People often bang on about the fashion/style wasteland of the 1970s, but I’d suggest that the mid-to-late 1980s were in fact one of the darkest times in Britain’s sartorial history. I remember, as a naive teenager, sporting the horrific combination of a pair of sand-coloured chinos*, a striped shirt and a reversible bomber jacket with […]
Category: Indie-pop
COMET GAIN: Strength (7″, Wiiija WIJ66, 1997)
This is a great record. ‘Strength’ is a little slice of girl-group/Motown-infused indie-pop that is a lot more proficient and ‘together’-sounding than pretty much anything else you might hear by Comet Gain. That might sound disparaging, but it’s not supposed to be – I really liked Comet Gain (or should that be ‘like’? – are […]
MECCA NORMAL: Rose (7″, K IPU 32, 1992)
This is another choice from a pile of seven inch singles that I purchased from a kindly Brighton-based seller on eBay some years ago. I think I’ve mentioned this transaction on here before. It was a set of K Records and other US indie label releases, and it was a joy to receive them in […]
EGGS: Bruiser (LP, TeenBeat TEENBEAT 76, 1994)
Love the photograph on this cover. Who is that, Julie Christie or somebody? It looks like somebody from a 1960s/New Wave-type movie, probably sheltering in the rain after skipping down a Parisian street with her umbrella twirling. Or something. Perhaps it’s one of Eggs? I don’t know. I don’t really know that much about Eggs. […]
14 ICED BEARS: Hold On (12″, Borderline BORD 12 001, 1991)
This 12″ is from the latter days of 14 Iced Bears, who first (I think) released a couple of 7″ singles on Sarah in the late eighties. Despite sounding as shambling and perky as many an indie-pop band of that time, they always seemed to be slightly edgier, with one foot in strange neo-psychedelic territory. […]
THE SMITHS: How Soon Is Now? (7″, WEA YZ 0002, 1993)
I really like this song, but I am in no way a Smiths aficionado. I only own a couple of their records, and I think I’m slightly younger than those music fans that had a deep and meaningful relationship with their band as they traversed their awkward teenage years. (A combination of hip-hop and indie […]
GAG/ABLE MESH: Condo 63/Mountaineer/Holiday Faces (7″ flexi, Audacious AUDACIOUS 2, 1993)
A brief meditation on the inherent problems in trying to order records, that feature more than one artist, on the shelf – such as in this example, which I’ve just spent ten minutes trying to find. What’s the best way to go, assuming an alphabetical ordering of records is the baseline requirement? Arrange in order […]
HULA HOOP/HOOD/BLAIRMAILER: 3 Band Flexi With… (7″ flexi, Tangled TANGLED 006, 1993)
Flexis are cool. People don’t make them that much any more, as far as I know. Maybe it’s difficult to make them these days. Maybe I should investigate, and if I can, just make a flexi for the hell of it. And hey, if I did, it might be like this one, as it’s a […]
SWELL MAPS: A Trip To Marineville (LP, Rough Trade/Rather ROUGH 2, 1979)
This album is an insight into a strange set of minds. I bought it in around ’92 or so after hearing Swell Maps’ name dropped in the context of a variety of indie-pop and fanzine mentions of – very vaguely and very possibly wrongly – music that prefigured the Pastels and was ‘shambolic’ before the […]
POPINJAYS: Monster Mouth (7″, One Little Indian 61 TP 7, 1992)
This record currently nestles on my shelf betwixt singles by The Popguns and The Poppyheads. It was because of The Popguns that I picked this up at the time; I liked their bouncy indie-pop and figured (illogically enough) that a band with a slightly similar name, and a cute record sleeve, must be another bouncy […]