Volume 18 Side 3 - Boo Radleys, Delicious Monster, Chapterhouse, Curve, Sugar

1. Boo Radleys - Wish I Was Skinny (Creation)

It's been discussed surprisingly infrequently since, but The Boo Radleys' "Giant Steps" was a monstrously critically acclaimed album in 1993, sometimes seeming to be spoken about in the same breath as the work of Brian Wilson or Miles Davis. From apparently nowhere, the Do Badlys had risen in stature to become Gods of slightly experimental indie rock.

As I've mentioned before, there were clear signs in their earlier releases that changes were brewing in the band, and a new-found maturity was already apparent by the point of the "Boo Up" EP. While I've always been a fence-sitter where "Giant Steps" is concerned - I seem to remember being one of the only people in one of my social groups at the time who was slightly agnostic about it, which was a bit awkward - there's no question that it was one of 1993's most interesting (if uneven and slightly bloated) releases. It's the sound of young men knee-deep in their record collections, taking psychedelic drugs and having a creative spree, and occasionally hitting the bullseye.

"Wish I Was Skinny" isn't especially representative of the rest of the album, being a spindly and simple sounding release about male insecurity, with its ponderous plucked guitar lines and mournful trumpet adding to the subject's mood well. Like Brian Wilson, whose "Don't Worry Baby" was one of the earliest songs about a man needing reassurance from a woman, the Radleys were taking steps here which struck chords with lots of ordinary, podgy, spotty young men who were never going to be considered macho or glamorous. I used to actually have a couple of friends who considered this to be their anthem, one even playing it at his birthday party (Yeah, we really knew how to have fun in those days).

It's simple, pretty and very effective, and the video was actually filmed in the Radleys old comprehensive school and showed them being kicked around and bullied. They seemed to be representing themselves very honestly as complete outsiders, ugly ducklings who loved music and wanted to share their ideas with us. In a world filled with preening peacocks, their straightforwardness was welcome to everyone who probably enjoyed hanging around the local record shops on a Saturday more than they did a night at the club later that evening. Later on, their schtick could on occasion be slightly cloying - we won't get to discuss "From The Bench At Belvedere", but that's just as well, as it's an exercise in self-indulgent sentimentality - but for now, it was finely measured.



2. Delicious Monster - Big Love (Flute)

If "Snuggle" on the last LP was brief and rip-roaring, "Big Love" really shows off the songwriting chops the group had by this point. "Big Love" is a luxurious sprawl with chiming guitars, sensuous vocals and a considered arrangement. Rachel Mayfield appears to be suggesting that she can't get no satisfaction, and this is one part pean to love and lust, another part subtle comment on the role of women as objects of desire in society - at least, that is, if I'm reading it correctly.

It's a very yearning track, though, and even if it was possibly a bit too subtle to be a breakout mainstream hit, it was certainly critically acclaimed and performed well on the Indie Chart. It also proved that Delicious Monster were a multi-faceted band who could cope with subtlety and weave intricate melodies just as much as they could deliver raucous indie sounds.

More on them soon, hopefully.



3. Chapterhouse - We Are The Beautiful (Dedicated)

The old shoegazing scene was largely dead by this point. The groups had either proven their creative superiority and been elevated above and beyond the tag (My Bloody Valentine, The Boo Radleys) or they were now being mocked or, worse still, ignored. Chapterhouse returned in 1993 with a strange new determination, though. Their comeback single "She's A Vision" exuded an adult poppiness which had been lacking from their previous efforts, sounding strangely close to a "Seeds of Love" era Tears For Fears. At the time, the record label claimed that it had actually been a proper Top Five hit in Portugal, but I've found nothing online to verify that claim (press releases really should be verifiable sources, but over the years I've found they're often the stuff of wild exaggeration and fantasy).

"We Are The Beautiful" bares a bit more of a resemblance to the Chapterhouse of old, but is still a polished, shining, sleek Ferrari gliding along the psychedelic pop highway. None of that slick production can really hide the fact that the song itself is a bit uninspiring, though, offering nothing of any real substance. Even the chorus, which is presumably supposed to be a rallying cry, sounds limp. This would be their final single, and there would be silence from the band until they briefly reformed again in the late noughties.



4. Curve - Missing Link (Anxious)

That said, lots of groups seemed to be dropping like flies at this point. Our dear friends Curve, once the future of British Alternative Rock, were beginning to seem emotionally fragile. Their tour to support their second studio album "Cuckoo" was apparently beset with personal problems, and by the time it was over, so were the band. A split was announced, and the only single to be released from the platter was "Missing Link" (unless we count the extremely rare and barely promoted "Superblaster").

For a band who had a very clear, solid identifiable sound of their own in the build-up to their first album, Curve were now starting to blend in a little. "Cuckoo" is actually a much better LP than critics gave it credit for at the time, but nonetheless the buzzing synthesiser sounds of "Missing Link" resemble numerous Euro-industrial bands who were doing the rounds at this point, and the dramatic, urgent delivery of the chorus resembles Annie Lennox more than ever. Curve were still producing compelling material, but they were losing their own unique aura.

The split wouldn't be permanent and they would be back in 1998 with the album "Come Clean" - but certainly from the point of view of our timeline, it's all over for them. Of all the groups we've discussed, they're one of the main ones I feel possibly could have achieved something enormous if only a few slightly different turns had been taken. The fact that Garbage, who we'll come on to eventually, clearly owed a small debt to their sound showed that what they were producing wasn't in itself uncommercial.



5. Sugar - Tilted (Creation)

Frantic and psychotic sounding, "Tilted" gets the bit between its teeth and never lets go, thrashing and pounding away until the neurotic chorus arrives, which utilises a similar rising, stretching chord pattern to Magazine's "Shot By Both Sides".  It's an exhausting listen, this, but one which featured in a wide variety of year-end "best of" polls (even if that seems unlikely now).

Sugar had recently returned with their mini-LP "Beaster", which was highly acclaimed and shot the band straight into the National Top Ten. It caused Bob Mould to apparently ring his friends in America and brag about how high he was in the British charts. It was an unfortunately short-lived period of mainstream success, and within a year Sugar would return to being a largely cultish concern, but it felt justified at the time. Husker Du had spent years dealing with disinterested record labels and low sales, becoming key influences on grunge without much in the way of financial reward. Sugar righted that wrong for a brief period, and gave Bob Mould commercial recognition he had never previously enjoyed. It certainly didn't hurt that he was also writing some of his finest material too.

Volume 17 Side Two - Suede, The Auteurs, Kinky Machine, Delicious Monster, Cranes

1. Suede - The Big Time (Nude)

By this point, Suede had achieved what many considered to be impossible in 1993. An alternative band with guitars (and not a hint of a dance remix to help them along) had become a major act, splashed across the front pages of both music magazines and the Sunday supplements. When invited to appear on the Brit Awards to perform live, they played a faintly imperfect but very spirited and edgy take on "Animal Nitrate" while Brett Anderson bashed his microphone against his bottom.

"Animal Nitrate" hit the top ten and Suede seemed to have occupied the same cultural position as The Smiths or The Stone Roses prior to them - they were the token indie band in the mainstream, the act everyone rooted for on a Sunday evening, waiting to hear on the radio if their release had come straight into the top ten, or even edged it to number one.

Suede's position as the Kings of Indie was cruelly brief compared to many of their predecessors, though. This was for a variety of reasons, not least that their success helped to usher in a whole wave of other skinny kids with guitars, and they would find themselves having to share media space with Blur, Oasis, and Pulp et al rather than being the main focal point. On top of that, they lacked the populist touch of many of their emerging rivals. Their Brit Awards performance highlights that - it feels faintly eccentric and threatening somehow, designed to make it feel as if the event had been gatecrashed by outsiders. It's clearly not an attempt to win over the Henry and Norma Normals watching, it's a clarion call to any suburban oddballs in the country who may not have been touched by Suede's ideas yet.

Nestling on the B-side of "Animal Nitrate" was this, "The Big Time", which showcased another side to Suede that was frequently being overlooked. A weary ballad about a hidden-away, closeted homosexual lover to a famous person, it's melodically simple but achingly effective, utilising a song structure not entirely dissimilar to some of Scott Walker's efforts on "Scott 3". It's the sound of weary, repressed, burden-bearing England, but rather than crudely painting its central character as a desperate caricature, it sounds emotionally vivid and deeply personal - an alternate take on Twinkle's "Golden Lights" with way more exhaustion and baggage.

It also pointed a possible way forward for Suede. Later on in 1993, they appeared on television performing an acoustic version of what some mooted might be their next single, "Still Life". Rather than the thumping, angular razzle and dazzle of "Animal Nitrate" or "Metal Mickey", it sounded plain, beautiful and broken. "Dog Man Star" would be a bit fuller and richer than that, but it wouldn't sound any more upbeat. It was almost as if Suede were walking away from the very sound they had helped to popularise and becoming a more complicated group.



2. The Auteurs - How Could I Be Wrong (Hut)

The Auteurs emerged from the ashes of the cult C86 group The Servants, and were one of the original bundle of groups the word "Britpop" was used in relation to. Select magazine ran the headline "Yanks go home!" in April 1993, and listed them alongside Suede, St Etienne, Pulp and - er - Denim as among the new wave of British groups likely to transform our fortunes both at home and abroad.

Lead singer Luke Haines' scabrous biography "Britpop and My Part In Its Downfall" is dark and hilarious, acting as a decadent rock and roll take on "A Confederacy of Dunces" stylistically. Throughout, Haines continually portrays himself as a worldly, erudite man with a foul temper and sharp tongue surrounded by vain opportunists and idiots paddling in the shallow end of culture. He'd bloody hate this blog.

While the book makes for fantastic reading, it also serves to underline what, for me, has always been a weakness with The Auteurs records. Haines' personality - or, at least, his public image - is bitter, aloof and detached, and that cuts through every single record. There's a sub-zero feel to a lot of what the group did, even playing with provocative lyrical ideas without any clear conclusions, archly sneering at listeners who might be disturbed or shocked (interestingly, Haines recently confessed that as a parent, he would now find songs like "Unsolved Child Murder" difficult to write or perform, which suggests he's more interested in shocking other people than exploring ideas or elements of his own psyche he feels uncomfortable with. I'm not entirely condemning this, I just find it interesting).

Regrettably, "How Could I Be Wrong" is possibly one of their weakest early singles too, hanging everything on a slight melody and a world-weary plodding tempo. It sulks along without leaving behind much impression, the only real point of interest being the mismatch between the lyrics and the song's overall mood - "The stars are brighter/ are lighter/ than they have been for years" Haines sings, part hushed, part exhausted and weary, before following it up doubtfully with "How could I be wrong?" It's the sound of a man who can't quite believe his luck and wants to whisper about his good fortune for fear of jinxing it, certain that the large cheque he's just been given to cash will bounce. Even the drumbeats afterwards are ponderous rather than celebratory.  Given The Auteurs eventual standing in the grand scheme of things, it's unfortunately appropriate.



3. Kinky Machine - Supernatural Giver (Lemon)

The West London based Kinky Machine were cult favourites on the live circuit, and it could be argued have become rather ignored scene-setters for Britpop. Releasing singles with clear glam rock and classic pop influences, they were out of step with grunge in 1991 when they formed and had largely lost momentum by the time the first winds of change emerged in their favour.

Still, elements of "Supernatural Giver" ended up being used as introductory music for MTV's regular "120 minutes" alternative music slot, and climbed to Number 70 on the national charts. It's a swaggering piece of Bolan boogie, really, a stomping, barnstorming slice of retro which is a total delight to listen to, but at the time paled in comparison to developments elsewhere. While the likes of Suede and Pulp were pocketing elements of the past and analysing and reshaping them for the future, Kinky Machine were too close to seeming like a cut-and-paste tribute.

Lead singer Louis Eliot later re-emerged in the group Rialto, who were far more accomplished and produced some of the most unfairly overlooked singles of the post-Britpop comedown period, not least the epic "Untouchable" which, had it been released a few years before 1998, would have been enormous. But I digress.



4. Delicious Monster - Snuggle (Flute)

I have a conflict of interest to declare here. The lead singer of Delicious Monster Rachel Mayfield is a friend, and I contacted her relatively recently to ask if she'd mind talking a bit about this era of her life. Had I planned things out a bit better, of course, I'd have contacted her months ago in preparation for this entry, but it slipped my mind, and as a result I don't yet have her input.

So then, I'll present you the facts I know about this track for now, and we'll hopefully come back to it in the near future to talk about it in more depth. The group were from Birmingham and signed to Flute Records, who were an offshoot of Beechwood Records who released the "Indie Top 20" LPs. Critically acclaimed to an incredible degree to begin with, they scored singles of the week in the NME and Melody Maker, and were also regular needle-time darlings of late night Radio One.

"Snuggle" highlights the conflicting elements in their sound brilliantly - the track introduces itself to you as a cooing, delicate and seductive thing, before suddenly, and without much warning, becoming demanding and abrasive. Rachel's vocals are completely up to the challenge, twisting and turning effortlessly into a variety of different emotions, beckoning the listener forward with one hand before kicking them across the room with the next demanding howl.

It's a thrilling and brief single, but while the group were continually tipped for bigger things, they never quite found a way forward into the mainstream and remained a cult indie group, constantly scoring indie chart entries while never quite crossing over.

More on them soon, hopefully.



5. Cranes - Adrift (Dedicated)

No matter what changes in popular culture buzzed around them, the sound of Cranes remained the same as it ever was. "Adrift" is as disturbing and eerie as ever, but lyrically mixed in with ideas about the complexity and unpredictability of a love affair, telling us: "down, down the river we go/ holding on for dear life/ to the last stick of the raft" before clarifying: "we're like a boat drifting/ in a lonely sea/ and I start to cry".

It's not life-affirming stuff, this, acknowledging that even in the most compatible relationship there are threats, challenges and isolation, with the only comfort being that there are two people in peril rather than just one. It's not a beautiful listen at all, but as ever it does occupy its own unique creative space, and probably because of that the band's cult following would sustain them for a long time into the future.