1990 was the year of baggy… A great deal of that style hasn’t stood the test of time very well…. It has to be said that 1990 was also probably the year of the half-baked genre tag, when the music press seemed to cook up a new and clumsy name for vague groupings of bands on a weekly basis. Often it did the artists no favours at all louderthanwar

The Fall – Bill Is Dead this sublime cut from 1990 finds Smith doing the last thing anyone expected, as he cast off the whiskey-fuelled ringmaster image to reveal a rare glimpse of a vulnerable and very human being underneath. The previous year had been an annus horribilis. Smith’s marriage to Brix had collapsed and his father died suddenly of a heart attack aged 59. From the following year’s Extricate album, Bill Is Dead (the title actually references his father’s late friend) is untypically candid, reflective and melancholy, as the great Craig Scanlon provides a beautiful tune for Smith to sarcastically but movingly croon: “These are the greatest times of my life.” theguardian

Teenage Fanclub – Everything Flows It’s questionable whether – when Raymond McGinley sold his fridge and Norman Blake cadged £200 from his parents back in 1989 – Teenage Fanclub knew quite what they were on to as they convened in Pet Sounds, Glasgow, to record their debut single. Blake and McGinley had recruited bassist Gerard Love only a fortnight earlier at a Dinosaur Jr gig, and Everything Flows mimics that band’s appealingly slack guitar squall. Yet this plaintive ode to the passing of time (“See you get older every year / But you don’t change, I don’t notice you changing”) seems to mature like a fine wine. theguardian

The Sweetest Ache – If I Could Shine I like to think either Haynes or Wadd brought this Swansea sextet on board solely because of its moniker. If ever there were three words that best summed up the Sarah catalogue, it’s “the sweetest ache.”… “If I Could Shine” plumbs the depths of Galaxie 500 dream pop, the song’s most fetching feature is the dynamic that exists between the bramble-laden guitar parts and the leafy synthesizers. stylusmagazine

Another Sunny Day – You Should All Be Murdered On Friday nights I like to drink beer with my mates in our pub. Amid the debates about sport and the usual old jokes / stories that we have all heard a 1000 times but still find ridiculously funny (as only inebriated men can) we sometimes address things that genuinely matter, that are genuinely important, to such an extent that it is not beyond the wildest stretches of the imagination to presume that President Trump and that Russian fella who got him the gig, probably talk about similar things.One such such topic that my beer addled friends and I discussed, that I am convinced would have been addressed by the Donald and Mr Putin over a beer when less important matters of state had been addressed for the evening is ‘What Sarah Records band is most typical of the whole Sarah Records aesthetic’. janglepophub

The Happy Mondays – Kinky Afro “Son, I’m thirty / I only went with your mother ‘cos she’s dirty” it begins. No, wrong: how it begins is with maybe the crispest, loveliest rush of quick-strummed pop guitar that’s ever graced a single. The intro of “Kinky Afro” serves notice of greatness, tells you that what’s coming isn’t going to be another Mondays jam but is going to be something sentimental, heartbreaking and gorgeous. This instinct isn’t wrong: maybe on paper that lyric looks dumb or just funny, but the way Ryder sings it sounds like a man not used to the truth but with no choice but to tell it. “Kinky Afro”‘s father-son dialogue crackles with self-disgust and exhaustion, but also, every time the song swings into its borrowed and scuffed-up chorus, with pride. Maybe it’s the way the music keeps reaching out and up, a soup of strings and Mark Day’s woozy glam guitar, but no matter how dead-end the lyrics, “Kinky Afro” ends up hopeful. “Yippie-ippie-iy-iy-ay-ay-ay” snarls Ryder, and whatever he means you believe it. freakytrigger

Primal Scream – Loaded they might easily have faded into obscurity, were it not for a remix of I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have, from the second album, by Windsor bricklayer turned acid house DJ Andrew Weatherall. In his first experience in a proper recording studio, Weatherall produced a Frankenstein fusion of bluesy miscellanea and trippy good vibes, splicing together source materials as diverse as an audio sample of Peter Fonda from the film The Wild Angels, a vocal sample from The Emotions’ I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love and a bongotastic drum loop from an Italian bootleg remix of Edie Brickell’s What I Am.Advertisement. I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have was reborn as Loaded, and Britain had its first great indie-dance record, a sonic totem for a generation seeking to reconcile its burgeoning fascination with house music, club culture, repetitive beats and ecstasy with its love of good old-fashioned greasy guitar music. The song’s uncomplicated raison d’être, and that of the acid house scene as a whole, is written into its sampled opening lines: “We’re gonna have a good time … we’re gonna have a party.” theguardian

Heavenly – I Fell In Love Last Night Like other Sarah bands, Heavenly’s style—both music and aesthetic—was polarizing. In its earliest days, indie pop was a parallel movement to punk. Both scenes touted the belief that anyone could make music on their own terms, that mistakes were something to be celebrated. But punk was associated with fearlessness, or at least the facade of that confidence. So maybe if you identified with the punk spirit but weren’t angling for anarchy, you became an indie pop kid. Instead of wearing a T-shirt held together with safety pins, you rocked anoraks and cardigans; you were probably a bit dweeby. pitchfork

Galaxie 500 – Summertime Trying to write about Galaxie 500 without mentioning the Velvet Underground has always been like playing the board game Taboo, in which players must try to define an object without using many of the other words commonly associated with that object; for example, a player may be asked to describe “snow” without using the words “white” or “cold.” “Summertime” may be the band’s most blatant homage to the Velvets (you can sing the whole of “Heroin” over top), but it still only sounds like Galaxie 500, and the performances here — Wareham’s slowly immolating guitar solo, Yang’s whale-song bass, Krukowski’s Moe-Tucker-Joins-The-Military percussion — are transcendent stereogum

The Popguns – Waiting For The Winter it kills me every time with its urgent hooks and energy popmatters

Nirvana – Sliver the first track that really pointed the way to Nevermind, a gleeful retelling of a childhood visit to Cobain’s grandparents in which throat-shredding vocals meet a glorious tune and Nirvana’s celebrated, Pixies-inspired quiet/loud dynamic. But it was meant as a joke, a “ridiculous pop song” recorded in an hour during labelmates Tad’s lunch break. theguardian

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – The Ship Song How could the snarling, sneering preacher of despair and dismay turn soft and sentimental? Why would he turn his back on blood-and-guts wails of noise for tender ballads and dark-hearted pop? In hindsight, though, it’s a school of thought purely for the dimwits unable to realise there’s a delicate beauty to the Bad Seeds that is just as powerful as the hellfire-and-brimstone melodrama. And as The Ship Song shows, softer doesn’t necessarily mean slushier: it’s almost too intense, a stark, swelling piano ballad that walks a tightrope between lump-in-the-throat romanticism and unsustainable devotion, and Cave sings every word as if he’s been compelled by some higher force to use his last breath to explain how besotted he is. “Your face has fallen sad now / For you know the time is night / When I must remove your wings / And you, you must try to fly,” he sings, and he knows that nothing that blazes this fiercely can last, that a love so obsessive and compulsive isn’t built to survive. Cave has delivered dozens and dozens of blood-soaked scriptures and sleazy sermons on the mount, but few which have the honesty, bravery and skin-prickling power of this one. theguardian

Daniel Johnston – True Love Will Find You In The End great music is often founded on imperfection—the blemishes are the best moments…These hiccups, far from disrupting the music, inject the songs with a sense of humanity. Daniel Johnston’s 1990 is full of these profound moments of imperfection. The instrumentation is sparse throughout, with Johnston alternating between the hammering of piano keys and the haphazard strumming of a barely tuned acoustic guitar… These “flaws” highlight the singer’s troubled background. While battling schizophrenia and bipolar disorder—enduring multiple breakdowns, arrests, and spells in mental institutions—he found relief in making music. Significant too is Johnston’s religious faith, highlighted by his lyrical obsession with Satan. This fixation on the Devil demonstrates the singer’s attempt to exorcise his demons, both psychological and spiritual, through artistic expression. Daniel Johnston expresses himself with the ragged intensity of a true believer. This passion reaches its peak with “Don’t Play Cards with Satan”, which climaxes as the singer repeatedly screams “SATAN!” as though in the throes of glossolalic madness…. But, like the light at the end of the tunnel comes the album’s centrepiece, “True Love Will Find You in the End”. In this redemptive love song, Johnston’s strumming remains unsteady, but his voice, twisted with the agony of a sinner in the previous song, is now tender and angelic. mancunion

Bark Psychosis – I Know I’m tempted to declare that all bands should be like Bark Psychosis: that paradoxical combination of being clued up but not premeditated, eloquent but not dogmatic, timely and timeless; that delicate balance of craft and chaos. But if all bands were like Bark Psychosis, they wouldn’t be the shining, saving grace that they indisputably are. Simon Reynolds, MelodyMaker

The Would Be’s – I’m Hardly Ever Wrong I first came across I’m Hardly Ever Wrong by Irish band the Would Be’s when I recorded it by chance from Steve Lamacq’s Evening Session. Growing up in a small town, his daily show on Radio 1 was my only entertainment for a couple of years, and it introduced me to many classic songs, as well as new bands… tinged with regret and melancholy, anchored by slightly mocking horns that follow the floating vocal line like an encroaching conscience or voice of doubt. theshriekingviolets

Ride – Like a Daydream a chiming, harmony-heavy pop song and the video featured Mark Gardener wearing the shoegazer standard-issue stripey top. The band’s lyrics were never their strong point and they sent themselves up on a seasonal remake of this song, retitled Like a Snowflake and given away to fanclub members the following year. “I wish that life could be just like Christmas Day,” they sang, “Its not like summer ’cos in summer you see hay.” theguardian

Lush – Sweetness and Light encompasses both the rough and the smooth, with its fragile, sky-high harmonies, mid-song mad-dash guitar collision, and vast expanse of melodic sound bigtakeover

World of Twist – The Storm World Of Twist are the great lost band from Manchester’s music history. The people that know, know and they get talked about with great excitement by anyone who can remember them including Liam Gallagher, who as a 18 year old youth saw the band play their classic sold out gig at Manchester’s Ritz- a night so legendary that everyone who was there feels blessed. louderthanwar

The Charlatans – The Only One I Know At the time, I saw it as completely new and inventive but I would learn much later that the song borrowed lyrics from The Byrds and an organ riff from Deep Purple… Even today, I feel out of breath just listening to it and remembering all the times, all the drunken nights, I danced to this particular track, mouthing along to what I imagined were the lyrics to “The only one I know”. mylifeinmusiclists

Milltown Brothers – Seems To Me the brothers Nelson courted the fans of just about every genre that was prominent in the early 90’s (with the exception of grunge) which in reality was ultimately their downfall. For instance the passing trade of all things baggy/Madchester were offered slithers of the Hammond organ to try and arouse their senses. Unfortunately, like throwing crap at a fan, hardly anything seemed to stick with the floppy fringed, big T-shirted youth who followed the scene, primarily because tracks such as Apple Green and Seems to Me gave only the merest hints of the instrument whereas the disciples of the genre fervently demanded their music to have the living shit drowned out of it with all things Hammond (i.e. Inspiral Carpets and The Charlatans). It just was just too subtle for the Madchester crowd. who quickly sauntered off to start the long wait for an eventually rubbish follow up from The Stones Roses. janglepophub

EMF – Unbelievable What do you call it again when an artist or band writes a song that becomes the biggest thing they ever do, overshadows their entire body of work, and becomes the only song they are remembered for? Oh yeah… mylifeinmusiclists

Dee-Lite – Groove is in the Heart This song has found itself on the playlist of most wedding receptions in the last two decades for good reason. Like “The Macarena” and the “Grease Mega Mix”, it’s a crowd-pleasing, dance floor filler that for some reason or other, appeals to all generations. But unlike those other tracks, this one has a bit of soul. mylifeinmusiclists

Sonic Youth – Kool Thing terminally catchy… serves as a brutal subtweet to LL Cool J, a rapper Gordon previously admired. Her opinion of him took a dive after SPIN tasked her with interviewing the rapper in order to get her feminist perspective on the genre. The two failed to connect during their discussion, and Gordon was particularly put off after LL remarked that a man “has to have control over his woman.” Gordon funneled the frustration she felt into “Kool Thing,” a noise-punk diss track that brings Chuck D along for the ride spin

The Pixies – Velouria a great example of Pixies’ disciplined adventurism. It features a theramin… Most bands would spotlight the shit out of a theramin guest appearance. Like a violin or a bagpipe, it’s not the kind of instrument that you can easily hide.  
But true to Pixies form, “Velouria” doesn’t ballyhoo the theramin. It’s not even the first thing you notice about the song — that would be Joey Santiago’s shimmering riff, the triumphant chorus, or even its lyrics (an ode to an unshaven Northwestern hippie girl … who might be a time traveler). The theramin hovers around the margins throughout, providing counterpoint to Francis’s vocals and sustaining Bossanova’s sci-fi vibe. stereogum

AVO-8 – Out of My Mind

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The Wedding Present – Corduroy a dirty pop delight theguardian

The Seers – Welcome To Dead Town brilliant Elvis Costello like composition godisinthetvzine

The Lemonheads – Different Drum Dando has always had an ear for a cover version, able to select songs that fitted his melodic and lyrical sensibility perfectly, and Different Drum was perfect for him. You can still hear that the Lemonheads had been a punk group, once upon a time, in the squalls of guitar that introduce the bridge, but you can tell Dando’s more interested in the lines that carry the melody, the countering of the riff rising upwards and lead line spiralling downwards theguardian

The Field Mice – If You Need Someone

Mazzy Star – Halah A sedate, stoned jangle, graceful slide guitar, Hope Sandoval sounding as not-botheredly divine as an immortal teenager who can see through time, and is frankly unbelievably bored by it all (well, up until the deftly heartbreaking line “I need to hear you say goodbye/Baby won’t you change your mind?”, anyway)

The KLF – What Time Is Love? The music doesn’t really matter as long as you have a great idea. And great ideas Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty had plenty of clashmusic

Sea Urchins – A Morning Odyssey The Sea Urchins may not have been the best band around. They were certainly not the most prolific. However there was/is just that aura about their work that means that they are forever destined to be fondly remembered by those of us lucky enough to have been around during their Sarah years janglepophub

The Beautiful South – A Little Time What we have is more a sketch than a track – a bit of observational comedy, or a scene from a ‘bittersweet’ sitcom. Isn’t it funny how guys say they want a little time….? The music backs that up – discreet punchline flourishes between the lite-pop verses letting on we’re listening to something a bit wry. The problem is, pop song is always multi-layered – you’ve always got the arrangement and the lyrics and the vocal performance reinforcing or trading off against one another. So pop is full of unreliable narrators, conflicted dickheads, people who say one thing and mean another. And while undermining cliches is clever, it’s even more clever if you don’t have to point it out. You can imagine a Beautiful South version of “I’m Not In Love” with Briana Corrigan popping up between verses going “ACTUALLY YOU ARE IN LOVE REALLY!”. freakytrigger

Po! – Sunday Never Comes Around played a big part in the world of fanzines, DIY record pressing and worldwide mail order before the internet was a thing. Ruth PO! started the band as well as being the founder of indie record label Rutland Records. Her songs are great pop tunes  but often there’s a barbed edge in the lyrics. Songs such as ‘Sunday Never Comes Around’ and ‘Appleseed Alley’ are indie-pop gold indietracks

Boo Radleys – Kaleidoscope still amateur compared to their Creation Record releases.  At the time they were signed to Rough Trade Records, after the initial Ichabod release on the indier than thou Action label… Sice’s voice is weak and wishy washy in this release, and I believe this happened because of the mix of the songs but he finds his voice for the classic Everything is Alright Forever album teenageshoegazer

Aztec Camera – Good Morning Britain they were best known for Somewhere in my heart, which reached number three in 1988, but for me for some reason this one lingered longer… Ah, now I remember, it’s because it appeared on the generally otherwise not terribly brilliant compilation The Hit Pack. To give you an idea of how good this rival to the Now That’s What I Call Music series was, the last two tracks on side two were:

• New Kids on the Block – Tonight
• Gazza and Lindisfarne – Fog On The Tyne

I don’t know what to say, except that in my defence I took it back to Woolies as soon as I could. recordrewindplay

The Railway Children – Every Beat of The Heart Gary Newby had a voice you wanted to eat strawberries from. It was the beauty of a crystalline note perfect nature. This clean essence was also accentuated by the sheer clarity of the accompanying jangled chiming hooks and melodies, that effectively made them the favourite band of discerning youngsters who appreciated musical substance over the era’s rapacious attention to vogue…it was music for those who let themselves enjoy all that could be pure and sweet janglepophub

The La’s – Timeless Melody the band’s truest statement of purpose pitchfork

Inspiral Carpets – This is How it Feels fantastic pop tunes which today sound simultaneously bright-eyed, innocent and ever so slightly quaint theguardian

Paris Angels – Perfume remains one of the greatest singles of the Madchester era. Produced by New Order engineer Michael Johnson for aptly named indie Sheer Joy, its glistening guitars, ecstasy-rush synth whooshes and Jayne Gill and Rikki Turner’s sweet and sour vocals were superior to anything Factory was releasing in the baggy summer of 1990 thequietus

James – Come Home (Flood Mix) Reviewed by Fruitbat and Jim Bob of Carter USM

F : It’s not that radical a remix, is it? I didn’t really notice any difference with the version that was out before.

J : The original record was really good, but I don’t really see the point of that one much. It’s not even longer. It seems a bit silly to bring it out again, a bit of a cheap move. I don’t know who persuaded them to do it. It’s one of my favourite records of the last year but this cheapens it a bit. It’ll be a massive dancefloor hit and if it was from Manchester it would be even bigger.

NME : It is

J : Oh yeah nme

Pale Saints – Sight of You It’s a song about the basest of things. The guy’s been dumped. While he’s busy having his feelings hurt, his gal has moved along to another guy. He wishes the new guy dead. thisisthatsong

The Clean – Draw (In) G to A [W] Hole their first proper full-length shows the irrepressible joy, and airtight skill, of their songwriting and displays it in bright, but not too shiny, lights. popmatters

McCarthy – And Tomorrow the Stock Exchange Will Be the Human Race The final album by McCarthy sees no letup in the search for the perfect pop tune. Tim Gane begins to display the hypnotic layering that would become his trademark in Stereolab. However, Banking is still characterized by jangly guitars and up-tempo pop drumming. Malcolm Eden’s nasal vocals are backed by Laetitia Sadier, future Stereolab singer and Gane’s future wife… The uncaring attitude so prevalent in the Thatcher/Reagan era is solidly attacked on “And Tomorrow the Stock Exchange Will Be the Human Race.”… unfortunately, sales never propelled the band to the heights of some of its lesser-talented contemporaries. allmusic

Julee Cruise – Falling Similarly to Twin Peaks, the substance of Julee Cruise’s music has long been buried under style theskinny

The Orchids – Something For The Longing sees the group breaking free of the shackles of the Sarah Records label in an attempt to make a more robust form of U.K. indie-rock apessimistisnverdisappointed

The Flaming Lips – Unconsciously Screamin’ a blistering salvo of white-noise crunch allmusic

The Cannanes – Vivienne With so many bands holding on to the blueprint that The Cannanes helped cement, its time for the original to stand up once again and be counted among the essentials of the ’90s ravensingstheblues

Th’ Faith Healers – Pop Song a raw distorted angry punk song, anything except a pop song really. The vocals are almost spat out teenageshoegazer

The Servants – Like A Girl Their brand of the mid-80′s jangly guitar-pop was intellectual, refined and classy as opposed to the shambolic and noisy lo-fi scene heralded by the C-86 compilation they would appear on and be connected with during their active career…. huge fan and Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch was trying to locate David Westlake in the hopes of forming a band with him, before launching Belle in his school class instead capturedtracks

Jane From Occupied Europe – Little Valley Town you’ve probably encountered the Swell Maps album of the same name… Having little in common with the Swell Maps’ shambolic, post-punk cacophonies, JFOE clad the chiming appeal of C86 indie pop to unmistakable psyche overtones without overdoing either.  Think very early Stone Roses with murkier fidelity and perhaps you’ll get the gist of Jane’s fuzzy charm. wilfullyobscure

Jane Pow – Good Morning demonstrate a way with a winning melody in the Byrds-influenced gem Good Morning louderthanwar

Trashcan Sinatras – Obscurity Knocks Not everyone under 25 was a pill gobbling spider monkey in Britain at the beginning of the 90’s, but you’ll find it difficult to unearth much evidence to the contrary now. True, hundreds of thousands of kids were hell bent on a government-petrifying way of weekend life involving repetitive beats and a diet solely of disco biscuits and H₂O, but music for tunnels and warehouses still had it’s time and place. The Trashcan Sinatras were one of bands that got away during this period, probably because whatever anyone says, the meek have very little chance of inheriting the earth… This was brilliant comedown music for those who could never face getting up. arcticreviews

The Darling Buds – Crystal Clear With Smiths/Blur producer Stephen Street twiddling the knobs… the band hops aboard the then-trendy Madchester bandwagon, coming up with “Tiny Machine” and “Crystal Clear,” the disc’s most memorable tracks. Some now-tired Blondie-isms remain, but this fine sophomore effort is mostly a forward-looking, groove-heavy delight trouserpress

Uncle Tupelo – No Depression Ultimately, worry is the thing that animates No Depression and what, 24 years out, still resonates the most: it’s a part-panicked, part-dispirited, part-defiant reaction to broad social injustices and personal defeats, all the things that make the world seem untenable. The circumstances might reconfigure, but the sentiment remains: life is unfair. pitchfork

The Montgomery Clifts – Lovesville USA one of the great lost tracks godisinthetvzine

The Emotionals – Cheat On Me has a nice touch of early Blondie about it louderthanwar

Power of Dreams – 100 Ways To Kill A Love fantastically potent songs that have lost nothing in the passing of the years independent.ie

Mousefolk – Crazy Mixed-Up Kid a truly DIY band who couldn’t play any instruments but formed the group anyway, and within a few years were playing gigs across Europe and finding college radio airplay as far afield as the USA and Japan godisinthetvzine

Björk Guðmundsdóttir & tríó Guðmundar Ingólfssonar – Gling-Gló an Icelandic onomatopoeia whose English equivalent is “ding dong”, or the sound that a bell makes wikipedia

Hindu Love Gods – Junku Pardner an unofficial supergroup that consisted of singer/pianist Warren Zevon and the three instrumentalists from REM (drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, and bassist Mike Mills). This very casual band originally got together in 1984, when they recorded a little-heard single. They also recorded one album of blues covers in 1987, though it wasn’t released until 1990 rarebird9

Morrissey – Hairdresser on Fire For someone so routinely dismissed as a navel-gazing misanthrope, Hairdresser on Fire is probably the greatest example of Moz poking fun at his own reputation as a harbinger of doom: it’s intentionally ridiculous, the bathos of the grand, sweeping swings and chiming bells used to soundtrack a fusspot having kittens about his hair. And there’s an obvious humour, too, in how Morrissey – the unloved youth who used to roam around graveyards spouting Keats and Wilde – is having a diva-sized tantrum, because he can’t get an appointment at his favourite salon. theguardian

Yo La Tengo – The Summer one of the band’s most beloved songs. Kaplan and Hubley sing the low-key “The Summer” together, but it’s her voice that sticks with me—a simple, pure, honest voice that makes this acoustic gem one of their most touching songs, even if the lyrics are a bit inscrutable pastemagazine

The Chills – Submarine Bells nowhere in perhaps the entire Chills catalogue does Phillipps sync his sonics with natural beauty the way he does on this album closer. It’s a gorgeous love song so startlingly vivid that it seems to literally sink into the depths of the sea as he sings “sound moves further underwater.” goodtimes