Belle and Sebastian – The State I Am In There’s a young person, they are in trouble, and they’re going to tell their tale over some upbeat twee. That’s the general summary of every Belle and Sebastian song, but “The State I Am In” was the first time their formula hit our ears, and boy did it sound good. It’s the band’s magnificent debut, and their coy innocence is mirrored in every bedroom guitar line. Lullaby-like indie rock never had us laughing so hard. A young man finds out his brother is gay, marries a girl to keep her from being deported, and is busy kicking crutches out from under the crippled because he thought God swore to heal them all. When the priest winds up penning the boy’s confessions in a book, the boy wanders aimlessly through stores and eventually tries to give his soul up to God, resulting in one of Belle and Sebastian’s finest lines of all time: “And so I gave myself to God/ There was a pregnant pause before He said, ‘Okay.‘” It’s so dry and just dark enough that it’s not hard to see the sun on the other side consequence

Belle and Sebastian – Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying If there’s a constant theme in Belle and Sebastian’s music, it’s that of the value of finding salvation in escape through music or books. This one, however, takes a particularly meta turn in its first verse, Murdoch imploring, “Play me a song to set me free,” and subsequently assigning himself that very responsibility: “Nobody writes them like they used to, so it may as well be me.” But just as easily as he finds his confidence, it slips through his fingers, as he offers, “Think of it this way/ You could be successful or be us.” He wrestles and tumbles with his words, he stares at the window and the rain, ponders the lives of ex-lovers and resigns himself to the idea that his music can only wound, rather than kill. It’s a feeling every artist knows too well, so it hits extra hard to hear such an eloquent expression of creative frustration in such a gorgeously crafted pop song. treblezine

Silver Jews – How To Rent A Room Around 2009, Berman had a confession to make… He disclosed that Richard Berman—a notorious lobbyist responsible for dismantling unions, combatting minimum-wage increases and discrediting organizations dedicated to fighting everything from environmental protection to drunk driving—was his father. Berman said within the post that part of what drove him to form Silver Jews, before finally driving him to end it, was the hope of being a force that could amend some part of his father’s damage. He may have come to believe that art couldn’t do enough, but it doesn’t erase the seething vitriol that retrospectively pours from songs like “How To Rent a Room.” It’s one of the more haunting tunes in Berman’s discography, capturing the complexity of both his relationship to his father and his relationship to himself in light of it, ending with this chilling line: “Life should mean a lot less than this.” pastemagazine

Beck – Jack-Ass Strangely enough, Beck is at his sweetest when he’s tired, and “Jack-Ass” is nothing if not exhausted. Yet it’s also completely satisfied, a moment where its creator can look back on his creation with pride. Though he might be stumbling along to the track’s loop of shimmering xylophones and flutes, sounding every bit a man twice his age, Beck’s voice carries an undeniable note of comfort slantmagazine

Underworld – Born Slippy. NUXX Trainspotting arrived in the UK like a juggernaut, ram-raiding theaters. Two years earlier, in 1994, debut director Danny Boyle, screenwriter John Hodge, producer Andrew Macdonald, and star Ewan McGregor had caused some cinematic ripples with their comic thriller Shallow Grave, but their follow-up was a revolution. With just one movie this gang seemed to singlehandedly revive the ailing British film industry—it wasn’t just alive and kicking, but screaming and shagging and pissing and puking. Trainspotting was the celluloid calling card for Cool Britannia, and it emboldened a generation.

Adapted from Irvine Welsh’s ADHD heroin odyssey of the same name, it was as sexy as it was scuzzy, brimming with as much life as death, an ode to youth, sex, friendship—and music. Inseparable from the film was its soundtrack. On screen, sound and vision were indelibly married. Renton running from the cops to Iggy Pop. Diving down a toilet to Brian Eno. Overdosing to Lou Reed. And on CD, this ultimate mixtape, rock, pop, and techno were all slammed together, all with equal prominence, which spoke to what was going on in the clubs and on the streets. In mid-90s Britain, tribes were disappearing, coming together. You didn’t have to take sides any more. Everything was open.

Of all the songs though, above and beyond all the big names, Underworld’s “Born Slippy. NUXX” soared heroically. Soundtracking the film’s climax, an adrenalin rush of freedom and betrayal, it mixed sublime synths with a four to the floor freakout, and represented everything that was going on; it was new. While making Trainspotting, Boyle had used Underworld’s album Dubnobasswithmyheadman as a sort of rhythmic guide, but randomly found this 12″ remix in a record shop, listened to it, and immediately knew he needed to end the film with it. Trainspotting, he later said, was ostensibly about heroin, but was rhythmically more like ecstasy, and “Born Slippy” provided the perfect crescendo. vice

Suede – Trash a ditty for the downtrodden, a paean for the put-upon, and an anthem for anyone seeking romance in the most humdrum nooks and crannies. It’s a view of drab suburban life blitzed into Technicolor excitement, with pistol-shot drums and a squealing, screaming guitar line. Above all else, though, it’s Suede’s love letter to Suede, a celebration of their knack for finding glamour in squalid surroundings. “But we’re trash, you and me/ We’re the litter on the breeze/ We’re the lovers on the street,” is Anderson’s manifesto for all the misfits and lost souls trapped in satellite town hell: forget the jerks and their jeers because you’re more beautiful than they could ever be. theguardian

Lush – Ladykillers Berenyi noted the feedback she’s received for “Ladykillers.” She commented, “Men (and ONLY men) complain I’ve been unfair.”…

With sarcasm dripping from its title, “Ladykillers” presents three separate scenarios, each of which features a distinct, cringe-y male character. There’s the guy trying to spark some animosity between two women in a bar. There’s the dude with the muscles and long hair who feigns sensitivity and uses feminism as bait. Finally, we hear about the one who keeps chasing after a girl who isn’t interested in him. 

Over the years, these lyrics would spark questions over the identity of the men whose behavior is immortalized in the song… Berenyi commented, “I’m always asked to name the men in Ladykillers but nope, not gonna because it honestly could’ve been written about any number of people (loads of ’em out there!) – and it’s not about the blokes but how it feels to be on the receiving end.” 

With that statement, Berenyi crystalized why “Ladykillers” is such a powerful song. The history of pop music is overwhelmed by songs where women are objects. Even songs named after women are often more about the men singing them than the women in the lyrics. “Ladykillers” flips the script, because it’s a song about a woman’s reaction to men. Specifically, it’s about a woman’s reaction to men who treat women like conquests. audiofemme

Sleeper – Statuesque Sleeper’s records have been either overlooked, or knocked for being indistinguishable indie noise. Which is ironinc because… what strikes this listener, is how recognisable Sleeperpop really is, all slashing guitars and feet-friendly rhythyms, topped of by Louise’s fetchingly breathless vocals, always a welcome sound on the radio, like a woman in the throes of a fake orgasm nme

The Candyskins – Monday Morning hampered by undistinguished and uneven songwriting, as well as predictable melodies. Nevertheless, the album has a raw, infectious energy allmusic

Gorkys Zygotic Mynci – Patio Song Euros Childs impossibly cherubic voice and his sister Megan’s tear-tuggingly mournful violin remain two of the most distinctive sounds of the 90s. But also the most undervalued. Never were they combined more sweetly than on this daisy-mowing song, which is about love, not a patio nme

Super Furry Animals – Something 4 The Weekend a band who had only the loosest interest in being part of the rock movement of the moment. They were more concerned with producing a demented cocktail of warped psychedelic dreaminess, Beach Boys melodies and gonzo glam rock. It was a patchy debut, but all the ingredients are here – the mischief, the melodies and taste for cultural havoc (this was a band who modified an army tank into a rave sound system as well as celebrating Howard Marks on Fuzzy Logic and its cover)… Something 4 the Weekend that hit the sweet spot showcased SFA as the fantastic singles band they were to become. The George Foreman-quoting verses lectured on the perils of drugs. “George Foreman was asked, ‘What did you spend all your money on?’ and he said ‘Slow horses and fast women’. It’s about the downside. There’s too many songs celebrating the upside of sex and drugs,” explained Gruff Rhys. But when that spine-tingling chorus hits it’s the best legal high you could wish for. theguardian

Super Furry Animals – The Man Don’t Give A Fuck  the most profane-strewn top 40 hit in UK chart history. It almost languished as a B-side until label boss Alan McGee realised that despite the certainty of a radio blackout, it would be a hit nme

Manic Street Preachers – A Design For Life at its most basic a sarcastic ode to everyone who thinks a good life routine is eat, work, pub. Ironically, it’s a point that’s often lost to the casual MSP fans who sing the song as they stumble home at 2am from the local bar. Dive deeper into the meaning behind the song, and there are links to be drawn with MSP’s more outwardly intellectual work: socialism, class identity, and the war on aristocracy all feature heavily pastemagazine

REM – New Test Leper There’s an argument to be made that, in a perfect world, this is where the R.E.M. story would end. New Adventures in Hi-Fi certainly feels like an ending, whether the band intended it to or not. Not only is this the last album that R.E.M. released as a four-piece, it would also be the last album when R.E.M. felt part of the zeitgeist. It was always kind of bizarre that this weird, willfully obtuse band from a Georgia college town became legitimate pop stars; there was no way that it could feasibly last forever, especially given that the band had no real inclination to try to maintain that status. Yet, even as they crafted something too obtuse and personal for casual listeners to engage with, they still created the sort of dense, layered work that garnered them such a passionate following in the first place. If there’s anything to gather from re-examining New Adventures in Hi-Fi, it’s that the album stands among the finest things that R.E.M. ever recorded. spectrumculture

Stipe apparently wrote the immediate, touching lyrics — an ode to outcasts — after seeing a lost soul on a Geraldo-like talk show.

I can’t say that I love Jesus
That would be a hollow claim
He did make some observations
And I’m quoting them today
‘Judge not lest ye be judged’
What a beautiful refrain
The studio audience disagrees
Have his lambs all gone astray?
Call me a leper …

Stipe has called this — not ‘Losing My Religion,’ not ‘Everybody Hurts’ — his crowning achievement as a songwriter popbreak

Smashing Pumpkins – Tonight, Tonight a song that keeps scaling higher and higher when you think it couldn’t go any further, it’s a perfect encapsulation of what made Corgan tick at his mid-’90s peak.stereogum

DJ Shadow – Midnight In A Perfect World DJ Shadow was something else. He was interested in textures and feelings, and those textures and feelings are the reasons that Endtroducing….. still resonates so deeply today. stereogum

Eels – Beautiful Freak these 12 songs are marinated in misery and grunginess, that’s not the point of them so much as it is the darkness that enables you to see the album’s light. It’s a dim, flickering light, but it’s there just the same and it comes in the form of the record’s most childlike elements.

From the cover art inwards, Beautiful Freak presents childishness as a kind of ideal state, the thing we’re all trying to achieve even as the world continues to slap us silly and dudes get shot in the head all around godisinthetvzine

Beth Orton – Someone’s Daughter The single most interesting thing about Beth Orton remains her unique voice, best described as a kind of guttural lilt pitchfork

The Olivia Tremor Control – The Opera House a blur of fuzz guitar and harmonica, leading off with the funny notion of going to the movies just to watch the actors move their mouths. The surreality of it all is certainly worth a mention: Catchy as they are, these songs are riddled with potholes, with weird left turns, with hooks that seem to bubble out of nowhere before receding into themselves pitchfork

The Lucksmiths – Macintyre I introduced a variety of folks to this band… and most came away smiling at tales of librarians (“with the heart of Danielle Steel“), and sad bastards who sit around all day in Carlton pubs (Macintyre). onealbumaday

Scud Mountain Boys – Grudge Fuck The song is narrated by a lonely, forgotten lover, stoned and desperate, who calls his ex to see if there’s any chance of a night of comfort, even if it means sleeping on the floor, no touching allowed, though that’s not what he wants. “I would give anything to make it with you, just one more time,” Pernice sings for the song’s chorus. “I’d give you everything I owned.” Yeah, yeah, yeah: we’ve heard that song before. Most of us have been that sad sack making the pathetic call. Except that’s not the whole story – the protagonist isn’t just lonely. He’s vicious and cruel and destructive. He wants not just to improve his own life but to ruin his ex’s, and we only know that from the song’s title theguardian

Arab Strap – The First Big Weekend How did a beardy Scottish folk duo write the best song about going out ever? 20 years on, Arab Strap’s “First Big Weekend” is still the ultimate record about clubbing vice

Helen Love – Girl About Town The obsessions and ingredients that make Helen Love a mad scientist’s (and my) dream of giddy pop perfection may seem utterly random — punk rock, glam rock, bubblegum, disco, Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry, synthesizers, robotic vocal processors, ABBA, the Sweet, the Shangri-La’s, Wings, the Pooh Sticks, Talulah Gosh, “Planet Rock,” the Queers, Primitives, Rezillos, Freshies, Bay City Rollers, New York Dolls, the KLF, Tobor the 8th Man, manga, girl power, Sarah Records, Chickfactor magazine, music television, London, Los Angeles, New York, discotheques — but in the fiendishly capable and knowing hands of the prodigiously productive Welsh band and its namesake singer, they brew up into a delirious, tooth-achingly sweet omnivorous musical confection. trouserpress

Sleater-Kinney – I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone In their signature song, Sleater-Kinney brilliantly praise and criticize the culture that surrounds not only mainstream music, but the supposed indie scene as well. This punk classic has it all: a meta anthem about the flip of the gender role, with two of the tensest dual vocals ever committed to tape. Carrie Brownstein’s pissed-off hyena shrieks supplementing the chorus are a mini hit-and-run every time she opens her mouth. spin

The Wedding Present – Montreal With Gedge again flirting with obnoxiousness by rationalizing romantic indiscretions (“I kissed her/How could I resist her?” in “Hula Doll”; “I don’t care where this lands us” in “Kansas”) and unpleasantness (“Montreal” is a brusque kiss-off), Saturnalia is a solid (if unannounced) swan song that flashes lyrical ingenuity and stylistic novelty trouserpress

Mansun – Stripper Vicar The amount of times I’ve sat in pubs trying to explain to people what it’s all about is mind boggling, and in the mists of time, I’m not sure I can even remember myself. Paul Draper

Catatonia – You’ve Got A Lot To Answer For  Cerys Matthews’ vocals offer a layering of thick syrup with the occasional rough of honeycomb walesartsreview

Kenickie – Come Out 2Nite Since Kenickie first snared me in the mid-90s, they’ve popped up on every mixtape I’ve ever made, had their B-sides smuggled into nearly every DJ set I’ve played. And when I think about the T-shirt I left at the house of a boy I had a horribly unrequited crush on, a little tight knot of loss still grips my guts, and definitely not for the boy.

Most summaries of 90s music tend to focus on Britpop, making those years seem much more limited, male and white than it did if you grew up through it. Though they are seen now as something of a novelty footnote, Kenickie were, for many young, glitter-smeared fans, a necessary band of the era, one who lived out all its promise and its problems… As Laverne sings… “You’ve got to become what you can.” Kenickie, became, briefly, for some of us, everything. theguardian

Heavenly – Space Manatee I hadn’t really thought that much about Mathew Fletcher for a while. I’d first heard Heavenly’s single Space Manatee on a college radio station in autumn 1996, when the DJ had introduced the song by mentioning that Mathew, who was their drummer, had taken his own life. It wasn’t a particularly timely tribute – Mathew had died months earlier, in June – but Space Manatee was only released in the US in October. It sounded great, driving fast on 35W towards downtown Minneapolis. The speed, the melody, the sunshine: it was a perfect combination.

A while later, I came across a 7in copy of Space Manatee in a record store and bought it. I recorded it on to a cassette with a bunch of other singles I’d bought that month – taping the singles meant I could listen to them while I drove, not just when I was sitting in front of my stereo. So Space Manatee would have sat alongside the likes of Superchunk and Stereolab and the Grifters. As I drove around Minneapolis, listening to that cassette, Space Manatee began to bother me a little bit. It was a fun song; it was delivered with bright eyes and a smile. It made you want to hold hands, ride a bicycle, drink with friends. It was hard to imagine that someone in the band had been struggling mentally or emotionally, when the music was so blissful.

… So when I say I hadn’t really thought about Heavenly for a while, I mean for 13 years, until August 2009, when I wrote the lyrics for the song We Can Get Together, which appears on the new album by my current band, the Hold Steady.

It’s a song about how fans use songs to communicate with each other. It’s about the way a couple, or prospective couple, can build their own little world sitting in front of a turntable, playing their favorite songs for each other. It’s about how sometimes the songs we love can often say things so much better that we can. It’s about how we can make these songs our own, injecting our own feelings and meanings into words and music played by someone we don’t know. And Mathew Fletcher – a young man I never knew – was able to help frame my thoughts about some of what matters so much to me about rock’n’roll music.

…Rock’n’roll is, unfortunately, filled with lives ended too early. But the ones that hurt the most to me are the ones that seem to barely register on the wider public consciousness. When Kurt Cobain died in 1994, his suicide made headlines and magazine covers. He was proclaimed the voice of a generation, but it seemed almost as if his life and death had come to belong to the media. I didn’t feel like I or anyone I knew had a connection to Kurt. I enjoyed his music a fair amount, but couldn’t find any semblance of sadness or grief when I heard the news of his passing. I still can’t. Now, I have a hard time remembering that Nirvana was, at one time, an actual band.

Mathew Fletcher’s music never made him famous. But his lack of fame made his death even tougher to take in some way. There was never a myth of Mathew Fletcher. He was never claimed by legions of fans. He did not fill arenas or appear on magazine covers, so it is easier to think of him as a real person. It is easier to think of a real family mourning his death. It is easy to think of the gigs not played, the songs not written, the jokes not shared. This makes his death even sadder to me. Everything about his band and music is charged with a human element that I don’t feel when looking at most other records in my collection. And I wish I could play We Can Get Together for Mathew, to offer back some of the real life that I find in that Heavenly single. Craig Finn, theguardian

Glo-Worm – Tilt-A-Whirl chiming pop music of a non-bouncing variety that sounds pure, forlorn and unencumbered krecs

BMX Bandits – I Wanna Fall In Love (Version 2) power-pop doesn’t come any breezier, or much better avclub

The Lemonheads – If I Could Talk I’d Tell You In 1995, you’d have bet against Dando ever recording anything worthwhile again. As Ted Kessler’s NME review of their seventh album, Car Button Cloth, in 1996 recalled: “It’s hard to credit, for instance, the scene a year ago in which Evan Dando is standing handcuffed, tripping on acid, and bleeding in Sydney airport, insisting the police release him so he can retrace his steps around the globe to find his mind. He’d lost it on the way in, you see, and knew it was still out there somewhere.” Yet the album was the work of a man whose gifts simply could not be killed, no matter how hard he tried. If I Could Talk I’d Tell You is a song that’s like the sweets the group took their name from: sweet and bright on the surface, but sour in the middle. Its lyric is drugged confusion – “Hold off, are we going soft / Flushed my Zoloft and we’re comin’ around again” – and Kessler suggested the chorus (“If I could talk I’d tell you / If I could smile I’d let you know”) came from an incident when Dando found himself unable to communicate during an interview because of the amount of crack he’d smoked.

Wilco – Outta Site (Outta Mind) Tweedy’s sentimental streak is no secret, his knack for pumping out rowdy, sugary-sweet power pop deserves just as much credit. “Outtasite (Outta Mind)” is a full-on, guns-blazing roots rocker, making a case for itself as perhaps the most outright fun song in Wilco’s entire catalog. spin

Screaming Trees – Sworn and Broken  every single time “Sworn and Broken” crashes to its end as Lanegan sighs “it’s changed” all I can do is marvel at how that organ solo changed the entire tenor of the song. Not enough for it do anything on the modern rock radio stations of the mid-1990s, but enough for the me to always turn it up whenever it came up in the mix. medialoper

Broadcast – The Book Lovers a tendency to manifest the paranormal in a way that wasn’t stereotypically ‘dark’ or sinister, a quality that’s evident throughout all of their recordings, but particularly prominent on ‘The Book Lovers’ clashmusic

Stereolab – Cybele’s Reverie I always think of “Cybele’s Reverie” as fairytale Stereolab, one of the Groop’s fanciful stabs at a pop Disney fable. Everything about this song is playfully calibrated for maximum wow: the vocal lines enveloping one another like mutant kudzu, the killer wasp tickle of effects pedals, the strings a-swooping just so. Even at the chorus, when “Reverie” pauses to catch its breath and pulls its propulsive punches, dazzlement remains the name of the game, with sweet sweeps of orchestration and synth tone piling up swiftly and adroitly, like Jenga blocks in the hands of a master. stereogum

Neutral Milk Hotel – Song Against Sex Mangum… balanced the gross and the transcendent in his lyrics… Throughout the course of the rambunctious, trombone-heavy opener “Song Against Sex,” the speaker kisses another boy while the apocalypse sets in, complains about the porn he hates and the drugs he won’t take, and then lights himself on fire pitchfork

Smog – All Your Women Things Callahan’s ode to lingerie, “All Your Women Things” is a nearly 7-minute master class on how to write a song about love, loss, and breasts. Callahan rues, in that unmistakable baritone, that he ignored a woman he’s lost either because of a breakup or a death, saying “Well it’s been seven years / And the thought of your name / Still makes me weak in the knees.” He bemoans the fact that he ignored “your left breast / your right breast” and marvels at “All your bridges and bras / Your cotton and gauze / All your buckles and straps / Releases and traps.” It would be incredibly romantic if it weren’t just unbelievably heartbreaking. (It’s also a little bit creepy, as Callahan songs are wont to be. In the bridge, he says he’s gathered all the woman’s leftover lingerie and made “a spread-eagle dolly.”) avclub

Robert Pollard – Get Under It I can tell you exactly when I went from being a casual toe-dipper fan of Robert Pollard’s music to being the mental case presently on display before you. It was in the fall of 1996 when I got hooked big time on Pollard’s whale of a first solo album, Not in My Airforce.  This record kept me up nights, was a constant companion and it still feels like a part of me nearly twenty-five years later. I sank deep into my headphones for this one. For years, I considered it my favorite Pollard record of all, GBV or otherwise.

So, what’s the difference between Guided by Voices and a Pollard solo album? In 1996, not a whole hell of a lot. constantbleeder

Guided By Voices – Don’t Stop Now after a midpoint transition of what sounds like violins strained through a cheese grater, the guitars and drums erupt, and the track becomes a 24-track salute to the kind of big, emotion-tugging rock song the band has done more adeptly than anyone else for about two decades slantmagazine

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – 2 Kindsa Love To say the riff is intrinsic to the song is an understatement: the riff is the song theguardian

Ash – Angel Interceptor The musical equivalent of an iron fist in a velvet glove… Seductive, cutesy and utterly transcendent while retaining the streamlined velocity and power of their early Trailer tracks thestudentplaylist

Babybird – Goodnight It was 1996, and I was in the Lake District for a summer holiday with a friend’s family; music was key in-car entertainment and one of the principal tapes in the stereo of that lovely old red Volvo 240 estate was a selection of live cuts from Radio 1’s Mark and Lard show. At the time I wasn’t really that aware of Radcliffe and Riley, but I was familiar with most of the bands on the cassette. Nestling in there was something new: Babybird and their curious single ‘Goodnight’. I’m like a TV ? Learning to swim ? That song, and Echobelly’s ‘Car Fiction’, stuck in my head and on return to university I was greeted by my friend Jonny’s rabid, Sheffield-centric, newly-coined fandom for Stephen Jones’ odd fellows.  He was frothing at the mouth about the explosion of home-made demos that Jones had released and, in October of that year, ‘You’re Gorgeous’ enjoyed an extended (eventually overlong) run in the higher reaches of the charts. backseatmafia

Longpigs – On & On My abiding memory of Crispin Hunt, the 95% cheekbone singer with 90s cult rockers Longpigs, is the time we gatecrashed the Booker prize-winner’s party with a goldfish… We’d stumbled in looking for the toilets (long story) carrying a fish, complete with bowl, that we’d stolen from an Action Man launch around the corner (longer story). Cornering that year’s victor, Graham Swift, who was cheerfully scoffing sausage and mash on his own on a quiet window seat, we did the two things you must never do at Booker prize-winner’s parties. Crispin asked him what his book was about. I started telling him about the book I was writing. We cleared the room of disgusted literati within 10 minutes.

…Crispin’s character encapsulated the music of Longpigs’ 1996 debut The Sun Is Often Out: the febrile hyena-yelps and graceful guitar churn of She Said; Jesus Christ, all roaring Britrock abandon lashed to epic grandstanding; the heart-wringing howls of the profoundly moving On And On, like a spurned romantic trying to tear out and eat his own misery. It was music as suave, scandalous and full of ballsy bravado as Hunt himself, and for a few months their stylish noise-pop was at a post-Britpop vanguard, helping lay the tarmac along which the likes of Muse would drive space-rock thundertanks to stadium glory theguardian

The Delgados – Under Canvas Under Wraps The Delgados return to the city after a 19 year absence which has certainly made the collective heart of tonight’s sold out audience grow fonder… Under Canvas Under Wraps, the punkest moment of the night that jolts the awe-struck audience to life…The whole performance forces us to ask, once again, how it was that The Delgados were not much, much bigger in their day?theskinny

Radiohead – Lift On March 14, 1996, Radiohead performed at the Troubadour, the storied West Hollywood club with capacity for just 400 people. Beyond a setlist, little information about the gig—supposedly a secret show—survives. Still, one person who claims to have been there calls it “the most amazing Radiohead performance I’ve seen.” Back in America for the first time since mid-December, the band debuted a couple of songs that would appear on their upcoming album OK Computer, “Electioneering” and “Let Down,” and one called “Lift,” which still hasn’t been released.

Radiohead went on to play “Lift” some 30 times that year, including their huge outdoor amphitheater gigs opening for Alanis Morissette, then peaking commercially with Jagged Little Pill. Strummy and steadily building, with yearning vocals about how “today is the first day of the rest of your days,” the song named after the British word for an “elevator” was a gorgeously hopeful sign of Radiohead’s future following their sleeper-hit sophomore LP, The Bends; after all, Yorke had been saying he didn’t want to make another “miserable” record. Unsurprisingly, “Lift” was rumored as the first single from the follow-up album. pitchfork

Lambchop – The Man Who Loved Beer There is an ambiguity to the song that leaves it up to the listener to decide what it means but the melody itself is straight down the line. This twilight sound provides an amazing sense of atmosphere. In short, the instrumentation sounds lived in. It barely seems written; it’s as though it just breathes out of the words like the hush of wind through the trees. faroutmagazine

Trembling Blue Stars – For This One When it comes to break-up albums, it would be hard to imagine a more comprehensive one than Her Handwriting. The songs document the end of the relationship between Wratten and Davies, just as the Field Mice’s For Keeps tells of the relationship’s beginning. It does so in a way that had to be cathartic for Wratten or else he would never have recorded such personal moments for the entire world to hear. exclaim

Tullycraft – Josie The word “twee” is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “mincingly cute or sweet,” and next to the definition there’s a good chance you’ll find a picture of Tullycraft… Some people just don’t get it exclaim

Urusei Yatsura – Plastic Ashtray Urusei Yatsura could easily have been a fluffy pointless pop band, but they gleefully strangled each melody… They are just so fucking joyful. They gave birth to a beautiful litter of pedigree pop puppies and then contaminated the gene pool by breeding them with a flea bitten mongrel born of lo-fi fuzz, yelps and feedback squall stock.

All call and response vocals and a middle-eight of such wonky delight Stephen Malkmus would have been proud to have penned it. The descent into chaos of ‘Plastic Ashtray’ is probably where this album has its most influence on me. It was this song that introduced me to the unpredictable delights of attacking my guitar with a drumstick, of toying with noise. Of reaching into the guts of an instrument and yanking the noise out against its will echoesanddust

Bis – Kandy Pop a wonky mix of relentlessly upbeat guitars and knowingly meaningless lyrics about sweeties. They were also the first unsigned band ever on Top Of The Pops nme

Holiday – Prostitutes In Town begins as a homage to New Order’s “Love Vigilantes” before a cathedral-ready organ enters to great effect, transforming the track from a minor ditty to a more moving mini-anthem allmusic

Electronic – Forbidden City theoretically a dream collaboration between key members of three groundbreaking bands — ends up being more pleasant than necessary

Shoestrings – Summer Days  relaxed and peaceful allmusic

The Charlatans – One to Another a thrilling and monstrous track from the rumble of its opening piano chords theguardian

AC Acoustics – Stunt Girl Despite musical talent, quality songwriting and fans in the industry, they were unable to capture a wide audience whenyoumotoraway

Placebo – Nancy Boy Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll to the extreme, along with a twist of androgyny, this was the raunchy, controversial material that highlighted the band’s sexual ambiguity diffuser

Orbital – The Box (Part 2) creepy string arrangements of “The Box” put the listener in a complete state of paranoia sputnikmusic

Northern Uproar – From A Window One might have reasonably expected Northern Uproar to hail from some grisly and iconic mill town wedged into a Pennine Valley. Perhaps they would be photographed in combat jackets, beneath some politicised graffito.

As such, it always seemed mildly incongruous to discover that they hailed from the deadening sprawl of Heald Green, a swathe of 70s estates lying close to Manchester’s Ringway Airport. Despite this prevailing geographic dullness, or perhaps because of it, Northern Uproar hurtled into public awareness back in the heart of the guitar-laden era of the mid-90s – I refuse to use the phrase Britpop – as four teenage lads armed with a bucket of genuinely insightful songs and a reputation for ferocious live shows. This, I can vouch for, having caught them on a steamy night at Manchester’s Roadhouse in 1994. It was difficult to sense that any kind of failure might be looming… and, in many ways, the dream unfurled into a frenetic cycle that would see the band signing to Heavenly, scoring a Top Of The Pops appearance, music press covers and a sprightly debut album produced by James Dean Bradfield and Manics producer Dave Eringa. As Northern Uproar’s single, ‘From A Window’ shunted its way to number 17, the future appeared in a haze of blinding brilliance. thequietus