indie rewind
Not Forgotten: Weezer – Weezer (Blue Album)
Recently Weezer have returned to prominence via their cover of Toto’s “Africa”, and long term fans have subsequently howled in derision at their decision to release a covers album. Actually, it seems that Weezer fans howl in derision to the vast majority of their releases, yet their albums continue to regularly hit the top ten …
Not Forgotten: Ben Folds Five – The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner
Woah, did I misjudge this album when I first heard it. I’ve never known an album take so long to burn into my psyche, but The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner is a case where patience and occasional replays eventually pays off. The last of the trio of Ben Folds Five studio albums from their …
Not Forgotten: Tom Waits – Mule Variations
Mule Variations starts with what sounds like a rhythmically capable panel beater knocking seven bells out of a steel filing cabinet with hammers, and it gives you a glimpse of what Tom Waits had been doing in the seven years since the release of Bone Machine. As an album, the deconstructed blues of Mule Variations …
Not Forgotten: Sparks – No.1 in Heaven
Career reinventions don’t come much more well executed than Sparks’ recently reissued 1979 album, No.1 in Heaven. While brothers Ronald and Russell Mael had found an enthusiastic audience for their arch intelligent pop in the UK in the mid 70s, reaching a commercial peak with the game-changing single ”This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the …
Not Forgotten: The Zutons – Who Killed the Zutons?
Sometimes you hear a band and you go, ‘Yep, that’s for me’. It was like that when I heard Who Killed the Zutons? for the first time. It was, and remains, a pleasingly riffy indie album with added saxophone and an incredibly high tune count. My word. If they continued like this, I may have …
Not Forgotten: Terrorvision – How to Make Friends and Influence People
Terrorvision were one of those acts that really deserved more than they got in the 90s. Forging a sturdy pop metal alloy at a time when so many acts at the time were playing frequently flimsy retro obsessed rock, Terrorvision were no less derivative than their contemporaries, but where others were in thrall to 60s …
Not Forgotten: Pulp – His ‘n’ Hers
In retrospect Pulp were a band that burned brightly and became hugely important to a generation, but whose work remains oddly preserved in a sort of musical aspic. Although they had been around since the late 70s, Pulp had remained almost comically incapable of making any sort of commercial or critical impact. That remained the …
Not Forgotten: Pixies – Doolittle
While C’mon Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa had hooked many people into the Pixies with their abrasive sounding crunching alt rock, 1989s Doolittle saw them take a different approach, with a sound which saw them being ‘produced‘ for the first time. C’mon Pilgrim had effectively been polished up demos, and Surfer Rosa had seen the band …
Not Forgotten: Fountains of Wayne – Utopia Parkway
In the years before the tuneful “Stacy’s Mom” seared them into the subconscious of music fans as one hit wonders, Fountains of Wayne were a band enjoying medium-sized success, with a string of modestly charting power pop singles. A self titled debut album charted in the UK in 1996, albeit way outside a top 40 …
Classic Compilation: The Cult – Pure Cult: For Rockers, Ravers, Lovers and Sinners
The Cult always seemed to be a bit of an oddity in the British landscape of music in the 80s. They weren’t a miserable indie band, they were briefly goths, they were musically opposed to synth-pop, and they weren’t a flag-waving celtic rock act either. The Cult’s transition from goth rockers to a straight ahead …