indie rewind
Not Forgotten: Big Star – #1 Record
Influential albums are something that I approach with trepidation, especially when they are by acts that are considered to be ‘cult’. As massively influential as albums like The Velvet Underground and Nico, Forever Changes and Horses have proved to be down the decades, they’ve never really made any connection with me. They’re great albums for …
Not Forgotten: The Soundtrack of Our Lives – Behind the Music
Retro rock is a risky business. If you pay homage to your influences too closely you risk ending up in a creative cul-de-sac, where your fans don’t need to know what your new album is like, only if it is any good. In a worse case scenario you could do all you can to emulate …
Not Forgotten: Tom Vek – We Have sound: 10th Anniversary
Recently classic albums ‘Screamadelica’ by Primal Scream and ‘Nevermind’ by Nirvana celebrated their 25th anniversaries with special releases of their classic albums. Whilst it does make those of us who remember those albums so affectionately from the first time around, it is important to remember albums that shaped music in such a way. Whilst Tom …
Not Forgotten – Mercury Rev – Deserter’s Songs
Like their sister-band The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev took the scenic route to success. After a messy debut album and an equally messy follow-up they ditched their front man and took a gentler and much more interesting career path, with the jazzy, dreamy and startling See You on the Other Side being a charmingly rough …
Not Forgotten – Mull Historical Society – Loss
I’ve always found it difficult to put any kind of tag on Loss. Just what type of music is it? It has elements of self-produced indie, but it’s far too well produced for it to be classed as lo-fi. It has moments of pure pop genius, but I would hold back on pigeon-holing it as …
Not Forgotten: The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
After years of struggling in the alt-rock wilderness, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots was the first release by The Flaming Lips that you could say had been ‘long awaited’ by just about anybody outside of North America. Sure they had their small bands of admirers scattered across the globe previously, but The Soft Bulletin had …
Not Forgotten: They Might Be Giants – Flood
As the 90s dawned, things were restless in the musical firmament. In the UK, we were coming to terms with the fact that we were still suffering from the hangover of terrible pop songs and even worse production methods that the 80s had blighted us with, and across the Atlantic folks were taking a long …
Not Forgotten: Guided by Voices – Motivational Jumpsuit
An overlooked rather than a forgotten classic, Motivational Jumpsuit was the first of two albums by Guided by Voices that were released in quick succession in the first half of 2014, before they once again called it a day last September. Less of a disorientating skip through Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout’s collective muse than …
Not Forgotten: Teenage Fanclub – Songs from Northern Britain
Having carved a career critically acclaimed career during the peak years of BritPop, by all rights Scottish power-pop guitar-slingers Teenage Fanclub should have been huge and the fact that they have achieved one solitary top 20 single in the UK (the utterly lovely “Ain’t That Enough”) and a trio of top 20 albums, including the …
Not Forgotten: Elliott Smith – either/or
It was a movie that first brought my attention to Elliott Smith. On watching Good Will Hunting in 1998 I heard some remarkable songs on the soundtrack that I didn’t know. It was Miss Misery playing over the end credits that particularly caught my attention. I loved it so much that I stayed to the …