Volume 19 Tracks 16-20 - Gigolo Aunts, Blue Aeroplanes, Compulsion, Pop Will Eat Itself, Rancho Diablo

16. Gigolo Aunts - Where I Find My Heaven (Fire)

The opening guitar lines of the theme from the nineties sitcom "Game On" - or the film "Dumb and Dumber" depending on your preferred reference point, since it was confusingly used in both - burst through loudly and confidently. From those opening bars right through to the end, "Where I Find My Heaven" sounds like an almost flawless pop song, rammed to the brim with bittersweet lyrics and bouyant but intricately woven melodies. At the time, my first thought was that this sounded like a single Teenage Fanclub could have released if they'd decided to pander just slightly to the mainstream.

What's truly surprising is how, despite its mainstream presence and clear potential, "Where I Find My Heaven" really wasn't the huge hit it could have been. On its 1995 reissue it managed one week in the Top 40 at number 29, then disappeared from view. The finger of suspicion in the UK's case probably points in the direction of Fire Records who never were terribly good at maximising the potential of their artists, but its failure on RCA in the US is truly baffling.

Gigolo Aunts had a long history as a band prior to this point, having their roots in the 1981 power-pop band Sniper. Therefore, they had already spent over a decade penning the kind of effortlessly memorable melodies much beloved of that genre. This makes comparisons with Teenage Fanclub somewhat unfair, since they had a considerable head start over that Scottish band.

"Where I Find My Heaven" remains their most known song, partly due to its mass media use, but the group had a strong cult following globally and managed to sustain their careers until 2002, when one final LP "Pacific Ocean Blues" was released. Despite the apparent finality of this, I absolutely wouldn't bet against a comeback tour of some kind.



17. Blue Aeroplanes - Broken & Mended (Beggars Banquet)

Why, hi there, Blue Aeroplanes! How's it going? Haven't seen you since Volume Two. I think we lost you back at the, uh, junction with the eighties and nineties when you signed a piece of paper in that huge glass building up there. What have you been up to? Oh, I see. So things haven't changed that much, then? You kept the Russian dancer, and you still have those, uh, super-piquant conversational spoken word lyrics? HEY, well I guess, uh, dig the consistency, yeah. [CHORUS]

There's something amazingly stubborn and determined about The Blue Aeroplanes, and what's more astonishing still is how long a career they've been allowed. It's perhaps a tribute to the patience record labels in the eighties and nineties had, however much they were derided at the time. If such a group were to be formed now, they would be saddled to a very small indie label with a limited budget, whereas the Aeroplanes had a cultish stint on Fire Records, followed by a major label deal with Ensign/ Chrysalis, then on to the independent powerhouse Beggars Banquet. All for a group who are almost one of the quintessential arthouse indie bands, whose only real hope of mainstream success would have been to accidentally write a song which made some kind of popular sense. 1990's indie dance remix of "...And Stones" came the closest to that, but still no cigar.

"Broken & Mended" isn't remotely similar to that record, and is effectively the group returning to basics. Jagged guitar work combines with almost beatnik vocal ramblings, and the whole thing slams around the room sharply. For all that, it's not their finest single, and while I can't quantify why this doesn't work as well as the likes of "Jacket Hangs" or "Tolerance" - the group appear to be operating to their own agenda, so it's hard to draw comparisons to anything or anyone else - it nonetheless isn't a track of theirs I feel compelled to return to often.



18. Compulsion - Mall Monarchy (One Little Indian)

Irish punk band Compulsion were actually a pretty big deal for a few months in 1994. Bracketed in with the NME created and frankly somewhat damp squibbish New Wave of New Wave scene, they also had an abrasive, distorted sound and pounding energy which made them palatable to the grunge kids. In another world, at another time, they might have been enormous.

"Mall Monarchy" appeared on the "ITV Chart Show" not once but twice, and received a healthy amount of evening airplay, but perhaps failed to launch the group in the manner expected. It's a snarling piece of work with a distinct anti-consumerist message, and sounds like the stuff of dreams for frustrated teenagers and adult anarchists alike. It's certainly more memorable than the material being offered to us by S*M*A*S*H at this particular point in time.

Unfortunately, it was all a bit of a dead end, and while "Mall Monarchy" is an unquestionable anthem, it would rapidly be usurped in the UK by other groups who wouldn't dream of using the word "mall" in a song lyric. Unless it was used in the context of "Pall Mall", that is.



19. Pop Will Eat Itself - Ich Bin Ein Auslander (Infectious)

The latter stages of Pop Will Eat Itself's career are often baffling. If their confused, hyper-random video for "RSVP" weren't enough to contend with, "Ich Bin Ein Auslander" was an unlikely anti-fascist racket which charted in the Top 40 in the UK and was showcased on the rather staid, beige, pensioner-friendly "Late Late Show" chat show in Ireland. Over on YouTube, there's a clip of the band on the programme looking utterly inebriated, miming over enthusiastically to the song with their faces wrapped in sellotape. It probably didn't even make any sense at the time either, though Gay "Bykers on Acid" Byrne does at least seem to agree with the song's sentiments (rumour has it that the programme's security personnel took a dimmer view of their antics).

While the song itself is no masterpiece, it does capture the group at their most angry and raucous, and reminds you that towards the end of their careers they were heading in an increasingly ferocious and politicised direction. It's hardly the most radical thing you'll hear today, but it is still, unfortunately, horribly relevant, and its defiance is a tonic.

The meshing of the band's electronic, Hip-Hop and sampling influences to this kind of firepower also works incredibly well - almost as if they only realised the group they wanted to be at the point of the original line-up's last album.



20. Rancho Diablo - Plan B (13th Hour/ Mute)

"Indie Top 20" featured a lot of obscure bands during its 23 volume run, but I'd be willing to bet that Rancho Diablo are high on the list of the least known and appreciated. Signed to the Mute subsidiary label 13th Hour, you have to wonder if the group were perceived as some kind of nineties version of Fad Gadget. Wobbly porno trumpet noises meet with thundering industrial basslines, wails of feedback and growled vocals to create something very unique sounding, but sadly not something that works even remotely for me. It's most certainly an acquired taste, and it's possible that their sinister sex dungeon funk might gain new fans after this blog entry goes out, but for me there's no easy point of entry.

Rancho Diablo's recorded career was brief and failed to last very long into 1995, but was proof that Mute's profits from Depeche Mode, Erasure, Inspiral Carpets and Nick Cave were being ploughed back into difficult projects that wouldn't have shamed the label in its earliest days. This seems like a very strange inclusion for the "Indie Top 20" LP, but I strongly suspect a "take Rancho Diablo, get Depeche Mode much cheaper" styled agreement is responsible for their presence here. That or the compiler Tim Millington was just a massive, and very unlikely, fan of their work.

Volume 19 Tracks 11-15 - Boo Radleys, Magnapop, Tiny Monroe, Salad, Sharkboy

11. The Boo Radleys - Barney (... & Me) (Creation)

Opening with a chord pattern vaguely reminiscent of Gary Glitter's "Another Rock and Roll Christmas", The Boos go on to paint a gloriously accurate yet simple wintertime scene ("The lake is almost frozen/ the grass is silver hair") before descending into doubt and moody, introspective tones. To this day, I can't really get through winter without playing this track at least a couple of times.

It's by no means as simple as it first appears, though. The single morphs almost effortlessly from one sound to the next, from disjointed, fluttering psychedelia, to attempted Beach Boys styled close harmonies (singing "Faye Dunaway" for some reason) to the epic, dramatic outro. These should rightfully feel like tattered fragments of ideas which have no place together across the same single, but they all glue together remarkably well - there are ambitious Paul McCartney tracks out there which sound more stilted and less natural than this.

"Barney (... & Me)" was also the first sign, on 45 at least, that The Boo Radleys were developing a sharp pop sensibility amidst the denseness of their ideas. Large elements of this single are propulsive and heartlifting in the way the best pop can be, and serve a different purpose to a lot of the other contents of "Giant Steps". It's an idle comparison which was inevitably bandied around a lot at the time, but this is Pop as Brian Wilson imagined it to be circa "Pet Sounds" and "Smile". Sometimes complex, occasionally a bit dizzying, but nonetheless remaining true to the thrills a three-and-a-half minute tune could afford. I'm not claiming that "Barney (... & Me)" is as good as Wilson's productions in his prime, before readers queue down the street with baseball bats to wreck my modest home, but it showed the group were capable of exploring those possibilities in more depth if they chose.



12. Magnapop - Slowly Slowly (Play It Again Sam)

It must have been twenty years now since I last bothered to listen to this track, and having had another spin of it for research purposes, there's no particular reason why I should have left it so long. Filled with tick-tocking guitar rhythms which quickly move into rough, distorted chord patterns, and weary, cautious female vocals, this really could have been released at any time between 1989 to the present day. If Magnapop formed tomorrow and "dropped" this video on to YouTube - as the kids might say - there's little doubt that the blogosphere (as the kids also might apparently say) would lap it up. It's a slice of timeless, faintly alienated US college rock whose stylings haven't gone away, and whose more unexpected and eccentric guitar stylings make it stand out.

Trouble was, Magnapop didn't release "Slowly Slowly" on Soundcloud in 2017, and while their US reception was quite positive, in the UK things were changing fast. As a result, this registered briefly with evening radio listeners before being rapidly forgotten about by everyone, including me. In North America, however, they were keenly appreciated by Bob Mould of Sugar, and given a support slot on an REM tour, and remain a going concern to this day. REM and The Eels have both covered the group's songs, and their cult status is now completely assured.



13. Tiny Monroe - VHF 855V (Laurel)

It's perfectly possible to draw some parallels between Magnapop and Tiny Monroe. Both singles contain sharp and angular guitar work, but where Magnapop's sound exerts a weary Stateside nineties cynicism, Tiny Monroe sound caffeinated and sparky. Norma Jean Wilow, the lead singer, exudes attitude throughout, and the whole thing swaggers with an almost glam rock pout on its chops (the song's title was apparently named after Norma's car reg plate number, which might be a call back to the same idea in Roxy Music's "Remake Remodel").

Trouble is, while it may stride confidently over the horizon giving you an Elvis sneer as it goes, "VHF 855V" is a treble-heavy and somewhat slight slice of new wave inspired pop. You can certainly hear the early stirrings of Britpop here, but sadly it's the least interesting elements. There's nothing artful or likably pretentious about it, nothing well observed, or even sublimely catchy. It arrives in a hail of scratchy guitars then exits having made little lasting impression beyond the fact that the group wholeheartedly believed in their own efforts. The confidence shines through, but it's not enough to hold the rest of the song together.

This kind of energy and spark would become apparent in numerous British bands from 1994-6, and while at its best it was responsible for some astonishing music, at its most mediocre it felt like a failed confidence trick. In 1994, that was forgivable. By late 1996, it became a source of deep, burning irritation, like being hassled by pushy young door-to-door sales representatives in retro Adidas tops a hundred times a week.



14. Salad - Diminished Clothes (Waldorf)

None of this applies to Salad, though, who have recently reformed and are enjoying a spate of positive press and cult fan worship all over again. Somewhat cynically disregarded by critics in their nineties pomp and largely sidelined by daytime radio, it's impossible to begrudge them their present lap of the Britpop revival circuit. A reassessment of their work has been long overdue.

Salad at their best sounded as if they had spent half their lives absorbing and assimilating all manner of influences from across the musical spectrum, utilising grunge's quiet/loud dynamics, prog's unpredictable gear shifts and changes, glam rock's fake fur coats and sparkly glamour, as well as the best bits of all the ideas ambitious frontwomen or solo artists had had from 1970 onwards... as stated in my previous entry on the group, only the fact they were fronted by a very successful model and MTV jock prevented most critics from appreciating their best moments. Why bother to listen carefully to an apparent vanity project when there's a new Tindersticks LP to quietly assess?

An additional problem was possibly the fact that their earliest releases didn't quite sound fully formed. "Diminished Clothes" is probably the best of the bunch, and was still a regular feature at live gigs until very late in the band's day. Filled with tribal drum rhythms and Marijne Van Der Vlugt's excellent pleading, bluesy vocals, it's minimal, hypnotic and faintly creepy in the way PJ Harvey's work of the same period could often be - not a high water mark for the group, but certainly a sign that they were moving far beyond their slightly raw and unfocussed roots.

Sadly, Salad would jump to the Island Records owned boutique indie label Island Red in due course, and for whatever reason "Indie Top 20" would not see fit to include them again. A shame, as some of their best moments such as "Drink The Elixir", "Motorbike To Heaven" and "Cardboy King" would get considerably more gushing write-ups from me, just as they did first time round. Damn it. All I can really ask is that you dip in and explore them properly for yourselves, if you haven't already.



15. Sharkboy - Razor (Nude)

Sharkboy were a short-lived proposition signed to Nude Records (home of Suede and, um, not much else) and fronted by the striking and charismatic Avy. Their frequently understated, smoky, subtle and melancholic sounding singles sounded out of place up against the ferocity of grunge and the razzle-dazzle of Britpop, and as such fell into an awkward no-man's land. While disappointingly few people bought their records, or indeed bother to listen to them on YouTube to this day, they were certainly wildly appreciated by some. Their debut LP "Matinee" was issued to an almost rabidly enthusiastic Melody Maker review, but this failed to translate into an awful lot of copies being taken up to the counter at Our Price.

While elements of Sharkboy's sound could easily be placed alongside the likes of Mazzy Star or Tindersticks for ease of reference, there was actually a faintly gothic, stagey edge to the group's sound I never quite took to at the time. Avy's earliest vocals do occasionally sound like an attention-seeking drama student doing her best world-weary Morticia Addams impression. Listening back over their best moments now, however, I'm warming to them considerably more than I did back then, particularly "The Valentine Tapes" which showed the group growing in warmth, ambition and scope, with Avy managing to find a way pull the listener into their world rather than putting up walls. "Razor", on the other hand, is cold, minimal and hard to find a way into.

As a postscript, it's possibly worth mentioning that I was sent to review a support slot gig of theirs at the time, and they failed to show up. Myself and a friend tracked down the tour manager to find out what was up, and we were snappily informed "Look, I know you're the last person I should say this to, but how the hell should I know where they are? They're MISSING, that's all I know! They've been nothing but unreliable the whole tour. I mean, if you ask me, they could have a bright future ahead of them, their vocalist is a fantastic frontwoman, but if they're not going to get their shit together..." and this rant continued in rather dull detail for some time, consisting of a long itinerary of complaints from a man trying to get on with his job but being foiled at every turn. The band never materialised that night. The review copy was never filed. Then, not long afterwards, they were no more.

Volume 19 Tracks 6-10 - Suede, Depeche Mode, Bjork, Saint Etienne, Stereolab

6. Suede - My Dark Star (Nude)

Another Indie Top 20 compilation, another Suede B-side. With just about any other group of this period, this would seem like being short-changed, but "My Dark Star" sat as the third track on the twelve inch format of the sprawling and mediocre "Stay Together". While that single did provide Suede with their first top three hit, it really was a triumph of hype and expectation over substance on that occasion. There are fans of the group who applaud it for its drama and excess, but I'm afraid I'm not among their number, and I can't even remember the last time I voluntarily sat down to listen to it.

"My Dark Star", on the other hand - which surely didn't give David Bowie any ideas towards the end of his career - is yet another one of Suede's pieces of understated but highly effective songwriting. A pulsing drone punctuates the chorus, providing an exotic, almost psychedelic feel, while Butler's fretboard work is pleasantly ambitious rather than bombastic. Along with Anderson's brilliant, impassioned vocals, this creates yet another flip side which could quite have easily sat comfortably on the tracklisting for "Dog Man Star" instead. The only thing standing in its way is a subtle but powerful sense of optimism which the album in general lacked.



7. Depeche Mode - In Your Room (Zephyr Mix) (Mute)

And with a distorted mechanical roar and some chiming guitars, the Butch Vig remix of the rather more electronic album track bursts into view. Given Gahan's precarious state of health at this time and poor internal relationships within the group, there were some - video director Anton Corbijn in particular - who speculated that this might be Depeche Mode's last ever single.

It's certainly the end of their capital "r" Rock phase, with electric guitars never featuring so prominently again on any future Mode singles. Still, Butch Vig does an incredible job of making the synthetic and analogue elements of the track work in tandem with each other, complimenting the sound rather than battling it out for dominance. It's almost a complete deconstruction. The use of meaty beats and a full palette of guitar effects here predate his later work with Garbage, and turn a song which originally sounded like a middling album track into an interesting and exciting piece of work packed with dynamics. It's one of the few examples I can think of where a Depeche Mode remix has actually improved on the source material.

Aided by an elaborate, collectible multi-CD package, it climbed to number eight in the charts then rapidly slid down again, and has become a somewhat forgotten part of the group's catalogue since. Third or fourth singles from albums usually fare badly in the collective consciousness, and it's often for good reasons - in this case, however, I can't help but think that a lot of people might be missing out. If they had split up after this release, it seems almost certain that it would have had a stronger impact and we'd hear a lot more of it now.

Depeche Mode's future adventures occur outside the timeline for this blog, so this is the last time we'll be discussing them.



8. Bjork - Violently Happy (Massey Mix) (One Little Indian)

"Violently Happy" was also the fourth single to be plucked from "Debut" - or the fifth, if you count the fact that "Play Dead" was made available as a bonus track on some versions - and at the time it seemed peculiar that anyone would have bothered. "Violently Happy" in its original guise is pulsing and minimal, never moving far from its simple root riff. While working within the context of "Debut", it really doesn't sound like much of a single, though the use of Bjork in a faintly unusual "padded cell and scissors" video helped it get a lot of MTV exposure in Europe at least.

The Graham Massey mix pumps things up quite a bit, though, turning the track into a banging, didgeridoo backed war dance. Again, it's not necessarily a view that would be shared by her fans, but it repeats the trick of the previous track on this LP by adding a vast array of colour, adventure and dynamics to a previously rather simple piece of work. I far prefer it to the original and wouldn't be at all surprised if a lot of clubbers bought the CD to own this version rather than the 7" edit.



9. Saint Etienne - Pale Movie (Heavenly)

While Pete Wiggs has described this song as a "bit of a failure" since, this almost sounds like Saint Etienne at their shiniest and poppiest. Stick petroleum jelly in your ears and ram your head under a pillow while this plays, and you could almost convince yourself that it's one of Geri Halliwell's Spanish sounding singles given a bit more depth and drama. "La Isla Bonita" for the indie-kid set, if you will.

Of course, that's a very simplistic overview, and in fact the song has a lot more going on than that. The lyrics in particular are beguiling and fascinating, moving from fairly bog-standard observations like "He's so dark and moody/ she is the sunshine girl" to "In the bed where they make love / She's in a film on the sheets / He shows dreams like a movie / She's the softness of cinema seats" almost effortlessly. Like The Pet Shop Boys before them, Saint Etienne were at this point taking commercial, electronic pop sounds to considered, intelligent and occasionally beautiful or interesting places. Some critics at the time debated whether their ambition was their undoing at this point, with the NME in particular noting that "Pale Movie" was lyrically too unusual and considered to be a proper pop hit in 1994. That's a tad cynical, but they did turn out to be correct - it managed one week in the top thirty at number 28, a respectable enough showing for an indie group, but a lot less than the track deserved.

According to an unverified source on Wikipedia, it did apparently get to number one in the Lebanon, though. I very badly want this to be true, so I'm going to call it a fact unless anyone can prove otherwise.

 

10. Stereolab - French Disko (Duophonic)

The last time we heard Stereolab on "Indie Top 20", they were embryonic and sandpaper rough. While by the point of the "Jenny Ondioline" EP - from which "French Disko" stems - they remained addicted to minimal drones combined with trilling, cheery calls to a socialist revolution, by now they seemed to have fleshed out their ideas beyond the straightforward template of "Lo Fi". The title track "Jenny Ondioline" was a startling and breathtaking piece of work which recalled the minimalism and the relentless and addictive nature of the best krautrock whilst also having a strange, rushing and shimmering identity of its own.

"French Disko", on the other hand, is close enough to Pop. Laetitia Sadier sings something very close to a nursery rhyme about continuing involvement in political action through difficult times. "Though this world's essentially an absurd place to be living in/ it doesn't call for total withdrawal" it begins, before eventually reaching the chorus's key clarion call of "La Resistance!" A luscious, chiming guitar melody repeats throughout, and the analogue synths bubble and squeak beneath. Never has the idea of political engagement sounded so joyous and hopeful, so downright thrilling.

Stereolab's cult status was pretty much sealed at this point, and they spent the next decade as the go-to group for often different strands of the record-buying public - fans of psychedelia, krautrock, twee indie, shoegazing, and even exotica found something to admire in the band, and while they never truly rose overground, they became an example of an old-school "indie" group with clearly defined ideals and principles who survived healthily during the commercial onslaught of Britpop.

No YouTube video for this, I'm afraid (unless you count a live appearance on "The Word") so Spotify will have to be your friend in this instance.

Volume 19 Side One - Tracks 1-5 - Inspiral Carpets, Carter USM, Blur, The Charlatans, Radiohead

Formats: CD/ Cassette
Year of Release: 1994

Volume 19 is a somewhat odd entry in the "Indie Top 20" canon, in that it's the first one where you get a sense that neither Tim Millington (the compiler) or Beechwood Music (the label) understood the direction alternative music was going in. It fails to introduce one new act who would even go on to achieve cult significance, never mind anything else. If you wanted to be charitable you could offer the space afforded to Radiohead as an example of the series being ahead of the curve, but the 1993 reissue of "Creep" really doesn't count. The group had already been signed to EMI for some time, had a hit in America, and released their debut album by this point.

That's not to say that this is a bad compilation, and certainly the front end of it is stuffed with all kinds of goodies. It's just that 1994 was the year of Britpop emerging as a force for either good or ill, depending on your point of view, and the first "Indie Top 20" LP of the year completely failed to grasp or understand the change in the prevailing winds. Even at the time, this seemed like an odd release, and a sign that perhaps the series wouldn't be with us for much longer.

1. Inspiral Carpets - Saturn 5 (Mute)

When the teacher asked the boys and girls in my class "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I never hesitated to answer. "Astronaut", I replied. Then again, so did the boy sat next to me, Neil. And the curly-haired pompous voiced little boy Michael, an absurdly tall only child who knew everything about space, much more than the rest of us, and even had more books than us on the subject, actually. (When I imagine Michael now, he's wearing tweed and smoking a pipe, and looks about 65. He's also constantly on social media putting other people straight). The rest of the boys all wanted to be astronauts too. None of us had an original career in our brains. But why should we have? What else would you have wanted to be?

"Well, who knows what the future might bring?" my teacher replied sceptically, but we all knew. The future was space. We'd all either be visiting there or living out there, commuting to the moon and Mars and back in home for tea. I drew the Saturn 5 spaceship obsessively in my art book, perfecting its outlines, dreaming that one day I would travel on such a thing.

"David, Saturn 5 doesn't look like that!" Michael objected just loudly enough that the teacher could hear. I always drew Saturn 5 to look much more futuristic than it really was. Looking at Google images now, I can see it's a fairly typical looking rocket, but I drew it wider and flatter looking, like some kind of elongated metal flatfish. Who put that idea in my head? Who knows? I was only six. Still though, when I imagine "Saturn 5" now, I imagine my doodled representation of it rather than the rocket as it actually looked.

At that point in time, there were songs about the future and space on the radio, and they all sounded metallic, chromatic and faintly foreboding. Synthesisers and drum machines were usually at the forefront. We had all our eyes on the horizon towards a jet pack future. Fast forward to 1994, and I'm trying to become an adult, and suddenly The Inspiral Carpets were writing songs about the very spaceship that had fascinated me as a small boy. The Inspiral Carpets. A band with squeaky sixties electric organs and decidedly retro leanings. Being excited about the future had become a thing of the past, a fond memory in itself. Futurism was now nostalgia. "Eee, do you remember the days when we all thought the near future would be a lot more technologically advanced than it's turned out to be?"

"There's a popular misconception, says we haven't seen anything yet" sings Tom Hingley on this single, and it's clear that while there's a simple pop bounciness to it, it's infused with the feeling that the future we all dreamed for ourselves never quite materialised. "Monochrome TV, all the things that you ever represented to me/ take me once more, take me to heaven again".

I don't want to overanalyse "Saturn 5" too much. It is, at its heart, a very simple indie pop single, and I bet most people are able to appreciate it as such. By talking about it in such a tone, I run the risk of making myself sound ridiculous. When the group's brilliant drummer Craig Gill died last year, an online campaign was set up to get it back in the charts again, which I can only imagine was because it was seen as being one of the group's most accessible and uplifting songs ("This Is How It Feels" would have felt horribly inappropriate). It re-entered the Top 50, spending one week at number 48 in sympathy.

Trouble is, when others hear "Saturn 5" I think they just hear a sixties obsessed group of Oldham lads singing an uplifting Monkees-esque pop song about outer space. Fair enough, as that's undoubtedly correct. But I don't hear that. I hear something a bit hollow, something that at its heart feels that wondrous human achievements are a thing of the past, and from now on the biggest thing the human race can hope for is keep what we've got as intact as possible. From this point forth, if we're going to sing about a future in outer space we'll have two choices open to us - turn the vocoders and doomy synth pre-sets on ironically, or pound on Jetsons electric organs while singing "Woo-hoo-hoo" backing vocals.

"Saturn 5", then. It's not as depressing as "This Is How It Feels", but for some reason it does make me feel a hell of a lot more despondent.

It reached number twenty on its debut release in 1994, ensuring the group had a lifespan far beyond the baggy years, though regrettably "Devil Hopping" would turn out to be their last album.



2. Carter USM - Glam Rock Cops (Chrysalis)

Carter's fortunes, meanwhile, continued to decline. "Glam Rock Cops" is probably one of the duo's most recognised and appreciated singles, but was in itself a callback to former glories. The leaden glam rock beat pinned to the foundations of this single sounded strangely similar to the one used on "Bloodsport For All", one of their big breakthrough moments.

Lyrically, the track veers all over the road from the personal to the political, talking about South London street muggings to the group's own strange role in the music business. "You took it all from me/ My cheque book, my wallet/ my pride and dignity" rants Jim Bob one minute, before later observing "They put me in the spotlight, tied me to the stage/ the only thing I got right was to lie about my age".  So if there's a key theme running through the single at all, dignity seems to be it. Undignified street robberies, a government mugging the public by taking more public services away from them, and a possible confession that Jim Bob and Fruitbat were starting to feel a bit irrelevant as thirty-something pop stars. It's tied together very loosely as an argument about how doomed authentic political commentary in rock music is (or at least, I think that's the the common strand they're trying to wrap everything up with). Nobody's listening because nobody cares, and nobody cares because nobody else is listening anyway. It feels a tiny bit clumsy, though, and once again I find myself wishing the group had left themselves out of the argument.

Still, "Glam Rock Cops" is probably the last single in their canon to really sound like a possible hit, having a demanding keyboard clarion call and a defiant stride to its chorus, and a solid trucker's beat behind it. And it was indeed their last top thirty hit, reaching number 24. Times were changing, and Carter would have no real part to play in the new media vision.



3. Blur - Sunday Sunday (Food/ EMI)

And here the new boys are, bang on cue. The trouble is, "Sunday Sunday" is frequently taken at face value as some kind of Jamie Oliver styled roast beef and Yorkshire Pudding knees-up. The printed subtitle the track was given perhaps should have been underlined in red biro: "Legislated nostalgia - to force a body of people to have memories they do not actually possess".

As a single in its own right, "Sunday Sunday" isn't one of Blur's finest. It's an oompah ridden frolic and skip through an imaginary English Sunday landscape, doffing its cap to the ladies as it passes. As a statement, on the other hand, it's a very stinging pisstake, and worryingly prophetic in the way it highlights the ridiculous lengths mainstream British society (or perhaps more accurately, the media) will go to to glamourise and falsify its traditions, past and role in the world. "You meet an old soldier and talk of the past" sings Albarn proudly "He fought for us in two world wars/ And says the England he knew is no more". Remind you of anything you've read recently?

Having Blur rub up against Carter USM on this compilation starkly highlights the differing approach to politics and social commentary the old indie guard and the new Britpop heroes had. The scruffy, glamour-free authentic bunch of old took the angle of "Everything is wrong, and we're going to tell you exactly why with some witty rhyming couplets". Blur and their ilk took a more subtle approach, and you could argue that it was so subtle it went straight over the heads of at least half their  audience (you shouldn't doubt the fact that plenty of people in Blur's home county of Essex did take "Sunday Sunday" very literally, because I had petty arguments with them about it).

Is that irresponsible? Were Blur having their cake and eating it, appealing to future UKIP supporters and knowing students in the same breath? While it certainly didn't hurt them commercially in the long run, you can only consider their approach irresponsible if you also level that charge at every art-school band from the early sixties onwards (including The Beatles), most of whom also had their moments of being less than opaque and choosing to weave interesting narratives rather than issue dictums. For my taste, "Sunday Sunday" is a lot more cunning, biting and subversive than "Glam Rock Cops", even if it's not a Blur track I return to very often.

(Incidentally, Andy Partridge of XTC was the initial producer for "Modern Life Is Rubbish", and I've often wondered whether the Colin Moulding penned "Washaway" was an inspiration for "Sunday Sunday". It takes a very similar lyrical tack).



4. The Charlatans - Can't Get Out Of Bed (Beggars Banquet)

The Charlatans had been absent from the "Indie Top 20" series for some time by this point, last being seen on Volume 12 with "Happen To Die". I suspect that Beechwood felt that the group were rapidly becoming irrelevant, and didn't feel the need to give them space during their "wilderness years" (these things are relative, though - The Charlatans still remained reasonably popular during their post-baggy/ pre-Britpop slump years).

Of all the groups to adapt to changing styles, The Charlatans possibly had the easiest ride, and emerged more popular than ever. There always was a swaggering mod groove to their most popular singles, and an identifiable attitude. "Can't Get Out Of Bed" emphasises this, having a beery, pounding Faces styled groove at its foundations. Gone were the old-school Charlatans rhumba rhythms, and in their place was music to thrust your hips to.

To my ears, this is less interesting than "Then" or "Over-Rising", killing off any atmosphere or curious psychedelia for a bit of a stomp down the Marquee. Still, it saved the band's bacon, and ensured they survived as a force where most other groups of their era fell.



5. Radiohead - Creep (Parlophone)

I'm almost tempted to pass on this one. "Creep" has become such an iconic single now, and Radiohead such a colossus of a band, that attempting to pass any kind of pithy comment on it or them is doomed to failure. For a start, it's a huge red herring in the group's catalogue, a piece of lovelorn angst penned by a very young Thom Yorke about a woman he went to university with. No wonder he's faintly embarrassed by it now. Everything I've written along those lines is kept well away from public view (on the down side, nothing I wrote back then set me up for a long creative career).

Also, while Radiohead's reputation as being one of the era's most innovative and forward-thinking groups is seldom questioned, "Creep" did beg and borrow as shamelessly as Elastica. Leaning on elements of The Hollies "The Air That I Breathe" so much that the group were later forced to credit (and reward) that track's authors Hammond and Hazlewood, it's not a work of enormous originality. Even the clattering guitar lines were later revealed to be a studio accident.

What "Creep" did do, however, was provide an anthem for awkward youths and misfits everywhere. While the point may be skated around now, there's no doubt that it sold in the US to huge volumes of grunge kids, leading many of us (me included) to suspect that the group were no more than a passing angsty storm. Most of Radiohead's singles from this period were contorted, irritated balls of disgust, recalling Howard Devoto at his most direct as well as the likes of Cobain at their most incendiary. Only the US mix of "Stop Whispering", with its scaling, epic arrangement, pointed towards something more intricate, developed and astonishing around the corner.

"Creep" does serve its purpose bloody well, however - listening back to it now, trying to think about the first time I heard it, I feel just as uncomfortable as I did then. Unlike most of Radiohead's other material, it's piercingly direct. Yorke was a decidedly awkward looking rock star in 1993, and you felt and believed every word of the track primarily because he was delivering it. It also acted as a necessary development for the group. Prior to "Creep", Yorke appeared in press photos looking defensive and out of place, like a sulky, scolded geek. By the time it was released, he was regarded in a different light, and his role as a thwarted outsider rock star emerged (let's stop short of using the word "tortured" shall we, or I'll really have to jump out of the window in shame).

Problematically, I later ended up meeting a friend of the woman the track was directed at, and got to hear about the basis for the song - since then, I've never been able to listen to it without it being reminded of a series of adolescent soap opera anecdotes. Still, erasing those thought processes from my brain as best I can, it's hard to hear "Creep" as being anything other than the ultimate loser's anthem. The early nineties weren't short of those, but this towered above them all with an enormous, weighty crown on its head.