried lead vocals, it sounds faintly blurry, out of focus and claustrophobic. Something was already starting to happen, even if the details hadn't been fully fleshed out yet.

"Strawberry Wine" also sounds like a psychedelic folk song booted into the laps of an indie group, having a faintly otherworldly quality as a result. This is bit parts Indiepop, Shoegaze and early Incredible String Band at the same time.

Of course, if anyone had been played "Birthday" and "Strawberry Wine" back to back at the time and been asked which group would go on to make widely critically acclaimed and groundbreaking albums with their recording studio experiments, I still doubt the answer "My Bloody Valentine" would have cropped up much. Hindsight is a funny thing.



4. The Wedding Present - Anyone Can Make A Mistake (Reception)

This starts with high-powered guitar jangling, then revs its engine and speeds off, leading one critic of the time to comment: "The Ben Johnsons of indie take off around the track so fast they go straight past any tune".

That's a bit unfair, actually. "Anyone Can Make A Mistake" has become slightly sidelined in the Wedding Present's catalogue, but it's actually a brilliant little single, combining some superbly melodic, growling guitar riffs with an unstoppable energy. Even at this point before they signed to RCA, you can hear that their future would include "Kennedy" - "Anyone..." contains very similar elements in its sound.

Bigger and better things were to come in terms of exposure for the group, however, and this single acted as their last to sit outside the official UK Top 100. (Until they went "down the dumper" again, anyway).



5. Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart (Peel Session) (Strange Fruit)

And here we are again, discussing a classic track everyone knows, dating from well before 1987, purely because it was on a Peel Session EP and entered the indie chart as a result.

This time, though, at least the track is more than marginally different from the finally released single version, and in my view actually better. Some might see this as sacrilege, but the Peel Session version adds more beef to Peter Hook's clattering basslines and the driving percussion, giving the track a sense of drama it didn't eventually have. Of course, other people believe that this destroys the sense of atmosphere the song later had - it's entirely a matter of taste.

The Peel Session EP climbed to number three on the indie chart, and number 98 on the Offical Top 100.