indie rewind
Not Forgotten: Soundgarden – Superunknown
For some reason it’s those bands who almost achieved massive success but just fell short that I find the most compelling. Jethro Tull were huge, but they never made into the rock superleague like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. XTC never enjoyed anywhere near the commercial success that their talent deserved. For all their musical …
Not Forgotten: Kula Shaker – Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts
Kula Shaker’s fall from grace here in the UK was so dramatic that it’s impossible not to attribute the relative commercial failure of Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts, as well as the band’s subsequent disillusionment, to the fact that Crispin Mills was an obnoxious brat who opened his mouth to say something stupid once too often. …
Not Forgotten: Kirsty MacColl – Titanic Days
Intelligent, witty, wilful, vulnerable, contrary, mind-bogglingly talented, possessing a steely resolve and yet still able to project a balance of both vulnerability and approachability utterly vulnerable, Kirsty MacColl, for all her glowing brilliance, never really managed to string together the career her immense talent deserved. This resulted in some of her albums becoming relative obscurities, …
Not Forgotten: Tori Amos – Under the Pink
It can’t have been easy following up an album as attention grabbing and uncompromising as Little Earthquakes, but to Tori Amos’s eternal credit, with Under the Pink she somehow managed to strike the balance between solid follow up and incrementally increased accessibility. While many will (quite rightly) point to Little Earthquakes as Amos’s masterpiece, it’s …
Not Forgotten: Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse – Dark Night of the Soul
For some, the convoluted release of Dark Night of the Soul (the record label shenanigans, the fact that Danger Mouse, Mark Linkous and David Lynch released a lavish booklet with a blank CDR on which you could burn copy from files that would not be nefariously downloaded (wink, wink)) almost eclipses the fact that this …
Not Forgotten: Kate Bush – Lionheart
Kate Bush had exploded on the British music scene early in 1978 and had made an immeadiate impact, sweeping all before her and instantly becoming the biggest artist in the UK. Or at least that’s what her record company wanted you to believe. In reality Miss Bush had been groomed for fame for at least …
Not Forgotten: R.E.M. – Green
These days the signing of a much respected alternative / indie band to a major label is met with trepidation from the band’s established fans. Some will accuse the band of ‘selling out’, others will simply fear that they will receive wider exposure and thus no longer feel as exclusive and special to them. To …
Reissue: Semisonic – Feeling Strangely Fine
Whatever happened to Semisonic? One minute some were considering them to be the next big thing in American rock music, and the next, well they just disappeared. So what happened? In the mid 90s, when there was a surplus of post-grunge cash sloshing around record companies, Minneapolis power pop act Semisonic somehow found themselves signed …
Not Forgotten: R.E.M. – Up
There was something about R.E.M.’s Up that rang alarm bells with me from the moment I heard that it was going to be released. Like many of their fans in the UK, I had got into R.E.M. during the early 90s, at the point where they were at the height of their commercial powers, and …
Not Forgotten: The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow
From its brightly coloured, die-cut artwork, there’s something about Chutes Too Narrow that has always struck me as cartoon-like. I don’t mean that in a bad way, after all cartoons aren’t as tightly-bound by logical linear narratives as other forms of story telling, which in turn means that the suspension of belief is almost a …