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

1. The Sugarcubes - Regina (One Little Indian)

"Four, Five, Six, Seven... and Bjork suddenly bursts alight, trilling, preening, calling, beckoning, the scarlet ethereal voice hitting the topmost notes with a heart-stopping clarity, the jiggering rhythm folding across her shoulders" - Melody Maker. 

The pop world hasn't been overburdened with songs penned in tribute to columnists who write for evening newspapers, but The Sugarcubes corrected that matter in 1989 with "Regina". Of course, being The Sugarcubes, the topic of the song was no ordinary woman, being an Icelandic columnist who mainly wrote about the achievements of her neighbours and said very little about the news at all, and their praise to her is occasionally eccentric and rather blurry in its aims. At one point Einar screams "I really don't like lobster!" in a manner usually reserved for political protest songs.

Business as usual back at the Bad Taste camp, then, although rather like the last time we met the group with "Deus", there's a slickness and poppiness to this track which barely matches the lyrics or indeed Einar's demented ramblings. The track clops along at an even pace, and the chorus is a simple, trilled refrain of "Oh oh, Regina!" which threatens never to end in the last minute of the track. The net result is that once the novelty of the sheer absurdity of the lyrics and the subject matter fades, you're left with very little to get excited about.

The album "Regina" stemmed from, "Here Today Tomorrow Next Week" is widely regarded to be a sophomore slump effort, and the fact that "Regina" acted as the lead single from it didn't bode well.



2. Kitchens of Distinction - Elephantine (One Little Indian)

"....hail from Tooting, South London, which is on direct route southwards to Timbuktu. Really. The band form two years ago after a chance encounter at the frozen food section of Safeway in Streatham!"

As the baggy movement began to gather pace and indie-kids started shaking their fringes and imaginary maracas on the dance floor to an assortment of Mancs singing to funky drummer beats in hushed tones, Kitchens of Dinstinction actually began to seem even more out of sorts than they were when they first arrived. For all that, "Elephantine" was possibly their biggest sounding single yet, with a huge yet disconcerting chorus. The track overall lacked their usual dependency on effects pedals and atmospherics and instead launches itself headlong into something approach a traditional tune, albeit one filtered through some peculiar prisms.

Perhaps due to the epic nature of the chorus, "Elephantine" did give the band their biggest indie chart hit yet, but their popularity would never rise much above cult indie appreciation.



3. Fatima Mansions - Only Losers Take The Bus (Kitchenware)

"Fatima Mansions is that very rare thing, a sound that sounds like nothing so much as itself" - 20/20
"The hungry, incredulous 'Only Losers Take The Bus' is perfect" - NME

Microdisney split up following the undeserved failure of their last album "39 Minutes", an unorthodox and astonishing album which featured fierce anti-Thatcherite lyrics backed with smooth Steely Dan styled arrangements and backing vocals from Londonbeat on session duties. The Londonbeat boys apparently sorely objected to getting in the studio to croon along to lines such as "There's nothing wrong with the young would-be rich/ That a head full of lead would not cure" but happily took their paycheque anyway. The record company Virgin didn't see the point of the entire affair, dropped Microdisney, and the group collapsed in disarray.

Lead singer and lyricist Cathal Coughlan wasted absolutely no time in forming a new band, and Fatima Mansions were the swift result. He was out of the traps so fast that, unfortunately, their first mini-LP "Against Nature" did still bear hallmarks of the Microdisney sound on a few tracks, containing familiarly brooding Scott Walker-ish ballads. Among those, however, were also pounding social rants ("The Prince of Caledonia he drives a diesel van/ When he's peddling skag in Hamilton/ He's a reality man!") and perhaps more unusually, Stock Aitken and Waterman styled indie-disco, slightly akin to Robert Lloyd. The group's lack of identity at this point confused more punters than it delighted, and their early work remains relatively overlooked to this day.

The first single "Only Losers Take The Bus" is most definitely remembered, however, being a thunderous, rattling juggernaut of a track, filled with Cathal spouting obtuse lyrics with a righteous fury and demanding, angular guitar riffs. Inspired by Margaret Thatcher's declaration that anyone aged 30 or over who still takes a bus has failed at life, some of the other lines - "Get these dead bodies off my race track!" in particular - hint towards a surreal attack on individualistic, self-centered Conservative values.

Musically it gave few clues about the fury the group were about to unleash on the world, instead hinting that their future lay in quirky indie rock - but nonetheless, it was far from ignored by the press, who were there to wave their flags enthusiastically from the sidelines.



4. Wire - In Vivo (Mute)

"Those masters of uncompromising melody do what they bloody well like (once more). Another slice of unholy Ecstacy on vinyl".

For all the talk of Wire being uncompromising, "In Vivo" really marks the final moment of an uncharacteristically poppy phase for the group. From the release of "A Bell Is A Cup" onwards, a clear sense was beginning to emerge that Wire were now a peculiar but faintly commercial group. "Eardrum Buzz" was proof positive that they could pen in an infuriatingly catchy track, and "Kidney Bingos" and "Silk Skin Paws" showed they could play their grown-up punk associates equally well at the "atmospheric adult pop" game. After this, though, Wire would become much more jarring and experimental.

"In Vivo" offers slick, catchy riffs sliding into an anthemic chorus, and while it never truly puffs its chest out, it's still a comparatively trad single by Wire's normal standards, with barely a sharp edge or unexpected twist or turn to be found. For those reasons, I find it possibly the least interesting of their Mute singles - and the fact it sold less well than many of them possibly indicates that the public felt the same way.

That's not to say it's bad, mind you. There very rarely ever was such a thing as a bad Wire single, and "In Vivo" is bold and shiny enough to be among the finer tracks on "Volume 8". It just doesn't excel.

The album this came from (provided you didn't own the vinyl copy) was "IBTABA", or "It's Beginning To And Back Again", which consisted almost entirely of reimaginings and reconstructions of other recent Wire songs, with the group often pulling the structures to pieces and building songs up again completely from their basic foundations. Frequently regarded as a substandard album in their catalogue, it was actually the first Wire long-player I ever bought, and I initially didn't understand what it was, believing all the tracks on it to be the original versions. When I backtracked later on, I actually thought the true original versions on "A Bell Is A Cup" were inferior, a view I've subsequently revised in some but absolutely not all cases. I still believe that (for example) the moody acoustic take of "Public Place" is the definitive version. "IBTABA" is definitely worth tracking down, but it may take a little bit of adjusting to get used to the parallel universe versions of the tunes on there.



5. Field Mice - If You Need Someone (Sarah)

"Taken from the double 7 inch EP 'The Autumn Store'".

While it's tempting to argue that The Field Mice were a huge cult band at the time, their subsequent influence on bands such as Belle and Sebastian means that their name is even more likely to be uttered by indie kids these days than it was in 1989. Indeed, a compilation of their work "Where'd You Learn To Kiss That Way?" released in 1999 sold more copies than anything released during the group's lifetime.

It would also be tempting to argue that the fey, ponderous approach "If You Need Someone" takes is typical of the group's output, but they actually played around with a wide variety of sounds, as future "Indie Top 20" appearances will prove. There's no question that it's something of a stereotypical Sarah Records release, however - dripping with wide-eyed teenage romance, sensitive promises, buttery guitar lines and plodding drum patterns, it's an indiepop Valentine's card to all women with duffle coats and cute bangs everywhere. And I actually have to confess that as a grown man, I find it slightly tough to get anything out of - this is a dream of a love affair written through the prism of boyish innocence, and it's a pretty listen, but not a very emotionally engaging or inspiring one. Unlike some of their other output, if you created an acoustic version of this and got a female vocalist to take the lead, nobody would really notice anything was up if you put it on a pet food advert in the present day. A strength or a weakness (or a sign that my true vocation lies in soundtracking adverts)? You decide.



6. Pale Saints - Sight Of You (4AD)

"This, the first to benefit from the band's jigsaw theory of song A songwriting pregnant with meaning".

WHAT?! Did "Indie Top 20" get that piece of blurb from a bad translation of a Hungarian music press review?

Anyway, "Sight Of You", from their "Barging Into The Presence Of God" EP, was such a huge track at the time that it hung around the Indie Top 10 seemingly forever, and featured in the final 10 of John Peel's 1989 Festive Fifty.

Along with the work of My Bloody Valentine, there's an arguable case to be made for it being one of the first "shoegazing" tracks as well. The droning organ, buried and cherubic vocals, and finally the sheer wall of guitars that hits you at the track's end seem to predict the emergence of sonic atmospherics rather than funky beats. That bassline, which almost appears to be leading the melody in places rather than anchoring it, obviously owed a bigger debt to Peter Hook, however.

Given the relative success of the track at the time, it's slightly surprising that it's heard so infrequently now, and also that Pale Saints failed to really build on it. Subsequent singles - more on those when we get to them - are actually much more adventurous and interesting in my opinion, but the group's appeal never did become as large as their early promise seemed to indicate. "Sight Of You" really should be regarded as one small element in their career rather than their crowning glory, but it's possible that the group paid the price for arriving with a certain type of noise far too early.

Indie Top 20 Volume 7 Side One - Pixies, Stone Roses, They Might Be Giants, Wire, Throwing Muses

Format: Double LP/ Cassette/ CD
Year of Release: 1989

If Volume 6 seemed scattershot and chaotic in its all-encompassing journey through indieland, Volume 7 doesn't really do much to restore order - but then again, why should it? The notion that the Indie Charts had predominant trends at certain times in its lifespan is true, but the shoegazing moment had its crusty scene running alongside it, the Britpop movement its Trip Hop, and the baggy/ Madchester movement had grunge alongside it (or at least the most successful howls of American alternative rock and punk as it bled straight into grunge).

There's a dominant myth that's been doing the rounds for decades now that Grunge emerged out of the shadows like some kind of murderer in the night and killed off the indie-dance heroes in British society. It's a myth I've probably privately contributed to many conversations myself, purely because it's such a convenient narrative. In reality, the late eighties and early nineties were an incredibly tolerant, diverse time for music, a time when you could go to your local alternative nightclub, sip on an overpriced pint of something truly objectionable, and listen to artists as diverse as The Stone Roses, Sly and the Family Stone, The Aphex Twin and Mudhoney. I should know, because I was there. It's only really when The Stone Roses went on a long, extended hiatus and The Happy Mondays lost the plot that things changed and the focus narrowed. Nirvana hitting the British music scene like a plaid rucksack filled with bricks at a time when not much else was going on inevitably had a significant impact.

But that's for us to think about later. For now, we're about to enter one of the most diverse, fascinating and occasionally perplexing eras in British alternative music. A time when anything went, but also indie music started to sell in quantities high enough for there to begin to be a noticeable mainstream impact. The videos got slicker, the production got better, the marketing more advanced... and far be it for me to court controversy by suggesting that the monstrous sales of Dance twelve inch singles and Stock Aitken and Waterman records may have given distributors a shot in the arm, it probably is the truth.

1. Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven (4AD)

"What more can be said about the Pixies". 

A highly apt liner note that remains a good point to this day.

With a mighty crash of five opening notes, "Monkey Gone To Heaven" heralds the moment when Pixies became a huge deal in the UK. The year before, "Gigantic" had been a massive track in the alternative clubs and even reached Number 90 in the national charts, but "Monkey" was truly inescapable in certain circles. The gloomy black and white promo video dominated the Chart Show indie chart for months, and Frank Black's world finally met with the public at large... a world of UFOs, surfing, Christianity, South America, and whatever else his brain was hoovering up at any given time.

"Monkey Gone To Heaven" still sounds extraordinary, and it remains perplexing that Ivo Watts nearly  turned the band down for being "too normal". Compared to many 4AD signings they may have admittedly been less ethereal or atmospheric, but where the very worst of those acts sounded little better than Clannad fans performing in a backyard shed, Pixies took rock and roll to some unpredictable places. While "Monkey Gone To Heaven" is supposed to be an environmental protest song (with various chunks of religious imagery seeping in along the way) the lyrics are so stripped back and scattershot that it could be dismissed as nonsense. Yet when Frank Black brilliantly howls "If the devil is six... then GOD IS SEVEN!" it could also be taken straight from a Black Sabbath LP, so trad is the idea.

Pixies ripped, clawed and tore at the fabric of rock music and the culture that surrounded them, and sounded so fresh and yet so familiar when they arrived that it was powerful beyond measure, like Proper Rock music distorted through exhausted dream sleep. Their blend of cultural influences and references could have turned out naive and messy, but there's a masterful control taking place in their work at an enviably early point. While we may have casually regarded them as American eccentrics at the time, their approach slowly became absorbed by other more successful acts from their home country... not least the quiet-loud-quiet-loud dynamic being applied to the verse/chorus structure, and the belief that early seventies hard rock wasn't an embarrassing corner of music history to be pilfering from.

And let's not ignore the fact that Kim Deal's basslines, which always sound as if they're being played with the thickest plectrum in the world, also added a huge amount to their sound.



2. The Stone Roses - Made Of Stone (Silvertone)

"Let's call them The Stones - no-one will get confused" - Sounds - 15th July 1989

It's very, very telling that the liner notes for both Pixies and The Stone Roses are tremendously half-arsed, almost as if everyone involved knew there was no point in expanding on the pre-existing narrative.

But let's not get too carried away here. That liner note may conveniently fit the idea that The Stone Roses were universally adored from the moment "Sally Cinnamon" first fell into the world, but it's not how I remember things at all. Rather, it seemed suspiciously as if the comparison the Sounds journalist was making to The Rolling Stones had been taken out of jokey context to prove a point the band wanted to make.

The simple truth is that while The Stone Roses and their manager Gareth Evans were keen to tell anyone that they were the most important group in Britain (if not the world) surprisingly few people believed them initially. Record Mirror ridiculed the entire situation by referring to their much-reported Manchester gig attendance figures and stating "Manchester City get more people in, and we're not putting them on our front cover either". The NME gave the debut LP 7 out of 10 and almost (but not quite) dismissed it as a nice enough psychedelic pop pastiche. Much history has been rewritten around The Stone Roses since because music journalists were caught with their trousers down - many still had all their money riding on The House of Love as being alternative rock's next big dominant force. The Roses seemed like a parochial, retro irrelevance, and who needed John Squire as a guitar hero when you could have Terry Bickers? (Though to be fair, both can be astonishing guitarists in very different ways).

That's not to say that "Made Of Stone" wasn't viewed as an exceptionally good single by most, but perhaps it's not really been given enough credit even since for its relative richness and complexity. Starting with a truly beautiful interwoven guitar and bass line, Ian Brown's hushed vocals then enter and begin singing what appears to be a surreal, lyrically drifting ballad about the righteous death of a wealthy scoundrel.

I'm possibly stretching comparisons to breaking point by saying this, but if you spin back to Volume Four of "Indie Top 20" and listen to Wire's "Kidney Bingos", there are clear and unacknowledged parallels in the approach, from the delicate prettiness of the interwoven guitar and basslines to the soft, surreal and yet actually very political lyrics, followed by a unifying anthemic chorus. The over-arching concept of The Stone Roses debut album was the 1968 French student riots, from the sleeve right through to many of the contents, seemingly wishing that similar values would transport themselves into a Thatcherite 1989. Wire's "A Bell is A Cup Until It Is Struck" was similarly very agitated and dystopian in a similarly blissed and calm way. It's highly doubtful the two bands ever even listened to each other, much less took influence from each other, but the fact that parallels can be drawn gives a significant hint towards the dominant mood of the times. The Poll Tax riots were just around the corner, ecstasy was everywhere, and among the youth of the country there was a significant kickback, a sense once again that the times could be changed and certain forces could be overthrown.

Of course, The Stone Roses may have been lyrically oblique, but they were still less lyrically baffling than Wire. Even with one listen of "Made Of Stone", it's possible to hear that it's clearly a song with a revolutionary darkness at its heart. "I'm standing warm against the cold/ now that the flames have taken hold/ at least you left your life in style" brings to mind a Porsche in flames in a riot-strewn Manchester street, and an unprivileged Ian Brown toasting marshmallows on the funeral pyre of a millionaire.

The chorus is so anthemic against this comparative menace that it did cause a few of the band's critics to take shot. John Peel sneered on his 1989 Festive Fifty countdown "Well, I can see that's got a certain sing-a-long factor..." Like many, he refused to do a u-turn on his original dismissive approach to the group, but I insist... they weren't just some kind of retro rock band.  They plucked a wide array of influences from the family tree of rock music before coming up with something engagingly different and relevant. They may have obtained the services of John Leckie as a producer for the album, knowing that his work on XTC's "Dukes of Stratosphear" was authentic psychedelic pop, but not a single track on "The Stone Roses" sounds exactly like an equivalent piece of 1967 era music.

Critics might argue, of course, that "Made Of Stone" does sound a bit like Primal Scream's "Velocity Girl", and I'll pass on discussing that one.

It's also tempting to pass on discussing the fact that the national chart peak of "Made Of Stone" on its first release was number 90. It hung around the indie top ten seemingly forever, of course, notching up a slow trickle of sales across the entire year, but the band were not big players in any sense. Time, a more sympathetic press, and the power of word of mouth would all work in their favour very, very soon, until the dam very suddenly broke.



3. They Might Be Giants - Ana Ng (One Little Indian)

"Ng is one of the most common Vietnamese names in the New York telephone directory - that's where the name came from. The song, however, is a love poem to an imaginary woman on the opposite side of the globe. It was the Number 1 college radio song in the USA; displacing U2. The video was a big MTV hit. The LP has sold over 200,000 copies in the US".

Clang, cla-clang, clang... ca clang clang, clang clang.... Ana Ng announces itself like a piece of music being played by a stammering robot trying to negotiate its way around an electric guitar. Of all the singles released by They Might Be Giants, it's probably one of the more accessible despite its quirkiness, taking a fairly complex lyrical conceit and peppering it with some very sharp, emotionally resonant observations, with lines like "I don't want the world - I just want your half" punctuating the clever-dickery of the "everything sticks like a broken record" gag.

There's an overwhelming sense that the single isn't as smart as it wants to be, though, and the band spend more time on attempted profundities than they do on the arrangement. By the time the track is due to close, the constant, nagging repetition of the chorus sounds uncomfortably like an idea without a firm conclusion.



4. Wire - Eardrum Buzz (Mute)

"Wire are criminally undersung - Eardrum Buzz is another of Wire's Hole-In-One, Inch-Perfect singles. A product of sheer draughtsmanship in the tradition of "Dot Dash", "I Am The Fly" and "Map Reference". If Wire weren't so good at this, they might have had a hit by now. But no matter". - Melody Maker

And if "Eardrum Buzz" couldn't become a hit single, you had to wonder what on earth Wire could produce that would be. Of course, it wasn't.

Alongside "Outdoor Miner", it represented the closest they came in their careers, though. Enjoying television and radio airtime, "Eardrum Buzz" was essentially jagged but excessively catchy synth-pop styled through the band's well-developed art-punk approach. Much more unashamedly Pop than anything they had issued prior to this point, it's polished and scrubbed within an inch of its life.

"Eardrum Buzz" is the Wire single a lot of Wire fans pretend to dislike or disapprove of. Subtlety isn't its strong suit. Rather than gently weaving its way into your brain, it approaches with a sledgehammer and demands squatter's rights. The lyrics are also almost sub-sixties psychedelia in their infantilism, with the chorus of "Zee zee zee zum zum/ buzz buzz buzz in the eardrum" dropping things down to almost "Fee fi fo fum" levels.

For all that, however, it's a burst of sunshine and a total joy. Had it been a huge hit, its ubiquity may have become trying; on the cultish lower-reaches-of-the-Top-75 status it managed, however, it's a private pleasure and nothing at all like a guilty one. And hey, it was still a bigger hit than The Stone Roses "Made Of Stone"...



5. Throwing Muses - Dizzy (4AD)

"Dizzy was released as a double A side single along with "Santa Claus" in March 1989. It is also to be found on the group's third full-length album Hunkpapa".

When we last encountered Throwing Muses on Volume Three, the noise was akin to an antagonised, hysterical racket in a rural henhouse. By comparison, "Dizzy" was a shock, another song from an unlikely source that sounded like it wanted to be a hit. While the verses combine flashes of poetic travelling imagery and almost crash into chaos, the chorus is pure late sixties/ early seventies Americana pop. It's hardly Lobo's "Me And You And A Dog Named Boo" - in fact, it may still be millions of miles away from that - but it's not impossible to reimagine "Dizzy" as a huge, overproduced stadium hit from another era.

It still remains one of the key tracks people most readily associate with Throwing Muses to this day, and while it may have just dropped short of getting mainstream attention, there's no reason why it shouldn't have achieved it.

Volume 5 Side 1 - Robert Lloyd, Wire, New Order, King Blank, Quireboys

Format: Double Vinyl/ Cassette/ CD
Year of Release: 1988

Volume 5 was a significant issue for the series, being the first ever Indie Top 20 LP to come out on Compact Disc - finally, the digital age had reached Beechwood Music, and listeners could (if they chose) listen to all manner of underproduced indie groups in high quality sound. Some of them had never even had releases on CD before. Marvellous. WERE WE NOT MEN?

Of course, I never owned this album on CD myself (or not until much, much later on when I chanced upon a second hand CD copy for £2). I didn't have the kind of money necessary for a CD Player at this point in my life, still listening to all my records on the turntable of a Saisho stereo unit my brothers bought me for Christmas. So whatever revolution this represented, it entirely passed me by.

I can distinctly remember this being a Christmas present too, at the tail end of 1988 - and I was delighted when I ripped the wrapping paper off and found this double vinyl LP waiting for me. When I finally played it at home, though, I was struck by what a gloomy sounding record it is compared to any of the previous volumes. There are obvious exceptions, but this is overwhelmingly a contemplative, moody record as opposed to a varied buffet. Despite the fact that Indiepop was a bit of a busted flush at this point and the music press had largely moved on to other concerns, it appears to be in denial about that fact, probably containing the highest number of slightly shambolic, vaguely twee, low budget bands since Volume One.

There's some good moments on the album, but no really great ones (in my opinion) and some downright baffling inclusions. Perhaps in this halfway house, this motorway travel tavern sleepover between Indiepop and Indie Dance, a slight loss of focus could only be expected. But you may well disagree as we travel through the tracks:

1. Robert Lloyd & The New Four Seasons: Something Nice (In Tape)

Robert Lloyd, normally lead singer of Brummie indie group The Nightingales (victims of endless lazy and slightly inaccurate "They're Birmingham's answer to The Fall!!!" music press reviews) and one of the heads of indie Vindaloo Records was well known as a scene stalwart. Behind numerous cult indie classics with wiry, angular guitar noises, once The Nightingales split in 1986 he clearly decided that his solo career would veer in a more pop orientated direction. The false group name Robert Lloyd & The New Four Seasons was created for this very purpose (and very quietly and quickly dropped again to become plain old "Robert Lloyd", presumably when someone got antsy that the actual Four Seasons would take legal action. Somewhere on a cutting room floor, perhaps this was even a subplot in the "Jersey Boys" film - "I cannot believe da noive of this Nightingales guy").

"Something Nice" proved Lloyd could clearly have a pop career if he wanted and had enough of a tail wind behind him. It's a stomping, bold, brassy and incredibly catchy track lyrically focused on some kind of mid-life crisis. "I get scared that something nice will fly by", Lloyd panics. "Every time I'm ill I think I'm dying" he clarifies later on, "every time I'm sad I feel like crying/ this is the state I've got myself in". For all that, this propels along in a strident, chirpy, almost festive fashion, sounding like a hit Edwyn Collins never had.

This received a strong amount of evening airplay on Radio One, and ensured that the ears of A&R staff at Virgin Records pricked up. Doubtless hoping for a whole album of glossy alternative pop, he was signed to the label and released the "Me and My Mouth" LP and the rather ace single "Funeral Stomp" which utterly and undeservedly stiffed. Virgin dropped him, and there would then be nothing much from Lloyd until The Nightingales reformed in 2006.



2. Wire: Silk Skin Paws (Mute)

We last met Wire on Volume 4, with the fantastic "Kidney Bingos". "Silk Skin Paws" also emerged from the LP "A Bell Is A Cup..." and despite being a brilliant track in its own right didn't seem as obvious a single. A gloomy, atmospheric pean apparently about bankers throwing themselves out of windows, it's again rich with atmosphere, chiming guitars and icy synths.

As an LP, "A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck" created a short-lived wave of renewed critical focus for Wire, and there was a feeling that while they never truly achieved everything they could have done (in terms of sales) in the seventies, perhaps now was their time. Mute apparently hoped that they would eventually at least match their levels of success on EMI, and perhaps even usurp them. They were not without their famous supporters, either - David Bowie was even spotted buying a copy of their CD in HMV on Oxford Street.

Wire always were an awkward bunch of sods, though. A lot of their material in the eighties was sublime, but as time wore on some of their projects became either successfully or unsuccessfully experimental, and baffled critics and sometimes on occasion fans. The largely forgotten LP "It's Beginning To And Back Again" was a live-in-the-studio reimagining of other tracks of theirs, often so distanced from the originals that only the lyrics gave the game away - it's a great listen in places, actually, once the disorientation wears off. On the other hand, the "Drill" project, consisting entirely of different versions of the same song, was just completely fucking silly. An appearance from the group on an American chat show performing the track underlines their stubbornness hilariously. What would a band like Wire do with a prime time TV slot? Be as aggressively inaccessible as possible, obviously.

For Wire fans like me, this brief period is as thrilling as it is frustrating. In my opinion, the band should be on the tip of anyone's tongue when the subjects of punk or art-rock are raised, and should have managed at least one bona-fide hit, but they seem to have remained a cult act who never managed to prove their worth to a wider audience. Tracks like "Silk Skin Paws" and "Kidney Bingos" prove that even during their less fashionable, non punk scenester phase, they were more than just an arty, angular act - they were great songwriters as well. It's a shame that's talked about so infrequently.



3. New Order - Dreams Never End (Peel Session Version) (Strange Fruit)

Volume Five of Indie Top 20 is the very last time we'll be hearing New Order and Joy Division Peel Session tracks. Thank the Lord for small mercies. It's not that I don't like their work, it's just that they were clearly given slots on the albums as bait to floating voters in Our Price, and all their efforts date from a period years before the release date of these LPs. Therefore, putting them into meaningful context for the purpose of this blog is impossible.

"Dreams Never End" is a bizarre track in New Order's canon in that Peter Hook is given the mic rather than Bernard Sumner, and it makes a strange difference to the sound. His braying voice bears a slight resemblance to Andy Partridge of XTC here (even though it's probably trying to ape Ian Curtis) and almost in sympathy, the band clatter and jangle behind him. It's one of the least New Ordery sounding New Order tunes ever.

Despite this - or perhaps because of this - there's nothing remotely essential about it at all, and it's a curio rather than anything else. If New Order fans were asked to contribute to a poll of their finest work, I highly doubt "Dreams Never End" would be a prime entry unless Hooky himself rigged the contest.




4. King Blank - Blind Box (Situation Two)

As we trawl through the volumes of Indie Top 20, we're going to encounter a number of slightly baffling bands who have since been mostly forgotten, but were critically fancied for about two or three weeks in their given year. King Blank are the most obvious example so far, though I have no recollection at all of them being music magazine cover stars - I just have hazy memories of some complimentary gig reviews and the odd positive nod.

There's no way I can possibly be kind about this track, unfortunately. I lived in a small town in Essex at this point, and occasionally our local gig venue would put on a local groups gig bonanza, highlighting all the up-and-coming talent in the area. Tickets would be about £5, and you could stand all night and watch indie, rock and alt-rock talent from the regional Sunday leagues. Without exaggeration, there was always at least one band who sounded like King Blank on every bill. They would have the same bluesy swagger, the same raw sound, and similar vocals delivered through gritted teeth. None of them ended up with record deals.

King Blank, on the other hand, did, and I've never fully understood that. There's nothing exceptional occurring here at all, and the song constantly tries to bear its teeth and attack, but couldn't sound more staged and less threatening if it tried, like an amdram English take on the harder edges of the American underground. The production of the whole thing is so hollow and skeletal it also feels like it would collapse if you prodded it for long enough.

After one LP, "The Real Dirt", the group went their separate ways and guitarist Nigel Pulsford became one of the founding members of nineties grunge legends Bush, ironically becoming one of the few British bands to become hugely successful in America during that decade. King Blank give no hints away that this would ever be the case.



5. Quireboys - Mayfair (Survival)

Another truly baffling addition to the LP. The Quireboys eventually became far more successful than King Blank, of course, being a much-fancied old-school boozy rock group in the vein of The Faces. Renowned for their raucous live gigs, they gave the national scene a raw, balls-out sound it had clearly been missing for a long time by the late eighties. While they were never fashionable as such, they certainly beat Primal Scream to the Southern boogie punch bowl on a number of occasions as well.

Despite being on an indie label at this point, they really didn't have a keen indie following, attracting the long-haired denim wearing boys and girls much more keenly. They sound unbelievably out of place on this compilation as a result, like total gatecrashers.

"Mayfair" is a neat track, though, sounding like a lost piece of 1973 rock and roll. Stemming from a period when Ginger of The Wildhearts was a member of the group, it seems so authentic that you could possibly even fool someone by telling them that it's an out-take from a much more legendary band - and that bar-room piano and those growling vocals are expertly handled. It's not really surprising that their time in indieland would be limited, and EMI stepped in to sign them fairly swiftly, giving them a number two hit album in "A Bit Of What You Fancy" in the process. A long career in the limelight seemed assured, but disappointing sales of the follow-up "Bitter Sweet & Twisted" put paid to that idea and their demise was cruelly swift.

They've since undergone some line-up shuffling and reformed a couple of times, and remain active to this day.

Indie Top 20 Volume 4 Part 1 Side 1 - The Smiths, The Woodentops, Brilliant Corners, Wire, Cardiacs, Fields of the Nephilim

Indie Top 20 Volume Four Part One
Format: Single LP and Cassette

Now things are getting confusing. Volume 4 arrived in the shops in 1988 split into two distinct single LPs, Part One and Part Two, a bit like those old Ronco compilations from the early eighties except you couldn't buy one and get the other free.

Part One, "State of Independents", did not include the Indie Top 20 logo on its sleeve and in fact, I didn't even clock that it was part of the series when I first saw it in the racks. Part Two, on the other hand, seemed on the surface to be titled "Indie Top 20: House" and siphoned off all of the recent big-hitting House records which had buzzed around the Indie charts.

This seems like a completely bizarre approach, but there was a logic to it somewhere. Dance music was by now invading the Indie chart to the point where it was getting in the way of everyone's guitar-based pop fun, and that's what the NME and Melody Maker reading puritans buying Indie compilations probably wanted to hear. I, on the other hand, actually loved both music forms and would have been quite happy to own both LPs in one single gatefold sleeve. What I loved about the indie chart back then is that it was a wide open prairie for different sounds and frequently non-commercial ideas, not a ghetto for a specific kind of noise. I wanted to grab it all.

What we're seeing here, I suppose, is one of the earlier (though almost certainly not the earliest) attempts to treat indie as a genre rather than an abbreviation of the word "independent". For future releases, Beechwood would largely ignore Dance music, finding places only for crossover indie club hits. The beginning of the rot setting in? Well, not quite, perhaps just the end of the compilers Chet and Bee giving their audience material they just didn't want.

In any case, even bigger changes were around the corner which would threaten the mix-and-match approach of the early albums. Stock Aitken and Waterman were developing a little independent label called PWL which would send Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and Pat and Mick soaring up the indie charts and national charts in 1988, and I doubt Beechwood could have afforded to include those artists in its series, even if Chet and Bee had actually wanted to... (though perhaps Pat and Mick could have been purchased in exchange for a few Hornby Railway gift tokens to Pete Waterman.)

As an ironic footnote to this charade, it's worth noting that Beechwood's bread and butter would later come from Dance music compilations, of which "House" was their first.

1. The Smiths - William, It Was Really Nothing (Rough Trade)

The Smiths solitary Indie Top 20 appearance is this brief burst of engagement ring angst, inspired by the fantastic novel and film "Billy Liar".

"William, It Was Really Nothing" sounds like a short Smiths B-side propelled into something much bigger and more significant by Johnny Marr's amazing guitar work. It's enough to make you yearn for the days the pair would actually work together, and the idea of The Smiths as a functioning unit - Morrissey's quips and vinegary asides in the lyrics meet intricate finger-picked guitar lines which truly soar.

Some entries ago we discussed the fact that The Wedding Present were deemed possible mainstream replacements for The Smiths after Morrissey and Marr had a parting of the ways in 1987. You can understand the logic slightly, but Gedge was never this sharp ("How can you stay with a fat girl who'll say 'Would you like to marry me, and if you like you can buy the ring'?") and Solowka, though an under-rated guitarist (often by Gedge himself) couldn't touch the detail on offer here. In time, journalists and fans alike would grow to realise that The Smiths were a one-off phenomenon who weren't going to be simply "replaced" culturally by anyone - even their individual component parts. And the world would continue spinning and we would move on to other things.



2. The Woodentops - You Make Me Feel (Rough Trade)

The world wouldn't really move on to The Woodentops, though, who at this point in their careers had already had a fair run on Rough Trade. At one point even selected by Smash Hits as possible future pop stars, in reality they were a cult act who managed to release some moderately successful LPs (1986's "Giant" reached number 36, and 1988's "Woodenfoot Cops On The Highway" managed a respectable enough number 48) but no major singles.

"You Make Me Feel" was a very rustic sounding record which was never very likely to reverse that general trend. Deeply warm and likeable, and having an intimate woodiness to its sound which only The Lilac Time came close to replicating at this point, it nonetheless sounded out of place with almost everything else occurring in 1988.

The group would find themselves unexpectedly relevant in Ibiza, though, with the track "Why" attracting Balearic DJ spins, which led to the band taking a much more dance-orientated direction. By accident I suspect rather than design, they were therefore early lights in the indie-dance movement - but you won't get a clear sense of that from this song.



3. The Brilliant Corners - Teenage (McQueen)

Business as usual for The Brilliant Corners, then, who return to the lyrical atmosphere of "Brian Rix" by singing about teenage lust going horribly, horribly wrong. "I'd like to make your bed and bring you cups of tea/ To wash your clothes and scrub your back/ But you won't let me!" wails Davey.

Complete with an almost sarcastic, mocking muted trumpet solo, "Teenage" again occupies an awkward halfway house between the jangle of The Smiths and the mocking acidity of Half Man Half Biscuit, and if some people considered the group to be having a laugh at their expense, that's possibly not too surprising. Despite that, their gift with pop melodies was often above and beyond many of their peers, and they possessed a longevity that many of their Indiepop chums didn't. This would allow them to continue releasing singles until as late as 1990, though by that point the fire had been snuffed out.

The Brilliant Corners feature irritatingly infrequently on retrospective indie compilations these days, which ignores the pulling power they had at the tail end of the eighties.



4. Wire - Kidney Bingos (Mute)

At this point, Wire had only recently reformed from their hiatus after being dropped by EMI at the end of the seventies. Their final album for that label, "154", is a classic of its era and all too often overlooked in favour of their earlier work. Far apart from that, the metallic, synthetic claustrophobia in its sound would later expand, unfold and breathe in their work for Mute in the eighties.

"The Ideal Copy" in 1987 was a fine comeback album, but 1988's "A Bell Is A Cup... Until It Is Struck" built on the template further and the metamorphosis felt complete. Tight, precise percussion met chiming guitars and cryptic lyrics, and another under-rated phase of their career began.

Always art-punks with the emphasis leaning heaviest on "art" (they were acquainted with Brian Eno before a proper punk scene even really broke) Wire were never afraid to be obtuse, and "Kidney Bingos" is probably one of the finest and most developed but potentially confusing singles they ever released. For years I falsely believed that the lyrics were created from cut-ups of tabloid newspaper headlines - the band have since revealed that it was actually about members of the public entering a national Bingo competition to win transplants on a denationalised, privatised health service. The satirical idea here seemingly is that you can dupe the public into voting for any repugnant idea and even have them enjoying it if you persuaded them enough. "Kidney Bingos/ Organ Fun!" Colin Newman coos melodically in the chorus, selling it to maximum effect.

The melody here is so sweet and seductive that the song actually is a beautiful piece of work on its own terms, whatever the underlying meaning. There's a depth here that keeps drawing you back, with each guitar line and atmospheric wash having its own appeal (and the outro in particular taking its own seductive "high high high/ low" path).

That their eighties work is so often ignored is criminal. This single is a finely sculpted jewel, and should be near the top of anyone's Wire listening list.



5. Cardiacs - Is This The Life (Alphabet Business Concern)

More art-rock? The Cardiacs possess an admirably large (and often defensive) fanbase, who will often tell you that the band are something that creeps into your brain when you least expect it. You will hear a song or two, or maybe an LP, and initially be confused or repulsed, but then, suddenly... quite without warning, and perhaps in the middle of the night... everything will click into place.

First things first. I'm not trying to be deliberately contentious, but I don't really buy the idea that The Cardiacs are an especially difficult band. Within the context of rock music they're certainly more challenging than most, but they're hardly an improv jazz act playing at the Vortex Club, utilising brass-scratching solos. Their music is usually clearly structured, and often overloaded with so many hooks and ideas that one listen isn't enough to appreciate them all, but it rarely ever becomes an assault.

Some of their best material is also pure genius. "Tarred And Feathered", for example, sounds like sixties music hall inspired psychedelia colliding with a Ronnie Hazelhurst quiz show theme before falling down some stairs, which is a good thing. While the band have attracted some needlessly unkind critics over the years, their influence on other groups has also been notable. Blur are huge fans, and it's easy to hear the fact that a Cardiacs without the more awkward elements could sound like something very close to the Colchester foursome.

Though oddly, "Is This The Life" is widely regarded as The Cardiacs at their most Pop, and sounds very little like Blur. Instead, it sounds like a post-punk band building a scaling, epic track from a discarded "Animals" era Pink Floyd guitar riff. Not for no reason did some people sneeringly call them "progressive punks". Still, it is actually bloody brilliant, screeching and meandering guitar solo and all. The drums pound, Tim Smith's vocals sneer, and the whole track sounds so downright confident that you had to wonder if a corner was being turned and the band were set to become commercial. Certainly, the track attracted daytime airplay on Radio One, almost unheard of for an indie band at this point, never mind the flaming Cardiacs.

In the end, their own label Alphabet struggled to keep up with the pressing demand, and by the time the single could have been a minor Top 40 hit, the moment had passed. The follow-up, a cover of The Kinks "Susannah's Still Alive" (which naturally DID sound more like Blur, albeit only by a tiny fraction somehow) was also easily accessible in a skewed pop way, but didn't really attract the same kind of attention, and before long The Cardiacs were back on the margins again.

These days, Tim Smith is unable to talk or walk after suffering a stroke, which is a huge loss to the music world, and I do hope he can make a full recovery and produce some more material again. Now more than ever, rock music needs "difficult" bands like The Cardiacs who piss critics off and baffle some of the public.



6. Fields of the Nephilim - Blue Water (Situation Two) 

And the Goth Rock party goes on. Other trends came and went, but the indie charts for most of the eighties saw black-clad men and ladies dropping by to spray some dry ice about the place, and the Indie Top 20 series had to acknowledge that continuation. Even at the turn of the nineties, it was nigh-on impossible to go out to alternative clubs without bumping into a fair number of goths. (A confession - I often found a lot of the women incredibly attractive, but they only mated with their own kind, and nothing could persuade me that the music was anything like good enough to base my life around. My teenage lust went unanswered. Well, not just in that particular respect, but most respects, to be fair).

Fields of the Nephilim were just about the only band I could imagine myself getting more enthusiastic about than mere grudging admiration, and "Blue Water" was the key entry point for me. Those Shadowsy, tremelo-arm manipulated guitar lines, the sense of Morricone soundtrack drama, the pure filmic nature of it all - this is never boring. Every time you think the band have exhausted the possibilities open to them, they find a new passage or avenue to filter the music down, a new dramatic flourish to add.

Never the most credible band even among the goth movement, and often swiped away as "Sisters of Mercy copyists", I'd say that dismissing their work as crabbily as that ignores the influences which clearly have nothing to do with Eldritch. Their post-apocalyptic visions (in both video and song form) are often incredibly silly, certainly, but as long as you're prepared to take them with a pinch of salt, there's bags to enjoy here.