Volume 22 Tracks 11-15 - Dubstar, The Charlatans, Verve, Ruby, Belly

11. Dubstar - Stars (Food)

While I've been writing this blog, I've occasionally encountered tracks I haven't properly listened to for years, which give me an enormous proustian rush. Memories of places, times, drunken nights, and songs leaking out of Argos purchased clock radios in the morning in cheap rented rooms... these almost overpower the songs themselves. I was slightly surprised to find that "Stars", which was eventually Dubstar's biggest hit, was one of these tracks. It feels like something which was absolutely everywhere for six months, then nowhere at all, forever locking it to a specific time in my life.

The group's first LP "Disgraceful" was a steady and constant seller throughout 1995, peaking at number thirty in the album charts but hanging around forever. It attracted a diverse audience, with pop listeners, Dance music fans and indie kids alike having copies tucked away in their CD collections, and "Stars" did an enormous amount to help its status. Filled with the same dark, late night winter atmosphere as Sneaker Pimps "6 Overground", the track is subtle and slippery, and moody as fuck. Sarah Blackwood's vocals manage to be both sweet and bleakly agitated ("for my life, my God I'm singing") and it's actually a rather brilliant piece of pop music. The Pet Shop Boys at their most despondent are a better reference point for Dubstar here than any of their peers on the indie circuit.

Sarah Blackwood has been a continued presence on the music scene since thanks to her involvement with the cultishly successful Client, but I can't help but wonder if "Disgraceful" deserves a thorough reissue treatment. It was a constant, misty background presence throughout 1995 and deserves better than to sit in the cut-price CD section of Fopp Records.



12. The Charlatans -  Just Lookin' (Beggars Banquet)

The Charlatans resurrection into the mainstream of British rock and pop continued with "Just Lookin", which was a modest hit in 1995. Most of their material at this time consisted of straight ahead groovers which could just have easily been recorded by The Rolling Stones or The Faces in the early seventies. All of these lacked the moody, psychedelic nature of their earliest material, but it was impossible not to be charmed by the force of it all. Tim Burgess's grinning visage in the video for "Just Lookin'" says it all - they were a group in love with the sounds they were making and the swagger of their ideas, and only too happy to jettison their darker side for awhile.

Within a year, they would be back in the top ten again, the only early nineties baggy band to actually gain ground during the Britpop era rather than drift away into cultdom or irrelevance.



13. The Verve - On Your Own (Hut)

By the point of their third album "A Northern Soul", The Verve's transformation from psychedelic warriors into a band producing records of epic, classic moodiness was complete. While huge critical acclaim was on their side, sales surprisingly weren't - this is astonishing, given that all the other components which eventually made them enormous seemed to be in place. In particular, "History" from the LP sounded like it should have been an easy top ten hit. It was due to these failings on Hut and Virgin's part that Liam Gallagher apparently swore at a Virgin executive at a corporate do, sneering at him that he "couldn't even fucking break The Verve".

I have to wonder if it was entirely Hut or their parent company Virgin's fault, or other forces were to blame. "On Your Own" was a minor hit at the time, but its threadbare moodiness sounds distinctly un-1995. At this point, the Britpop knees-up was still ongoing, and hadn't quite given way to the subtle, epic melancholy which would dominate the later part of the nineties. The Verve often sounded wonderful and worthy, and "On Your Own" is a prime example of how touching they could be, but it didn't really cut through to the public's consciousness amidst the noise and pandemonium. Soon, all that would change and "Urban Hymns" would go on to be one of the biggest selling albums of all time in Britain.



14. Ruby - Paraffin (Red Snapper Mix) (Creation)

Lesley Rankine has been on this blog once before, albeit under a different guise and making an incredibly different noise. Silverfish were snappy, squatty Camden punks who briefly bullied the indie scene in 1993. Ruby, on the other hand, were a trip-hop project who slipped out almost unnoticed, despite some airplay and unlikely appearances on programmes such as "Later With Jools Holland" (where Silverfish were almost certainly never going to end up).

The original version of "Paraffin" is an atmospheric and vaguely threatening piece of work. The Red Snapper mix included here is jazzy, complex, and unbelievably good. Jittering and winding its way around the original melody, it showed there was considerably more to Lesley Rankine than thrashed guitars and the Camden underground - this is sophisticated and fascinating work which really should have been appreciated more at the time than it was.

I wish I knew where my copy of the Ruby LP "Salt Peter" had disappeared to. I owned both that and the remix LP this stemmed from, and they seem to have gone walkabout in the countless house moves I've undergone since.



15. Belly - Seal My Fate (4AD)

While Belly's status had slipped somewhat since their LP "Stars" had reached number one on the album charts in 1993, they remained a much-loved group among those who hadn't quite abandoned all American alternative music at the height of Britpop.

The wonderful "Now They'll Sleep" became their biggest UK hit in 1995, reaching number 28, and "Seal My Fate" managed to worm its way into the Top 40 as well. Epic, sweeping and featuring one of Tanya Donnelly's most convincing vocal performances, it comes dangerously close to the kind of commercial rock peddled by Alanis Morissette later in the decade, without quite losing its rougher or more unusual edges. It was the group's last single before breaking up, and it's difficult not to regard this as being an odd decision - if they had chosen to taken a break and reconvened a couple of years later, there's every possibility Belly could have become a much bigger act.

Volume 18 Side 2 - Pop Will Eat Itself, Elastica, Verve, Teenage Fanclub, Kingmaker

1. Pop Will Eat Itself - RSVP (Infectious)

Since their last appearance on "Indie Top 20", Pop Will Eat Itself had "enjoyed" a fairly long but fractious stint with RCA. It was clear from the beginning that their relationship with the major label wasn't ideal. Not long after their debut RCA album "This Is The Day... This Is The Hour... This is This!" was released, Clint Mansell could be heard complaining in fanzines that the band's chances of bigger success had been ruined by a series of cock-ups followed by weak excuses at the label. RCA seemed confused by how to market the group, they felt, and had given up trying.

The group's relationship with them still managed a total of three studio LPs and one compilation before they were dropped at exactly the same moment their single "Get The Girl, Kill The Baddies!" smashed into the UK top ten. This peculiar achievement by both band and label caused them to be named as the first ever unsigned group to appear on "Top of the Pops" - until the same claim was made for Bis a number of years later (who, to be fair, did at least have absolutely no major label marketing budget or previous history on their side).

The more indie-friendly quarters of the British music press had a field day speculating what all this meant. Had RCA actually just done something incredibly stupid? Were Pop Will Eat Itself dumper-bound, or ascending towards something greater? The answer,  in the end, was neither - they would remain with the same status they always had. Somewhat unusually for a group who haven't been given much consideration since, they had a core and dedicated fanbase, and the high number nine chart placing for "Get The Girl" was down to the combined fluke of strong first week sales for them and a slow sales week across the rest of the board. They still had yet to achieve a top ten album, therefore still hadn't made any "real" money for their corporate employers.

While you would normally expect an unsigned band with a top ten single to cause a bidding war, the majors were therefore somewhat sniffy about rescuing PWEI, and they ended up back in Indieland, this time on the newly formed Infectious label. "RSVP" was their 1993 debut there, and it shows the group moving back towards a harder, edgier, guitar-led noise. Its chant-a-long chorus was memorable, the relentless noisiness of it very much in vogue with the grunge and industrial sounds edging into the mainstream, and it allowed them another one of their many minor Top 40 hits (seriously - count them). They even managed to get the twins from the Australian TV soap "Neighbours", Gillian and Gayle Blakeney, to appear in the video (who had been in the band The Monitors in the early eighties, as my other blog Left and to the Back will testify).

You could actually sympathise with major label's confusion about how to market the group, though, if such a dilemma did indeed exist. They continually sold modest volumes of records to the same bunch of dedicated fans for years without really gaining new converts or inching much further forwards. Attempts had been made to market them as "Britain's answer to the Beastie Boys" initially, then as an Indie-Dance group, then as a band who could crossover to Kerrang or Metal Hammer readers - none of these really stuck, and they sat in no-man's land appealing to their own gang of Grebo oddballs.



2. Elastica - Stutter (Deceptive)

As the old superstars of British indie found themselves being kicked off major labels or falling out of favour, so the arrogant and dashing new breed emerged. One thing that's often forgotten about Elastica is that they were a fledgling group when the first wave of publicity hit them, having only played a small number of gigs. Justine Frischmann was absurdly savvy and had a clear idea in mind of how the group should look and sound before they even put out their first single, of course - but even so, it's surprising how well they dealt with the media furore.

I caught them live supporting Pulp at the Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms in 1993, and there was a palpable buzz in the room, and a slightly unexpected one considering they were only the support band (at this point, Pulp had yet to achieve a Top 40 hit, so their support bands were seldom groups about to dominate popular culture). A handful of fanzine-writing teenagers scurried to the front of the room, chatting excitedly with pens and notebooks in hand. As the group took the stage, one was heard to ask Donna "Did you like the photos I took?" to which Donna nodded somewhat distractedly.
"She said she liked them!" said the young photographer shamelessly, brimming over with excitement. "Did you hear that, she said she liked them!"
What the fuck was going on? Who were these people? I mean, I'd seen them in the NME and heard them on the radio, but...

Then the group began to play and... they sounded quite good. They sounded very much like what they were - a band with a probable future who had yet to develop a commanding live presence. Justine seemed confident and effortlessly cool, but only in the same way as lots of wealthy Hampshire types at my university.  I was starting to meet people born into wealth for the first time in my life, and at that point I couldn't see much difference between Justine's aloof, airy mutterings between songs and the distant poshness of some of my fellow students. Looking back on early interviews, it's apparent that she was incredibly intelligent, witty, cheeky and sparky in her own relaxed and casual way, but none of those personality traits were apparent on-stage yet.

Donna, on the other hand, seemed far more interesting, appearing born into her particular insouciant, punkish and vacant role in the group.

The debut single "Stutter", however, was two minutes of almighty and wonderful noise about the problems of drunken erectile dysfunction. At the time, the press bracketed the group in with the short-lived and under-achieving "New Wave of New Wave" scene, which tried to rally support for a raffish punk revival on Britain's somewhat underwhelmed gig circuit. Elastica were the only one of those groups to really go on to first division success, and if we're going to round up the best "NWONW" singles ever (though it's hard to understand why we'd bother) "Stutter" would almost certainly be number one. It's a commanding great treble-heavy, adrenalised rush which sounds like all the best elements of the late seventies era tied to the back of a Transit van and dragged along the road by a rope. Scuzzy, dirty (in every sense of the word) but so energising it's impossible not to listen to when it comes on the radio to this day, it actually sounded like the start of something big, brash and new, whereas the likes of "I Just Want To Kill Someone" by S*M*A*S*H (to give another NWONW single as an example) sounded like a reprisal of old ideas recreated to please ageing IPC journalists.

I didn't know it at the time, but in the space of one evening, I'd witnessed two groups with distinct identities both pointing different ways forward for British music, and both being correct. Britpop would prove to be a slightly bigger, broader tent than it's been credited for in recent years.



3. Verve - Slide Away (Hut)

And then there was Verve, of course, who with "Slide Away" provided Oasis with a future song title (or did they?) and arguably paved the way forwards for some of the mid-nineties indie sound. The melodrama of the song arrives through a thick pea-souper smog of effects pedal laden guitars, but the song still has a fussiness and fragility to it that would be sledgehammered out of the way by most of the new breed.

There will be those who disagree, but I personally find "Slide Away" a bit too directionless and woebegone to completely hit home. It's a big old meandering noise about nothing very much, and caused some people to wrongly assume the band had totally lost their footing. On the contrary, future releases would show they were actually beginning to find their way - commercially, at least.



4. Teenage Fanclub - Norman 3 (Creation)

Taken from their "underachieving" self-produced album "Thirteen", the pathetic number of views "Norman 3" has had since being uploaded to the Fannies official YouTube account certainly points towards opinions about this single being mostly negative or at best indifferent. In fact, many music journalists almost wrote the group off after "Thirteen" was released, feeling that whatever opportunities they had, they'd managed to lazily waste away with a mediocre follow-up album to a widely acknowledged cult classic.

That's needlessly harsh, though. "Norman 3" is the group at their most straightforwardly sweet, combining powerpop melodies with a slow, lazy wallowing in the emotions that surround the early stages of a love affair. "Yeah! I'm in love with you!" the chorus announces bouyantly, and it's incredibly simple and dumb but entirely relatable. It's not the group's finest moment, but catch it at the right moment on an early Spring day, and it will worm its way into your heart.



5. Kingmaker - Queen Jane (Chrysalis)

Few bands epitomise the slightly half-arsed politicised edge of early nineties indie more than Kingmaker. Released during a period when casual racism and fascism seemed on the upswing in Britain - though it all seems like a fairly harmless family row over Sunday dinner compared to the present day - "Queen Jane" paints portraits of disillusioned far right sympathisers, though fails to make particularly coherent or cutting points as it does so. It's clearly trying to make a clear and angry satirical point, but feels too scattershot and incoherent in its aims. "Oliver's Army" it isn't.

Musically, "Queen Jane" saunters along nicely, but also fails to deliver anything that might make it memorable or impactful. It swings by having made its snarling complaint, and within thirty seconds your mind is on to something else entirely. The late Conservative wilderness years of the early nineties probably did need a relevant political soundtrack of some kind, but God knows we deserved better than this.

Kingmaker had been hyped as one of the frontline indie groups of the early nineties, but as the decade progressed were struggling to maintain critical support. Their records all sold moderately well, but their sound clearly owed a debt to groups whose success was beginning to wane. When Suede supported them on tour, one highly critical review ran with the headline "Diamonds and Dogshit" (It made it quite clear, if you needed to be told, that Kingmaker were the "dogshit" in the evening's entertainments). Another tour of theirs featured Radiohead in the support slot. If nothing else, through accident or design they showcased two of the more influential nineties group on their tours, while failing to make any serious cases for themselves.

Volume 17 - Side One - Depeche Mode, Inspiral Carpets, Saint Etienne, Pulp, Verve

Formats: CD, Double LP, cassette
Year of Release: 1993

This is by far the oddest Indie Top 20 sleeve of all, looking rather like a continuity slide for a BBC Television children's programme. (Tim Worthington was the first to point out to me on Twitter the odd way in which the "Independent 20" LP sleeves often look like continuity slides, but this one really takes the cake).

It's one of the best albums in the series, though. I bought this one and played it close to death at home, before it followed me to university later in the year and got spun morning, noon and night as the soundtrack to my earliest months in that new place. I do have to confess that some kind of nostalgia may cause me to over-rate this LP, but the tracklisting tells no lies - there may not be a cohesive strand or dominant musical style throughout, but it does contain some absolute corkers, including some high John Peel Festive Fifty entries for that year.

This was also the very last Indie Top 20 LP to only contain music from independently distributed labels. After this point, Indie got treated as a musical genre by the series. If you're a purist, you could therefore argue that this was the last "proper" Indie Top 20 LP. More on that particular subject and my feelings on it when we get to that point, though.

1. Depeche Mode - I Feel You (Mute)

Depeche Mode's supposedly harder sound and rougher image was actually an enormous shock to many people in 1993, not least a friend-of-a-friend who lived in Basildon near Dave Gahan's parent's house and still glimpsed him on his occasional visits. Gahan's new face fuzz caused him to yell from an upstairs window in a horrified voice: "Dave, why have you grown a BEARD, you twat?" (If this makes Dave Gahan's life sound a bit like Vince's in "15 Storeys High", that might not be inaccurate. Possibly everyone's life in Basildon is a bit like Vince's in "15 Storeys High". Somewhat bizarrely, the main character's full name is also Vince Clarke).

Rude though this person's outburst may have been, I'm inclined to partly agree. Depeche Mode were (and are) one of the world's best electronic bands - their sudden bout of grungey self-consciousness around this point is one of the only times they've swayed to the dominant forces of fashion around them, and as such was a disappointing move.

Musically, though, "I Feel You" may be somewhat distorted and growly, but it's not a million miles away from their last hit with 'Proper Instruments' "Personal Jesus". Driven completely by one repetitive blues riff and some shunting railroad rhythms, it's arguably one of the simplest singles they ever recorded. Dave Gahan's performance manages to convey the lustful message in numerous different ways, though, from subtle and seductive murmerings to downright RAWK hollering, and while this song isn't overtly commercial, it does go to prove that he had become an incredible frontman who could sell any song to the listener. Radio One happily playlisted this without any questions being asked.

Sadly, this would also prove to be a period of disorder and disarray for the group, where endless touring and decadence took its toll on Gahan's health and frayed the nerves of other members. Sometimes there's not a lot to be said for being given the grown up's keys to the dressing up box and cocktail cabinet of rock and roll, as Tommy Vance probably never said.



2. Inspiral Carpets - How It Should Be (Mute)

That said, all was not happiness and light in the Inspiral Carpets world either. While so far as I know none of them were taking speedballs recreationally, "How It Should Be" was a new single, not available on any LP, which failed to enter the Top 40. It was the first fresh Inspiral Carpets track not to be a proper hit since "Move", released on their own Cow label in 1988.

That's not entirely surprising. "How It Should Be" is a fierce sounding single which almost harks back to their stripped back garage days, but it's not an obvious 45, sounding more like something which might be buried halfway through an LP. "You're just a nail I can hammer home/ This is how it is and how it should be!" chants Tom Hingley obsessively, while Clint Boon's keyboards swirl all over the shop. It's a mite psychotic sounding, and it was never going to capture the general public's imagination.

These days, it's a likeable curio in the back catalogue, not to be found on any studio LP (presumably left off their fourth platter "Devil Hopping" either due to the poor public response to it, or because it was only ever supposed to be a standalone single). It's a nice burst of noise I like to return to every now and then, but I doubt it would appear in any list I'd make of Top 30 Inspiral Carpets tracks (should I have the inclination to make one) and at the time it felt like a slightly questionable release, a sign the group might be going off the boil.

In the comments on YouTube, someone is getting quite rattled and insisting that the Inspirals ripped the tune for this off him. I can only vaguely hear what he's talking about, but even if his accusations are true, it hardly seems worth bothering the group with a lawsuit over lost royalties. "The Inspiral Carpets stole my idea to produce one of their biggest flops!" is hardly going to gain you much money or push your career any further forward.




3. Saint Etienne - You're In A Bad Way (Heavenly)

And this is an absolute gem. It sounds as if it could have been written and issued in any year from 1966 to 1993, containing the shuffling basslines and digital sheen of a modern 1993 single, but also the deceptively simple sounding chiming melodies and conciseness of a mid-sixties girl-pop track. There's a slight sneer about the central lyrical message - "Don't you know that crew cuts and trainers are out again?" Sarah Cracknell asks the object of her affections - but it's backed up with promises to lift the badly dressed man out of his rut.

The lyrics also mention Bruce Forsyth on the Generation Game, bringing to mind instantly a terrible 9-5 life with solo quiz show watching in the early evenings being the only form of numbing light relief. In doing so, it does actually effectively evoke those shite moments of your life where you temporarily drift off-radar, leaving the television on in the evenings for company, working a job where your colleagues are indifferent to your presence. We've all been there, and probably all wished for a Sarah Cracknell (or her nearest male equivalent) to emerge and promise a definite shift in the routine.

"You're In A Bad Way" still rates as one of the group's finest tracks to me, being near perfect pop - fluid, seamless, with every melody line and element feeling completely effortless. It's one of their biggest hits, and it feels like it could have been a hit at any point in pop history.



4. Pulp - Razzmatazz (Gift)

But then this ups the ante. "Razzmatazz" was greeted with confusion by a few (but admittedly not many) critics at the time for being a 'somewhat depressing' follow-up to "OU" and "Babies". Somehow, the idea had got into some people's heads that Pulp were now some kind of kitsch funtime party band with lots of quirky songs about sex. "Razzmatazz", on the other hand, was actually bloody spiteful.

Throughout, Jarvis points his elongated index digit savagely at an ex-girlfriend and bombards her with insults. Some are childish playground taunts ("The trouble with your brother/ he's always sleeping with your mother" is the actual opening line) others are disturbing home truths. The line "Started getting fatter three weeks after I left you/ Now you're going with some kid/ who looks like some bad comedian" is particularly cutting (and some would argue misogynistic, though the blog "Freaks, Misshapes, Weeds" does a very good job of explaining that away).

In the end, we're given the impression of someone whose life has completely gone awry, in a similar but much more tragic way than the individual in "You're In A Bad Way". Whereas he had a routine to cling on to, the woman in "Razzmatazz" is clearly having an absolute chaotic crack-up - "Your mother wants to put you away" clearly hints at that. This is the noise of someone hectoring an old partner who has completely gone to pieces in his absence.

Well, I say that... but is it really? "Freaks, Misshapes, Weeds" explains that the lyrics "use empathy as a weapon" which is a fantastic description, but to me there's always been a little bit more to it than that. The exaggerated high drama of the single has never wholly convinced me that it's just a piece of straightforward observational spite about one person's misfortune. What it actually sounds like is the noise of someone exaggerating or possibly even imagining or fantasising how badly off an ex partner is without them. It's suspiciously like the words of one jilted, frustrated lover ranting to his friends in the pub and convincing himself that the life he's left his old lover with is pathetic, an endless round of cheap chocolates, weight gain, early nights and ugly boyfriends. Some of the above may be correct, but all of it? I've always thought it's just a scenario the singer desperately wants to believe is true. There's just too much fury between the lines for me, and an overload of spite. The end impression I'm left with is of someone who is just as tormented and screwed up as his ex. Perhaps they should get back together again. It's clearly what he wants, even if he can't quite bring himself to admit it, though the line "I was lying when I asked you to stay" comes damn close to revealing the truth behind the situation.

This is the kind of dark, layered nastiness you would expect to find in a single by The Auteurs, so it's not altogether surprising to learn that it's Luke Haines's favourite Pulp single.

Musically though, "Razzmatazz" is much busier and more complicated than the lyrics might have otherwise let it be. Full of bright synth lines and dramatic interludes, and soaring, almost Gloria Gaynor styled pieces of melodrama and defiance at the end, it's another piece of expertly produced pop. Indie bands - and God knows that Pulp were at one point one of the most low-budget, mend-and-make-do indie groups ever - were now getting incredibly good at this. This packs plenty of drama and so many little flourishes and detours into one song without ever feeling forced or unnatural that it's a marvel. I would also have to say that it's probably my favourite Pulp single, and one that's undeservedly tucked away behind their more obvious anthems.



5. Verve - Blue (Hut)

In which Verve manage to invent those particularly smoky, hazy, guitar overloaded tracks Oasis ended up specialising in a few years down the line. Disorientating, dizzy, psychedelic and riddled with then-unfashionable backwards drum sounds, "Blue" feels more like a representative soundscape in places than a traditional verse/chorus/ middle eight song. Rather than soaring upwards, Ashcroft sounds particularly rattled, paranoid and agitated here.

Verve hadn't broken through to the mainstream yet, and this sure as hell wasn't going to push them up over the line, but "Blue" is still thought of by fans as being a fine early single. I must admit, though, I find it rather messy sounding, inconclusive and dull. Each to their own.

Volume 16 Side 3 - Verve, Spiritualized, Pulp, The Jennifers (Supergrass), Spectrum

1. Verve - She's A Superstar (Hut)

While I slightly struggled with Verve initially, "She's A Superstar" was an enormous, towering single which emerged very early in their careers. Riddled with scaling riffs, chiming, music box guitar elements buried deep in the mix, and rumbling basslines, it seeps mood and atmosphere rather than clubbing you around the head with nagging hooks.

Unfortunately, if the finger of suspicion can be pointed at any band in particular for starting the lazy lyrical tropes of Dadrock, it's probably Ashcroft and company. "She climbs so high/ I don't know why", sings yer man airily and lazily, possibly inspiring the by-numbers lyricism of Oasis and their many minions along the way.

Still, "She's A Superstar" scales, swoops and turns at graceful angles like a majestic bird - even if Richard Ashcroft had contributed no lyrics at all and this had been an "Albatross" styled instrumental, it would be hard not to be impressed by it. It's a Verve track you won't hear often on adult rock or alternative stations, but really, for me it was the first sign that some of the hype was possibly justified.



2. Spiritualized - Medication (Dedicated)

Spiritualized were getting more sophisticated too, moving on from being blissed-out underground hippies with a mighty fine lightshow, to creating songs with tight, ambitious and occasionally almost unwieldy arrangements. Their epic and absurdly long single "Feels So Sad" acted as evidence to listeners that they weren't afraid of a challenge, and even if that particular attempt was perhaps too bloated for its own good, it was clear that they had an intent to be more than just an indie group.

"Medication" is a moody and bitter pean to drug addiction which is filled to the brim with dizzy jazzy riffs, eerie organ work, and rushing guitar noises. It's a single that sounds impressive rather than having much impact emotionally - it's difficult not to be taken in by its ambition and conviction initially, but I suspect I'm not alone in saying that I didn't end up listening to it much after 1992 waved goodbye. But for anyone looking for evidence that Jason Pierce had moved beyond his Spacemen 3 roots and was now creating finely sculpted and detailed work rather than the lo-fi psychedelic druggy drones of yore, it was here, and things would only get better.



3. Pulp - Babies (Gift)

Pulp had been around for over a decade by this point, and could actually have featured on Indie Top 20 Volume One had Beechwood been inclined (1986's macabre "Little Girl (With Blue Eyes)" would have been a cracking addition to that cassette, actually). But they were probably never close to being in the running. Pulp were very much a sideshow act in Indiepop's boom years, churning out dark, morbid and slightly twisted songs with claustrophobic, under-produced atmospheres to very select audiences. While I don't count myself among the fans who will argue that every LP the band has ever recorded is great, their debut 1981 Peel Session contains the amazing "Wishful Thinking" (the most under-appreciated Pulp track ever?), the 1983 debut LP "It" is uneven but worthy, and 1992's delayed "Separations" LP is riddled with cheap synthesiser squelches and early eighties dancefloor rhythms as well as Scott Walker-esque patches of melodrama, and is probably their finest pre-fame effort. Only 1987's "Freaks" is a completely undercooked and joyless experience.

Pulp's time had been by no means wasted, but most bands would have packed up before "Babies", going off to get proper jobs and raise families and being satisfied with having a footnote in the world of eighties British indie. The press were not all entirely welcoming by this point. When the group jumped ship from Fire Records (who they felt didn't have their best interests at heart) to Warp's subsidiary label Gift, this was greeted by some journalists with extreme scepticism. The NME were heard to make an off-the-cuff complaint that if those C86 chancers Pulp were being labelled as bright hopes, then something had gone truly, horribly wrong with British music. Others, however, were wowed by Pulp's increasingly energetic live shows, and charmed by Jarvis Cocker's eccentric and charismatic on-stage demeanour.

By this point, they even had a shit-hot Canadian manager who nonetheless didn't seem to quite understand how to best market the group. She wandered around talking to people of influence telling them that she had "the next Right Said Fred" on her hands. Clearly, even at this point, things weren't entirely locking into place.

Thank God for the songs, then, which by now were becoming truly staggering. "Babies" is one of their finest ever singles, and one the marvellous blog "Freaks, Mis-Shapes, Weeds" does a great job of unpacking (though I agree with the statement that it's hard to critically dissect and analyse something so effervescent and enjoyable). The foundation of an incredibly simple, if faintly unusual, two chord riff acts as the basis for all kinds of instrumental diversions for the group, from Candida's synthesiser squelches to twanging guitars and ambient interludes, to the downright euphoric ending... if Pulp described themselves as a "garage band" in the mid-eighties, they had travelled far beyond that now, and were as fussy (if not fussier) than Verve and Spiritualized... except they were playing with shaggy dog story lyrics and pop hooks, not scaling epic rock mountains. Pulp at this point were about smalltown stories and awkward situations and sex, rather than drugs and astral flying.

"Babies" would become the hit it was always supposed to be when reissued in 1994 by Island Records. For now, though, it was a curio, a marvellous single which did get some radio and television exposure - the fact it ended up on "The ITV Chart Show" marked an enormous leap forward - but wasn't really heard as often as you might suspect in 1992. I was a reasonably regular indie/ alternative clubber and gig-goer at this point, and I heard it played by a DJ once, at a small bar called Saks in Southend. Myself and a few friends strode on to the dancefloor to give the DJ our vote of confidence while almost everybody else ignored it. It was a sublime single, and everybody who liked "Babies" wanted to believe that Pulp might finally enter the mainstream... but the odds seemed so frighteningly long at this point.



4. The Jennifers - Just Got Back Today (Nude)

Another Britpop big name checks into "Indie Top 20" incredibly early. At the nucleus of this group were Danny Goffey and Gaz Coombes, both of whom would later form Supergrass. At this point, though, they hadn't even finished school, but after hometime and at the weekends their lives were consumed by the very young indie group The Jennifers.

"Just Got Back Today" sold rather poorly and it's somewhat miraculous it ended up being documented on "Indie Top 20" - I suspect that Nude Records approached Beechwood with a deal where they would pick up the license to a Suede track at a reasonable price if this effort was also guaranteed a place in the track listing.

Nonetheless, you can hear bags of promise in this, and while there's absolutely no evidence of Supergrass at their most turbo-charged, it does sound exactly like one of the group's maudlin moments. A wailing harmonica joins hands with a despairing vocal line, and the band sound heartbroken beyond their years. It's not a perfect track by any means, though. The chorus is rather too laissez faire for its own good, and the ending is clumsy and inconclusive, but given how downright young the group were, it's staggering to hear how developed they already were. This mood and sound would recur throughout Supergrass's career, from the rainy Sunday evening loneliness of "Late In The Day" to most of 2005's understated and under-rated "Road To Rouen" (so much so that I once actually padded my personal CD Rom copy of that LP out with "Just Got Back Today" as a bonus track, feeling that it acted as a sweet, innocent echo back to their early days).

Neither Danny or Gaz were quite ready for the big-time yet, but there's enough here to help you understand how some critics and record label bosses were already excited. In a couple of years time, they would be enormous news.



5. Spectrum - True Love Will Find You In The End (Silvertone)

If Jason Pearce left Spacemen 3 to scale musical mountains, it was starting to become fairly obvious that Pete Kember was quite happy to remain a minimalist. The more time progressed, the harder it was becoming to imagine them ever having been in the same group together.

"True Love..." is a shimmering and simple cover of a naive and hopeful Daniel Johnston track. If Johnston's original is childlike and sounds in danger of toppling over at any second, the Spectrum version is tight and psychedelically inclined, with ringing bells, wailing guitars, and Christmassy glitter toppling all over the well-meant intentions of the original. It manages to make the song sound both still more childlike, and also more stately.

For all that, it respects the simplicity of the original, and manages to make it sound like a hymn to the possibilities of life-long partnerships. There have been moments in my life where I've scoffed and even groaned at the sentiments in this song, but as a middle-aged man I've now come to appreciate that there was some wisdom in it after all.

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.