Primal Scream – Velocity Girl In pop music, 82 seconds can be an eternity. That’s how long Primal Scream’s “Velocity Girl” lasts, and the song was enough to have crystallized an entire era and established an undying narrative. As the opening track of C86—a 22-song cassette compilation of British indie bands released by the legendary music magazine NME in 1986—“Velocity Girl” has become iconic pitchfork

Razorcuts – Sorry To Embarass You For those of you who weren’t there, C86, of which both Primal Scream and the Razorcuts were then a part, was the coolest movement ever. It was punk influenced 60’s jangly psychedelic-influenced pop. Primal Scream were the kings of this and, as far as I was concerned, even then they were the coolest band on the planet. They didn’t even have to play. They just looked good and when they played it was the stuff of summer, and of love, and of your future dreams coming true. So what if vocalist Bobby Gillespie often sung out of tune ? The Razorcuts were very much in the same vein, using Rickenbacker guitars, and having cool haircuts a la John Cale. Everyone there was young and happy. They didn’t have to worry about mortgages, pensions and jobs. We bought vinyl on 7′ and fanzines and had pin badges of our favourite bands. pennyblackmusic

The Smiths – Panic For all of the well-deserved acclaim, both contemporaneous and retrospective, The Smiths rarely topped the charts; of their albums, only Meat Is Murder made it to No. 1, and only two of their vaunted singles managed to crack the top 10. The discrepancy between the band’s cultural cache and commercial success didn’t escape Morrissey’s notice; aided by the beefier two-guitar lineup of Marr and Craig Gannon, “Panic” takes aim at ’86’s most inconsequential chart-toppers (Doctor and the Medics, anyone?) and the radio personalities who enabled them. consequence.net

The Smiths – Cemetry Gates A moment of bonding between two misfit friends who spend a dreaded sunny day sneaking off to the graveyard so they can quote Keats and Yeats and Wilde to each other, just because nobody else can stand them. With the guitar goading him on, Morrissey weeps at the tombstones, makes terrible puns and gives a solemn lecture against plagiarism, while plagiarizing everything from Richard III to The Man Who Came to Dinner. rollingstone

Pet Shop Boys – Suburbia What stands out?… For me, it’s when that simple, yearning melody of ‘Suburbia’ starts off riding the sort of tough, industrial-influenced beats Depeche Mode snuck into pop a few years earlier. Where live it often sounds bombastic and triumphant now, the reissue reminds us of its more clattering genesis thequietus

New Order – Bizarre Love Triangle Dozens of band have been chasing down a sound as honeydripping and danceable as this one. All have failed. pastemagazine

The Triffids – Wide Open Road the experience of Born Sandy Devotional is not one you’re likely to want to have every day, but on that day when you want to be carried away to a fully imagined place where emotions are a little more desperate and extreme, when you want your desire to escape dramatized in romantic terms without losing any of its complexity or ambivalence, you’ll be glad to have this popmatters

The Chills – Pink Frost Starting with a bright, optimistic opening, 20 seconds in the song takes a turn for the mysterious with an inquisitive guitar pattern and chilling, despair-filled lyrics based on a dream Phillips had about killing someone in their sleep. Despite its dark nature, the song retains a catchy melody and pop consciousness, and is oft compared to Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. popmatters

The Housemartins – Happy Hour Happy hours were big then – a golden hour of cheap drinking which would encourage stupidity – and something just connected. I don’t know if many people realised that the song was about feeling miserable in a happy hour, or that the lyrics make loose statements about women being harassed. paulheaton

The Chesterfields – Completely & Utterly Yesterday’s posting on Spritualized was originally going to be followed today by the OK Computer bonus album meaning that two successive days would have been a bit of a grind if your preference is for the lighter and more upbeat sort of music that will instantly lift your spirits and brighten up your day.

This shorter posting and little gem of a song, which clocks in at not much more than two minutes, was going to be the attempted redress of the situation and I’ve now brought it forward by 24 hours to brighten up your middle of the week thenewvinylvillain

The Jesus and Mary Chain – Some Candy Talking Radio 1 DJ Mike Smith apparently blacklisted the song because of the drug reference in the title (which Jim Reid has always denied), but the record was never outright banned, because the BBC had cottoned on that such bans usually sent a record racing up the charts. Even with only minimal airplay, it reached No 13 in the UK singles chart. theguardian

Talulah Gosh – My Best Friend Think of a genre. I bet there’s a band that defines it. A quintessential act that captures everything about it: the sound, the look, the attitude. Punk rock, it’s often argued, began and ended with the Sex Pistols. Iron Maiden cornered the market in looking and sounding like a heavy metal band, and have the record sales to prove it. And though many have tried, nobody has ever outcramped The Cramps. You get the idea.

Back in 1986 (of course!) there emerged, fully formed from Oxford, the absolutely quintessential twee pop group. They weren’t the first, they weren’t necessarily the best, but nobody nailed that cutie scene like Talulah Gosh nailed it. They came out of the fledgling indie-pop fanzine culture and were immediately absorbed back into it as stars of the scene. A quick scan of their photos and flyers will tell you why. Shy looking youngsters peering out from behind spectacular fringes and outsize glasses, they had  the outsider smarts to run with the punky accoutrements of founding indie fathers like the Television Personalities and The Pastels. Just with more polka dots. louderthanwar

The Flatmates – I Could Be In Heaven  released by Subway in September 1986 and declared “No musicians used on this record!” which was in response to Queen’s first album which proudly boasted “No synthesizers used on this record!” and The Human League’s first album which responded with “No guitars used on this record!” – the declaration, whilst accurate in that no classically trained musicians were used sells the band well short;  ‘I Could Be In Heaven’ is two and a half minutes of glorious lo-fi spikey pure pop, with a solid drum beat, jangly guitars and layers of harmonious vocals courtesy of Sarah Feltcher louderthanwar

Shop Assistants – All That Ever Mattered although their gauzier moments are gorgeous, it’s their ‘gazier tunes that are the most powerful. While Taylor mumbles and coos her way through much of the catalogue with expressionless cool, Keegan’s knack for dumb, jangly guitar lines, as elemental and enduring as the Scottish landscape itself, provides the real emotional punch. scotsman

The Bangles – Manic Monday  Prince had a fantastic idea. In a 1989 interview with MTV, Debbi Peterson of The Bangles recalled: “[Prince] really liked our first album. He liked the song ‘Hero Takes a Fall’, which is a great compliment because we liked his music. He contacted us, and said, ‘I’ve got a couple of songs for you. I’d like to know if you’re interested,’ and of course, we were. One of the songs Prince brought to the group was ‘Manic Monday’, written under the pseudonym of Christopher.”

The group accepted Prince’s offering with gratitude and set about recording the song to be released as a single from their upcoming album, 1986’s Different Light. The Bangles’ singer and guitarist Susanna Hoffs described their recording of Prince’s ‘Manic Monday’, revealing: “When I first heard that ‘oh whoa’ melody I thought of the Velvet Underground, Then when I heard the title I thought of Jimi Hendrix . But then with the Monday part and the harmonies, I thought of The Mamas & the Papas. It has a lot of the elements of emotion and style that [The Bangles] connect to. And [young people] really pick-up on the nursery rhyme appeal – like ‘Sally Go ‘Round the Roses’, [there’s] a nice simplicity to it.” faroutmagazine

Age Of Chance – Kiss the original was a unique sounding record that gave Prince his third of four number one singles, and it made so many musical ripples in the pond that a number of cover versions surfaced quickly… Age Of Chance jumped right on this sucker as soon as the original came out in 1986.

Age Of Chance were a Leeds four piece who favored high concept sloganeering, cycling gear, and thunderous, brutal beats mated with squealing metallic guitars amid a clashing din of samples… it’s got massive shouted vocals sung in a declamatory delivery and huge skronking beats that sound 60 feet high. The guitars are set to maximum stun and sound as nearly as feedback-happy as those on the previous year’s Jesus + Mary Chain album, “Psychocandy.”.. I can’t believe that the group managed to change some of the lyrics in the final verse either! Prince doesn’t strike me as one who would authorize such hi-jinx. Nevertheless, the change adds dry sarcastic humor to this fine interpretation. postpunkmonk

The Communards – Don’t Leave Me This Way first recorded by Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes in 1975 for the album Wake Up Everybody. It was released as a single in the UK during 1977, reaching No.5, shortly after Thelma Houston’s disco version had reached No.13. simplyeighties

Furniture – Brilliant Mind No song takes me back to my college days more than this one. Lyrically, it captured the woeful, yet universal, self-pity that adolescents and young adults often succumb to when navigating life and relationships. The opening line “I’m at the stage where everything I thought meant something seems so unappealing” was practically my mantra as an unfocused, question-it-all college sophomore.

Of course, nothing was more gut-wrenching to a not-quite-twenty-something than failed relationship efforts. It was all too easy to wallow in the blame-game nature of the chorus, alternating between saying “you must be out of your brilliant mind” and “they must be out of their brilliant minds.” After all, how could I be the one responsible for my shortcomings? davesmusicdatabase

The Go- Betweens – Head Full Of Steam ‘Hair is important,” began Robert Forster, the co-frontman of the Go-Betweens, Australia’s criminally underrated band, in an article on haircare for the Manchester fanzine Debris in 1987. “Hair is placed fairly and squarely upon your head, to be admired and cared for. At a younger age, I almost drifted into hairdressing, and thankfully didn’t, but I have made a careful and practical study of hair ever since. You need know little more about hair than what I’m about to tell you.”

Of course, Forster, a gigantic, glorious, preening flamingo of a man, or his writing partner Grant McLennan, who looks like an affably bewildered plumber’s mate alongside such a glamorous figure, could have expounded for hours on other subjects; the subtlety of their songwriting, for example, or how their cultural isolation in suburban 1970s Brisbane allowed them to mix punk rock and folk rock without realising this was forbidden by the London style bibles. But the fact that Forster chose instead to talk at length about hair probably says more about the Go-Betweens’ tragic failure to connect with the mass market they obviously deserved than any attempt at reasoned analysis ever could. stewartlee

XTC – Grass The real joy of XTC’s Skylarking is not necessarily the sweet and graceful pop tunes at hand, nor is it only the conceptual structure of the record or the multiple themes and theologies explored within it. It is that they managed to pull it all off while seemingly being at each other’s throats. Like a proper rock and roll record should be. faroutmagazine

Stephen Duffy – Sunday Supplement The record company took exception to the running order and title… (changing it from Cocksure to Because We Love You), and when it took a dive Stephen was unceremoniously dropped with it… gauche and gorgeous, hopelessly romantic and a million miles from the upbeat electropop that Virgin/10 obviously wanted. thequietus

Weather Prophets – Almost Prayed proponents of ultra-mild pop, exceedingly pleasant trifles with provocatively off-center lyrics trouserpress

R.E.M. – Fall On Me Perhaps the band’s trademark wordiness allowed for more nuanced lyrics than simple sloganeering, but the band excelled at depicting the political rot of 1980s America at its most human roughtrade

Momus – Lucky Like St Sebastian This is a huge, gentle music, half a step away from pop, and in “Lucky Like St Sebastian” and “Little Lord Obedience”, probably the most stimulating thing you’ll hear all year. Melodymaker

Felt – Ballad Of The Band enough to make a case for Felt’s greatness, with Martin Duffy’s tumbling organ lines making Lawrence’s self-pity sound thrilling theguardian

Felt – All The People I Like Are Those That Are Dead  It’s the perfect Felt statement, full of style and low-key passion, warm tones to the sound bringing out the best in the elegantly mysterious songs… It’s beautiful, louche, ecstatic and sad, all in one hit. Lawrence really is on top form and his bandmates perform the tunes flawlessly. Forever Breathes….. really is a work of perfection. louderthanwar

Echo And The Bunnymen – Bring On The Dancing Horses Do the lyrics make any sense? Absolutely not, but as a big, richly processed pop song, “Horses” endures like nothing else they recorded. In retrospect it summarizes what the band sounded like in maturity, and at the time of its release, about a year after Ocean Rain, it set the tone for the rest of their ’80s output to sound slicker, as if commissioned for John Hughes movies. “Horses” was, in fact, but the Psychedelic Furs took home the big licensing check for Pretty In Pink. stereogum

Eurythmics – Thorn In My Side an outpouring of relationship-related bile set to a key-change-heavy melody that stacks one ear worm on top of another. The none-more-1986 production, complete with duck-and-cover snare drum, hasn’t dated terribly well, but it doesn’t matter: this is an amazing song theguardian

Run-DMC – Walk This Way The concept came from producer Rick Rubin, who was aware the trio had rhymed live over the opening drum break of the Aerosmith track: until he suggested covering it, none of the band had apparently listened to the song beyond the first guitar riff… Walk This Way did more to popularise rap beyond a specialist audience than any other song, and its worldwide success was instrumental in making hip-hop a globally relevant art form. It remains, not just an important record, but an infectiously, reliably enjoyable one too – the band’s humour absolutely fundamental to its success. theguardian

The Beastie Boys – She’s On It a fun, dumb stomper with a great guitar hook and obnoxious couplets like “She’d get down on her knees / If we’d only say please.” The Beasties had reached a new plateau of offensiveness and were squinting upwards trouserpress

The Fall – Shoulder Pads Pound for pound, Bend Sinister is one of the Fall’s most fun records, and funniest spectrumculture

The Wolfhounds – Anti-Midas Touch the band who were always… spikier, wiry, fiercely independent, and experimental than the twee tag which has been attached to some of the associated original indie scene’s artists around at that time. It was no accident Wolfhounds were often compared to The Fall. echoesanddust

BMX Bandits – E102 Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain once said, “If I could be in any other band, it would be BMX Bandits“… It all began with the exuberant E102 in 1986, the first in a series of singles on Stephen Pastel’s 53rd & 3rd label, where BMX Bandits were label mates with The Vaselines. Later they joined Creation Records, the home of Teenage Fanclub, My Bloody Valentine and Primal Scream. yorkpress

The Pastels – Truck Train Tractor None of them, not drummer Katrina, nor bassist Aggi, and certainly not guitarist/chief vocalist Stephen, could carry a tune if you gave them a purpose-built wheelbarrow. Rock and roll history has proved that being a technically proficient singer isn’t everything.  hotpress

The Primitives – Really Stupid The Primitives were; (multiple choice)

– Utterly Perfect Pop.

– The last great Indie band (before Indie band became a career option.)

– The coolest band of 1986/7 (Great hair, artwork as well as tunes…)

– A tribute to the Phil Spector-sound via the Jesus & Mary Chain, Blondie, the Velvets and The Ramones.

– Dumb, sugar-rush pop with no depth. All surface, no feeling.

– At their best when they were signed to Lazy and had shit-drummer Jeff Tweedie giving them a wobbly edge with his Mo Tuckerisms.

– All of the above. (Correct)

For a while the Primitives were the coolest band in the world. They made me feel old at 22. This was post post-punk pop made by a band who seem to have beamed straight in from 1969 fully formed. The Bowl haircuts, the jangle and fuzz guitars, Part Monkees Part Velvets. Dumb. Cool. With a Blonde girl-singer; Like Blondie. Only not at all like Blondie. The major-labels were just dying to find a new Blondie. Really Stupid was a pure & simple classic blast of ramalama pop. Remembering what else was around at the time in the mainstream (Madonna, U2. Whitney) and the alternative realm (Goth was getting tired, Grebo starting to emerge and C86 shamblers shambling) it was no surprise that the Primitives seemed like the greatest thing since Psychocandy. louderthanwar

The Band of Holy Joy – Who Snatched The Baby? I did see Band of Holy Joy recently described as an ‘acquired taste’. I’d never thought of them in that way. I know they long ago created their own world, like all the best artists do, and maybe that’s a barrier for some but as they deal in the absolute basic questions of humankind’s troubled existence there must surely be a little universal appeal in there somewhere? thequietus

The Dentists – Strawberries Are Growing In My Garden (And It’s Wintertime) Byrds-indebted jangle, at once too hungry to be called twee and too pretty to be mistaken for punk factmag

The Woodentops – Good Thing while The Woodentops have always pertained to the 80s UK indie pop scene, shoving them into that bracket often seems quite tenuous; though it makes perfect sense in theory: too hedonistic to be explicitly “indie” and too idiosyncratic to be commercially viable. thequietus

Beat Happening – Foggy Eyes a record of the flourishing of DIY culture in America… essential for an understanding of indie-pop on these shores in the last few decades… For all their rudimentary skills early on, the band somehow found a way to craft alternative pop that charmed and inspired… “Run Down The Stairs” and “Foggy Eyes” are simple, and when heard then in the context of New Wave and hair metal, they seemed extraordinarily revolutionary. Beat Happening found a way to craft indie-pop (before that term even existed) using the DIY methodology of harDCore, but without the anger, angst, or machismo. apessimistisneverdisappointed

The Jazz Butcher – Angels balances the agony of heartbreak with gratitude at the support of his loved ones pitchfork

The Cleaners From Venus – Victoria Grey The Cleaners are a band whose obscurity makes The Bevis Frond look like U2 – a group so wary of Standard Industry Practice that they operated on a self-record/self-release only basis for the fifteen-odd years of their existence. It’s noble, and it suggests that they knew they’d find an audience – just not in their own time thelineofbestfit

David Bowie – Absolute Beginners “I absolutely love you,” Bowie proclaims in this upbeat single, and he bashes the nail of lyrical devotion right on the head. Subtlety is overrated in art and there is something profoundly brilliant about the simple sincerity that rings out with the edifying absolutely amid the three most famous words in culture. Simply put, it elevates the tired trio to the level of a paean that needs nothing else to act as a crutch. faroutmagazine

The Wedding Present – You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends as gruff, grumpy, and strangely electrifying as ever, much like bandleader David Gedge himself undertheradar

The Chameleons – Swamp Thing I feel bad for The Chameleons because their ratio of fans to good music is so low that I practically forced myself to write this review despite my massive writers block and general disinterest in writing things lately… Strange Times has become one of my personal favorite records, and I find comfort in knowing it is great enough to continue to create fans out of anyone who stumble upon it. At no matter how slow of a rate. sputnikmusic

Billy Bragg – Greetings To The New Brunette one of Bragg’s finest character sketches and was also (unsurprisingly) replete with social commentary. He writes the song from the perspective from a young ne’er-do-well who’s in love with Shirley, a woman who challenges him at every turn. The man wants nothing more out of life than a football game and a few pints of bitter and is frustrated by Shirley’s challenging sexual politics and domestic ambitions. “Here we are in our summer years / Living on ice cream and chocolate kisses”, he sings, setting up that question that lies at the heart of the song, “But would the leaves fall from the trees / If I were your old man and you were my missus?” He is asking the question as much to himself as to her. His answer is a vague request that could be a loving joke or a sardonic kiss-off. “Greetings to the New Brunette” is Bragg at his best: simultaneously honest, angry, and timorous, writing songs with as much emotional depth as the best of the Smiths or the Replacements. popmatters

Mighty Mighty – Is There Anyone Out There?  it’s obvious the band owes at least some debt to Orange Juice and Aztec Camera (The Smiths, too) blurtonline

14 Iced Bears – Inside It would be obvious to think that they are twee, even their moniker has a saccharine taste. But Inside and Blue Suit has thumping drums and a deranged guitar sound. teenageshoegazer

Hüsker Dü – Sorry Somehow Most albums like this provoke a reaction, whether that be proclamations of assured maturity from critics or condemnations from longtime fans over selling out. Instead, Candy Apple Grey’s legacy seems to be that it doesn’t have much of a legacy… the kind of album that ends up being forgotten for a reason: neither great nor a disaster, its highs are too few and far between to keep inviting people back, and its lows aren’t low enough to mark it as the point where everything went wrong. spectrumculture

Pete Wylie and The Oedipus Wrecks – Sinful! The song speaks in general of the disillusion of young people in seeing a world where evil feelings are presented as a model to move forward, and leads to think on how difficult it is to remain yourself and believe in your values in such a context. 80sneverend