This week I've picked one of those albums that's considered to be iconic and classic by indie radio stations and men who wish it was still 1995. It's the self-titled debut and one good album released by The Stone Roses. This is my dad's vinyl copy - Discogs leads me to believe it's the first pressing - and I think it must have been one of the last LPs he bought before switching to CDs. As a pretentious indie girl I was thrilled to discover it in his collection.
A1. I Wanna Be Adored 🔵 We fade in slowly with that well-known bass line ushering us in to the album. I like this song a lot, it's really chill with its repetitive lyrics and simple chords. It sounds like a sunny day and I remember the video coming on the big screens at a festival between bands, which felt like the perfect setting. This is a solid opening statement - what better way to explain your intentions than to name your first song 'I Wanna Be Adored'?
2. She Bangs The Drums 🔵
Another great bass part to start a good jangly pop song. It's surprisingly un-laddish when you consider their place in our culture, and actually quite twee. Again, it's sparse of lyrics but what is there is good, especially "kiss me where the sun don't shine, the past is yours but the future's mine". It continues to sound like the sort of album you'd listen to in nice weather.
3. Waterfall 🔵 I love the riff that runs through this song - I can imagine it being played at a big outdoor gig to an excited crowd. The vibe is still chilled out and summery. The verses are repetitive but the song sounds really pretty. I do object to the long instrumental break at the end though; this is the first of those on the album but not the last.
4. Don't Stop 🟢
This is just Waterfall played backwards. It's really weird as an inclusion on the album, I'm not really sure why it's here. I guess it's a fun experiment but it comes off as being filler material. It has new lyrics added on top but they've been made to sound as if they're played backwards too and it's coincidental that they still sound like words. It would have been a good b-side to Waterfall so that they could have put Fools Gold onto the album.
5. Bye Bye Badman 🟡 The most obvious-sounding tribute to psychedelic-era Beatles on the record, this song isn't really anything special. Ian Brown puts in so little effort that the vocals are barely comprehensible which I suppose is fair, given that he really cannot sing. It makes sense that this isn't an indie disco staple like tracks 1-3 are.
B1. Elizabeth My Dear 🟢 I'm not sure if you can call this a song as it's just a verse that they've lifted from Scarborough Fair and written new lyrics for. It lasts for less than a minute and there's nothing bad about it, it's just another weird thing to put on the album.
2. (Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister 🟡
For some reason I cannot grasp this song - I've listened to the album a few times and this particular song twice today and I still don't remember what it sounds like. A combination of Manchester accent and complete lack of singing ability means that the lyrics are pretty difficult to pick up on. There's twee lyrics again, like "sugar spun sister, candy floss girl" but aside from that it's totally forgettable.
3. Made Of Stone 🔵 And we're back in single territory. The production on this album is very flat but theoretically this has a big chorus moment. I like this song, it's catchy at least and the chorus has actually stayed with me. The guitar solo is soulful and just the right length.
4. Shoot You Down 🔵 A drum fade-in, then bass, then a nice guitar sound and finally subdued vocals. It's very 60s, but it's like they're all in different bands: Reni plays jazz drums, Mani adds a Motown bassline, John Squire's guitar part has an easy listening dreaminess to it, and Ian Brown is doing, well, whatever he does. The band dropping out to have a vocal-only chorus line would sound really good with a competent singer but Brown just mumbles a line tunelessly and that almost ruins the whole thing. The song teeters on the brink of train-wreck but somehow just manages to sound pleasant.
5. This Is The One 🟢 The drop out from band to just bass in the intro is exciting. This song plays with loud and quiet and I really like that, after the muddiness of some of the earlier songs. The choruses are so quiet that you have to really focus to hear them but luckily they repeat it all louder for ages at the end so the hard of hearing don't miss out. The band sound like they're having a good time playing this but the repeated "this is the one, this is the one" does get tiresome. I'm not sure about the little bit of backwards action at the end either.
6. I Am The Resurrection 🟢 These drums mean business - we're gearing up for a big finish. The vocals are more prominent in this song which might have been a production decision based on the fact that the band actually bothered to write some proper verses. The structure is odd as they bait us with 3 verses before hitting us with the big chorus; it's cruel but it is a treat to finally get there so it pays off. After that, though, is the almighty noodling - a loooong instrumental jam where the musicians show off all the skills that they could have brought to the last 10 songs, but mostly didn't. The false ending midway through this jam is the second cruel trick played during this song. It's hard to rate I Am The Resurrection as it's two songs. I really like the pop song first half, in fact it's one of the best songs on the album, but the jam session is among the most tedious parts so it drags the score down to 'average songs that I like' rather than 'good songs'.
It surprises me how un-masculine this album sounds, knowing the Brexity beer garden lad fanbase that the band have. The well-known tracks have become indie standards for a reason - they're the best that were around in the scene in 1989 and paved the way for Britpop or at least Noelrock (ugh). As a whole though, this album is kind of patchy with some weird decisions in it. Fools Gold came out 6 months later and knowing that they had the ability to make that indie/dance crossover record, it's interesting that there's none of that here and at this point they're a C86 band establishing their identity. Do I think this deserves its status as one of the best albums of all time? Not really.
I went into this one with minimal spoilers, just a couple of the song names, so my memory of this disc was that it was Britpop-adjacent. I am very passionate about Good Britpop. A lot of it is shit.
1. The Smiths - This Charming Man 💜
This is the first Smiths song I ever heard, as part of 'The Best Album In The World... Ever!' (which is where I first heard a few of the songs on this mix). It's flawless. All 4 members of the band deliver an exciting part to complete this song and Johnny Marr's guitar part is an obvious high point but I'd like to point out how great the bassline is! It's a perfect pretentious pop song and the only reason it doesn't get elevated to Favourite Songs Ever status is because of its ubiquity.
2. New Order - Blue Monday 1988 🎀
Blue Monday is more than just a song; it's a whole emotional state of being. Just hearing the intro to Blue Monday gives me the biggest rush. I love the original 1983 version and I love this 1988 remix equally. The persistent beat, the layers of sounds, the apathetic flat vocal - again, this is a flawless song. Gillian Gilbert is one of the most underrated musicians of her time and she deserves so much more credit for all of the amazing electronic sounds that made New Order so important. I cannot state enough how highly I rate Blue Monday.
3. Pulp - Do You Remember The First Time? 💜
Jarvis Cocker's low voice reverberates through my floor, my bones, my soul. He's a top class lyricist, so clever and witty. Pulp songs are such wonderful little vignettes of every day drama, and this song casts him in a familiar role of 'the mistress'(what's the male version of 'the other woman'? Is there a phrase or is this some sexism?). I think the line "Jesus, it must be great to be straight" is brilliant but I don't understand it in the context of this song - I always assumed Jarvis was pleading the girl not to finish with him and be faithful to her boyfriend. The rest of the band are also great here but it's the vocal that stands out as the highlight.
4. Neutral Milk Hotel - Two Headed Boy 🔵
And now the Americans enter to break up my Britpop party. Jeff Mangum cannot sing in key, which works well here - he switches from calm to yelling which works well for him. I have no idea what the lyrics are about; I originally got to know this song via a Dresden Dolls cover so I wonder whether there's any line to be drawn between this and their Coin-Operated Boy? Anyway, this is a simple acoustic guitar folk song.
5. New Order - True Faith '94 💜
Dance music, but make it melancholy. Pulling that off is difficult but New Order excel at it. This is a song you can dance to in the club or mope to in the corner and I rate that as a concept. I love the sound of the chorus and the "I feel so extraordinary" opening line. It's a second New Order song in a short time but I am happy with that decision when the songs are this good.
6. Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californication 🔵
I'm not totally certain but it's possible that this is my favourite song of theirs, as a person who knows their big hits but isn't really a fan who would delve any deeper. The vocal line is good; the song is chill but he delivers some of the lines in a fast-paced style. There are a lot of words in it and I'm not entirely sure what the song is about - something to do with Californian culture seeping out into the world? - but I can pick out lines like "space may be the final frontier but it's made in a Hollywood basement" which I quite like (I believe the Moon Landing happened though, for what it's worth). It's a bit too long with a guitar solo which I don't need, as I feel I'm always saying.
7. The Cranberries - Zombie 🔵
This has the grungiest noisy guitar and terrible sounding drums - Zombie has the makings of a great goth record if it had been produced properly. I think I like Dolores' voice but I do kind of hate that yelping that she does. The abrupt ending with the instruments dropping out is a cool way to round off the song.
8. Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely 🟡
Oh Comely is a very long, repetitive thing and I've listened to it numerous times over the years but the words haven't sunk in or even stuck in my memory. People talk about this album as a revolutionary, deep conceptual story but so far I've listened to 2 songs from it and neither of them are clear to me. Once you make it to 5 minutes of droning there's a bit that's more interesting but then there's a trumpet and they stretch this thing out for 8 minutes and I'm so bored.
9. Blur - Girls & Boys 🟣
I have a real love-hate relationship with Blur; they have some great songs and their drummer is a Labour councillor now but on the other hand they're class tourists, Damon treated Justine Frischmann horribly and their bass player is a Tory who makes cheese now. However, Girls & Boys is undeniably an absolute banger of a record, maybe their best one. It's really catchy and good fun with a genius chorus and excellent use of electronics. Damon's Mockney accent is unbearable but I suppose at least I get some pleasure in taking the piss out of it. This is the start of Blur and Britpop being all about "lads lads lads" though and I really hate that whole culture.
10. Pixies - Where Is My Mind? 🔵
The riff that opens this song is classic. The recording sounds so amateur in the way the sounds are positioned but that doesn't disguise how well put together the song is, all the parts work well. It's a good song but its inclusion in Fight Club makes it harder to love. In fact, Fight Club, the Smiths and Neutral Milk Hotel form parts of another Bad Culture which is just as gross as what Blur are peddling - the horrible 'not like other guys' intelligent hipster man who hates women just as much as the lad but in a less straight-forward way.
11. The Boo Radleys - Wake Up Boo! 🔵
The acapella intro for this song is unnecessary and I assume there's a single edit that omits it, but that's not what I have here. Wake Up Boo! has really strong 90s breakfast TV vibes to me - I can't pinpoint it exactly but I bet the chorus was absolutely hammered on morning shows and ads for a few years after it was a hit. It sounds really cheerful - the quintessential sunny happy morning song, even though I'm sure there are some darker lyrics in there. I don't rate anything else they recorded but they hit on a winner with this.
12. Garbage - Stupid Girl 🔵
I don't know what it is about the intro to this song but it feels like a sci-fi movie, like I'm in some kind of ship or plane that's swooping down into a futuristic city, weaving between skyscrapers - a sort of 90s Batman/Blade Runner kind of scene. Shirley Manson is super cool and I love the industrial rock sounds in this. There seemed to be a lot of music around at this time with restrained or bored-sounding women talking about sex and violence over electronics but usually they have really posh accents so it's cool to have a Scottish woman inhabiting this space.
13. Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 🟢
The third and final of their songs to appear, and the only one where there's a full band involved. The distortion on the guitars is turned up so high that the sound is failing and that sounds great with the yelled vocal. This is definitely better than Oh Comely - it's still relentlessly steady in its pace but it's exciting rather than dragging on. It closes with a flourish of brass though, which I don't really need.
14. EMF - Unbelievable 🟢
I don't have very positive feelings about 'baggy' as a genre overall but this is a good song. The members of EMF should be living in total luxury from the royalties they must get from this song being in ads all the time - kudos to them for coming up with that hook and licensing it out. My body's reaction to this song is to dance like Bez from the Happy Mondays, for better or worse.
15. McAlmont & Butler - Yes 🟣
When I first heard this on the aforementioned "Best Album..." I was very confused by its place - it didn't sound like Britpop and for a long time I had assumed that the singer was a woman, when in fact the performer is Mr David McAlmont. Yes is a really great 'fuck you' song and I love to sing along with it even though I'm very much Team Anderson and not Team Butler when it comes to Suede. There's so much going on here with the vocals, the strings and the piano that the guitar part is barely noticeable, which was probably a conscious decision on Bernard Butler's part but still interesting. Unfortunately nothing else on the McAlmont & Butler albums comes close to being as good as this song - it's definitely a one-off for them. The version on this mix fades out before the album version's ending which has all the musicians applauding, which is great because I can't stand that (see also: Whatever by Oasis). I once heard Yes played in the venue before Suede came on stage which I thought was a weird choice.
16. James - Sit Down 🔵
Another of the very much overplayed indie disco Absolute Radio hits. Like Wake Up Boo!, it's really cheery and lovely and positive. The song is well-done, but I understand why bands like Suede were formed as a reaction to the dullness of indie around this time. Still, it's a nice song and my mum sings along with it when it's on the radio so that sounds like a success to me.
17. Blondie - Atomic 🔵
Huge spy thriller vibes from that opening riff. Atomic is new-wave but at the same time it's disco. It's largely instrumental which often fails to hold my attention but this song is like going on a journey and I always enjoy the trip.
18. Babybird - You're Gorgeous 🟢
We end with another 90s cliché chorus that I strongly associate with TV background music from that era. I don't think I heard anything other than the chorus until I was a grown-up so I was surprised by how kinky and dark the verses are in comparison to the chorus and cutesy keyboard part. I don't think it's the love song that I assumed it would be.
It's really strange thinking about songs like Wake Up Boo! and You're Gorgeous, and also Spaceman by Babylon Zoo which I'll cover someday - they exist in a time before I was properly aware of pop music, but those hooks must have been so ubiquitous on CBBC and adverts when I was little that they feel like theme tunes or jingles or Christmas carols to me rather than just pop songs. This disc had a couple of themes running through it - those Britpop-adjacent one hit wonders and classics, but also fake-deep hipster bro music. Thankfully, despite being used in a million adverts, Blue Monday transcends any such narrow associations.
Here's how my current obsessions are manifesting themselves:
My vibe at the moment is very 90s mixed with modern internet goth. I've started browsing through Wish and adding things to my basket throughout the month and then clicking 'Purchase' on the last day, which means that I get little surprise parcels from myself at the end of the following month. The set of pins in the picture to the right are a Wish purchase, and so is the crystal necklace. I'm disappointed with the necklace - it has a chip where the silver coating has come off and the 'crystal' part has kind of melted into the silver next to it which shows that it's definitely just plastic, plus it's much more translucent than I expected it to be. However, it still reflects the light and I'll still wear it regularly. I'm much happier with the pin set, I was worried that they would be really poorly made and illegible but they look just like the photo. My favourites are the ghost and the 'Ugh.' heart which reminded me of The 1975's song of the same name. I'm going to put the banner with "Sure. Fine. Whatever." on something I wear at work to point to when I can't be bothered answering someone's silly question.
I found the Empire Records patch at Pie In The Sky in Edinburgh which has a wide range of patches, pins, band t-shirts and other cool stuff. A lot of it is really pricey (they had some great Jarvis Cocker pins which were £8.50; other pins and patches in there are up to £20 each) but this one was £2.99 and will fit right in on my denim jacket which I've been embellishing all summer. I was surprised to find it there because Empire Records is a totally underrated movie.
They're all sitting on a checked background courtesy of some 'cosy' leggings I bought in Primark. Their approach this season is apparently 'all tartan everything' - I'm not a fan of patterned trousers so I avoided those and went for the leggings instead, which I can wear under a skirt or short dress to keep warm this winter.
As everyone who knows me knows, I can't resist an armful of books, and I picked these ones up on two trips to my hometown charity shops. Sylvia Plath is one of my favourite people of the 20th century; I've read The Bell Jar multiple times, along with her Letters Home and some of her poems, but I've never come across a copy of her Journals until now. As much as I recognise her poetic genius, it's her letters and journal entries that enthral me the most - I don't believe there has been anyone who has written about the day-to-day experience of being a young woman as well as Plath did.
I picked up the Oasis book to fulfil the '2 for 99p' offer that allowed me to take home the vintage copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover. I like Oasis but they aren't my favourite of the Britpop set (more on Britpop later); I get the feeling that the best book about them would be one that the Gallagher brothers took turns writing so that it had the maximum amount of petty sibling drama, but we'll see.
Persepolis is different to my usual reading material in that it's a graphic novel but I've heard so many interesting things about it over the years that it feels like something I should get round to reading. I'm also looking forward to devouring the Jim Morrison story in No One Here Gets Out Alive, which I've passed over so many times but finally decided to purchase.
Finally, I can't resist old Penguin copies of classic books, even if they're falling apart, which is why I came home with a 60s edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover. I do already have a copy as part of a DH Lawrence compendium, but this paperback is going to be much easier to handle as long as I don't lose any pages! I also picked up a 70s copy of Franny & Zooey in the hope that I enjoy it more than The Catcher In The Rye, which I thought was a little overrated.
Now on to my favourite band of the summer, Elastica. Even though they were active from approx. 1993-2001, I've been obsessively devouring any Elastica material I can find over the last few months. They are the most underrated and overlooked of the Britpop 'big five' despite being the coolest of the bunch - there weren't and still aren't enough bands with three cool girls up front. I'm currently collecting their discography on vinyl so pictured are this month's acquisitions: the 7" of their single 'Connection' and a promotional soundsheet of 'Vaseline'. I think the soundsheet is particularly cool - it's a US item similar to the flexidiscs that used to occasionally come free with magazines over here but pressed onto a sheet of acetate rather than being disc-shaped. I've listened to the first Elastica album so many times this summer that I feel like I know every single second of it so it's cool to have found pressings of two of my favourite songs from it.
To jump briefly back to clothes and from one set of iconic ladies to another, I picked up this blazer in Primark yesterday which, like most of the clothes in there at the moment, reminds me of the girls in 'Heathers'. I took it into the dressing room expecting it to look terrible on me but instead I fell in love with it and will be wearing it to work all the time from now on. I now have a conundrum though: do I go to work on October 31st dressed as Wednesday Addams or Veronica Sawyer??
Back to the music and the pile of CDs I've bought this month. See what I mean when I said I had a 90s vibe going on at the moment?
At the start of the summer I began reading the book 'The Last Party' by John Harris, which gives a history of the Britpop era and how it contributed to the election of Tony Blair. The book covers Oasis, Blur, Suede and Elastica, which occasional mentions of Pulp, Menswear and a few other stars of the time. I've been listening to Suede since I was about 6, when 'She's In Fashion' appeared amongst the boybands on a compilation I got free with a magazine. Their self-titled debut album is what I've been listening to on the rare occasions that I'm not playing the Elastica album and this month I felt ready to graduate to their 1994 follow-up, Dog Man Star. Unfortunately, the only song on it that really resonates with me is the beautiful 'The Wild Ones', so I probably won't spend much time with it before moving on to the next album in their discography. (A Suede side-note that I have to mention - their singer Brett Anderson wrote the most wonderful coming-of-age memoir, Coal Black Mornings, this year and I got to meet him at the Edinburgh Book Festival last month. It was magical.)
I'm almost ready to graduate to the 2nd Elastica album too, but not before listening to their 6 Track EP which came out just before. They changed their line-up a lot between the two so I'm interested to see how the music sounds. I have, however, listened to Weekend Swingers, which is a bootleg I picked up on eBay. It includes a 1994 festival performance, 2 of their Peel Sessions and some other demos and live bits and pieces. I was worried that the quality was going to be bad but thankfully the sound is really good and so is the live show that makes up the first half of the disc - I wish I could time travel to see them play!
It was while I was browsing the Elastica section of eBay that I came across the soundtrack to Gregg Araki's 'Nowhere', a film I've written about before on the blog that is one of my favourite obscure movies. I had no idea that both Elastica and Suede had songs on the soundtrack and I ordered it straight away - I wish finding a DVD of the film was that easy.
I've also finally managed to pick up the first two Oasis albums. Even though I said they weren't my favourite of the Britpop bands, it's undeniable that they had some really good tunes, most of which are on these two CDs. I picked up Pulp's 2001 album 'We Love Life' out of love for Jarvis Cocker, Mazzy Star's 'She Hangs Brightly' out of love for their song 'Fade Into You', Bis' 'Vs. The DIY Corps' EP out of love for Scottish indie and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's self-titled just because I've heard they're good. Reviews to come someday when I've had time to listen to them!
A couple of magazines since I've been in Edinburgh: Bust is a feminist-leaning magazine that I found very charming and interesting when I first bought it, so I always have a look to see if there are any interesting features when I see a copy. This month's cover star plays the lead in 'Crazy Rich Asians' which I'm planning on seeing soon, plus there are pieces on cults, Michelle Wolf and Tumblr culture which are all things I'm interested in.
I also bought Dazed because M.I.A is on the cover. I saw her documentary Matangi/Maya/M.I.A yesterday and found it incredible so now I'm on a mission to read everything I can about it.
One final music item to finish off: I haven't talked about Depeche Mode in this post but I still love and adore them as much as I did at the start of the year. I've collected most of their vinyl now so I don't spend as much time in the Depeche Mode part of eBay as I used to but I had a look the other day and caught a copy of Black Celebration on cassette about to end with 0 bids. I put a bid in expecting someone else to be watching it, but nobody was and I won. As luck would have it, the same seller had also just listed the Suede album which I also ended up winning. I keep a cassette Walkman in my desk at work to listen to when I have nobody in the office to speak to - or when I need to drown out the people who are talking so I can concentrate - so both of these will be joining the collection in my drawer.
