Sparklehorse Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot

Sparklehorse Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot

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Sparklehorse's 1996 full-length debut, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, has even more sad, beautiful, weird moments of spacy, rural folk-rock than it does letters in its name. Primarily the project of singer/songwriter/guitarist Mark Linkous, Sparklehorse's sound embraces impossibly frail, cobwebby ballads like the album opener "Homecoming Queen," "Most Beautiful Widow in Town," and "Heart of Darkness"; sun-drenched, noisy pop like "Rainmaker" and "Hammering the Cramps"; and noise blasts like "Ballad of a Cold Lost Marble" and "850 Double Pumper Holley." The album's most powerful moments borrow from folk and country traditions, alluding to their universally understood poignancy, while updating and personalizing them with spacy arrangements, distorted vocals, and slivers of feedback. "Heart of Darkness" and "Homecoming Queen" in particular have a woozy, late-night sweetness that conveys a touching, if unstable, honesty. The single "Someday I Will Treat You Good" molds this vulnerability into a radio song, with catchy and affecting results, but it's the shambling, understated songs like "Saturday" and "Sad & Beautiful World" that define the group's down-to-earth melancholy. Despite covering some expansive musical territory, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot doesn't sound scattered so much as spontaneous, reflecting the happy, sad, noisy, and quiet moments in life.

Various Shadow Factory

Various Shadow Factory

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The first Sarah Records' singles compilation does an excellent job of efficiently encapsulating everything the fledgling label was then about -- "no unreleased outtakes or bonus mix cons, just an honest old-fashioned something we're proud of, a statement of faith in all sorts of futures tomorrow" read the liner notes, and without a doubt contemporary pop music doesn't get any more old-fashioned, dewy-eyed, or heart-on-its-sleeve than this. (The title of Another Sunny Day's "I'm in Love With a Girl Who Doesn't Know I Exist" is alone a primer in pop-kid angst.) The 16 singles that comprise Shadow Factory hardly represent the creative apex of Sarah's output, but few labels have begun with so much promise -- the prodigious talents of bands like the Field Mice ("The Last Letter") and the Orchids "Underneath the Window, Underneath the Sink") were obvious from the outset, but it's melodicism and underlying wit common to all these songs that is the most persuasive testament to why the label still enjoys such a rabid cult following to this day.

Brighter ‎Singles 1989 - 1992

Brighter ‎Singles 1989 - 1992

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Ah, Brighter. If you needed melancholy, intimate, gently heartbroken indie pop to keep you company as you curled up under your blankets and felt blue, they would never let you down. Their brief catalog is sad and blue from start to finish. An apt comparison would have to be the Field Mice if you took away any glimmer of happiness and that band's willingness to experiment. Brighter were mostly content to stay within the bounds of the sound they sketched out on their first release: ringing guitars, drum machine, melodic bass, and above all Keris Howard's almost painfully personal lyrics and bedsit perfect voice. Matinee have done indie kids everywhere a big favor by rounding up the band's three singles and one 10" EP they recorded for Sarah between 1989 and 1992. (The group also released two flexi-discs that sadly don't appear.) Each song is a steady stream of sadness, but the standout songs are the epic "Noah's Ark," the almost peppy "I Don't Think It Matters," and their musically sunniest song, "Poppy Day," which ironically boasts the lyrics "The sun rarely shines without you." You know from the resignation in his voice that the sun hadn't shone on Howard for quite a while. Oh well, his sadness is indie pop fans' gladness, and this collection brings a feeling of warm nostalgia for the old-timers who lived through it and a feeling of happy discovery for those who enjoy the bands that Brighter influenced (like most of Matinee's early-2000s roster, especially Keris Howard's group Harper Lee). 2002 brought Matinee's great Razorcuts retrospective, and then 2003 brought this superb collection, making you wonder what 2004 would bring. Maybe an Orchids box set? A Harvey Williams retrospective? Once again Matinee proves itself to be just about the best pal an indie kid could have.

BMX Bandits Gettin' Dirty

BMX Bandits Gettin' Dirty

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The fourth BMX Bandits album, 1995's Gettin' Dirty, breaks with tradition by finally establishing a fully fledged band who contributes to every track instead of gathering a nebulous collection of friends surrounding singer/songwriter Duglas T. Stewart. As a result, Gettin' Dirty is the first BMX Bandits album with a consistent sound and feel. Stewart and guitarist Francis McDonald (moonlighting from his regular gig in Teenage Fanclub) wrote most of the songs together, with Stewart's lyrics complemented nicely by McDonald's Big Star-derived melodic sense. While none of the tunes are as completely swell as "Serious Drugs," the highlight from the previous year's Life Goes On, there's also a refreshing lack of the half-baked filler that marred previous BMX Bandits efforts. Highlights include the title track, a downright sweet reverie about the joys of showering with your significant other, and the Phil Spector homage "Come out of the Shadows," but Teenage Fanclub fans will be most intrigued by the McDonald-penned "No Future," which is a companion song to "Tears" from Teenage Fanclub's Grand Prix: the two songs are musically identical, with two sets of lyrics written from opposing viewpoints of the same romantic situation, an interesting conceit that also works as a pair of great pop songs.

Various CD86 48 Tracks From The Birth Of Indie Pop

Various CD86 48 Tracks From The Birth Of Indie Pop

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In 1986, the British music weekly NME issued a cassette dubbed C-86, which included a number of bands -- the Wedding Present, Primal Scream and the Pastels among them -- influenced in equal measure by the jangly guitar pop of the Smiths, the three-chord naïveté of the Ramones and the nostalgic sweetness of the girl group era. Also dubbed "anorak pop" and "shambling" by trainspotters, C-86 quickly emerged as a cause célèbre within the hype-fueled Britsh press, and though the music's moment in the spotlight proved short-lived, it influenced hordes of upcoming bands on both sides of the Atlantic who absorbed the scene's key lessons of simplicity and honesty to stunning effect. While the two-disc compilation CD86 fails to reprise the original C-86 cassette in its entirely, this is nevertheless a vital and far-reaching overview of a singular moment in time when boy-girl harmonies, lovelorn lyrics and infectious melodies were again paragons of hip -- and unlike so many other flavors-of-the-month, the 48 songs here still sound fresh, even timeless in their unaffected and unadorned brilliance. Highlights include the Dentists' "I Had an Excellent Dream," the Sea Urchins' "Pristine Christine" and Talulah Gosh's "Talulah Gosh."

Boyracer Punker Than You Since '92

Boyracer Punker Than You Since '92

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From their origins in the late 1980s in Leeds, England, pop-punk outfit Boyracer have evolved into an ongoing, collaborative project, helmed by band founder Stewart Anderson. Punker Than You Since '92 aims to collect a mere 75 of the band's 500-plus releases, including rarities like its debut seven-inch vinyl single and a variety of other tracks previously available only in limited editions. The band's sound has elements of early-'80s Scottish Orange Juice-Josef K axis, adding its own jangly-guitar-mixed-with-feedback flavor to miniature pop gems like "That Boy Yr With Is a Dick" and the Superchunk-like "Absence Makes the Heart Grow Harder."

The Family Cat Magic Happens

The Family Cat Magic Happens

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From the debut single, "Tom Verlaine," onward -- barring the minor glitch that was the mini-album Tell 'Em We're Surfin' -- the Family Cat's work was generally well received by the British music press. Unfortunately, that enthusiasm never really translated to sales figures, either at home or abroad. This second album on the Dedicated label underscores how unlucky the quintet from Yeovil was, never to achieve any significant commercial success. There's a certain amount of continuity from the 1992 predecessor, Furthest From the Sun, but Magic Happens is a more fully realized, polished achievement. This time around, the band's textured, melodic rock also has a consistently harder edge. This can be heard not only on driving tracks like the singalong opener, "Wonderful Excuse," and the charging, explosive "Airplane Gardens," but also on down-tempo, brooding numbers shot through with searing guitars: the melancholy power ballad "Your Secrets Will Stay Mine" and "Amazing Hangover," a song that captures the moody feel of its title. Although Magic Happens showcases the Family Cat's knack for variations in intensity and pace from one track to the next, those shifts are most compelling when they're seamlessly integrated within the same song. The standout "Move Over I'll Drive," for instance, swaggers along darkly in 6/8 time, occasionally bursting out of its quieter, slower spaces, and ultimately gathers momentum to build to a guitar-fueled climax. The title of the closer, "Nowhere to Go but Down," was ironically prescient, since this album proved to be the Family Cat's swan song. While Magic Happens is a fitting epitaph for one of the better British guitar bands of the period, it inevitably begs the question: why was this group left watching from the sidelines as their less-talented guitar-based contemporaries profited from the Brit-pop explosion of the mid-'90s?

Ian Brown Golden Greats

Ian Brown Golden Greats

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Whatever its flaws, Ian Brown's debut album, Unfinished Monkey Business, suggested that he was the true visionary behind the Stone Roses, providing the wild mercurial ideas that were grounded by John Squire's classicist song structures. Its sequel, Golden Greats, confirms that notion. Less song-oriented than its predecessor and overflowing with neo-psychedelic sonic textures and dance beats, Golden Greats floats between dazzling peaks and unformed, unrealized ideas that are nonetheless quite intriguing. Some may miss the clear hooks that characterized the Stone Roses (and even parts of Unfinished Monkey Business), but Brown sounds revitalized here and the result is a fresh, frequently exciting record. True, it can get a little indulgent and it's not quite cutting edge (no matter how much he wishes it were), but that doesn't distract from its very real virtues. At its best, the album boasts wonderfully, subtly crafted productions brimming with neat textures (the organ riff, Mellotron, and sampled strings on "Set My Baby Free" are a perfect example) that are intriguing on first listen and grow richer with repeated listens. Like its predecessor, Golden Greats meanders a bit too much and it places a little too much emphasis on surface, but when the surface sparkles like this, it's hard to complain too loudly.

Echo & The Bunnymen Crystal Days 1979 - 1999

Echo & The Bunnymen Crystal Days 1979 - 1999

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The answer is a resounding yes -- Echo & the Bunnymen's Crystal Days: 1979-1999, a four-disc set boasting a great built-in book with a biography and track-by-track commentary, is worth every penny. Through 71 tracks, it does an excellent job by catering to the longtime fan and merely curious, running through all the hits and selecting standout album tracks, rarities, and unreleased curiosities, all worthwhile. The very fact that compilation producer Andy Zax was driven to put this project into motion after realizing he just had to find a way to get stellar B-sides like the Velvets-meets-Byrds heaven of "Angels and Devils" and the Peel Session version of the experimental "No Hands" into circulation tells you right off that you're in good hands. If this great-sounding box proves anything, it's that the Bunnymen don't deserve to be merely regarded as an excellent '80s band; sure, they've had some bumps along the road, but despite having thrived in a decade known for plasticity and fad crazes, this collection establishes that their legacy exists apart from the negative connotations the "'80s band" tag carries. And by carefully selecting songs from their '90s incarnation, they throw a pie in the face of those who believe all reunions are artistic no-nos. The first three discs run chronologically through the band's first 20 years, occasionally throwing surprises into the mix with alternative versions and outtakes. The only gripe one might have is the favoring of the "All Night Version" of "The Killing Moon" over the original, which would be nitpicky. The final disc is chiefly occupied by live covers, including a great set-closing combo of the Velvets' "Heroin" and their own "Do It Clean." This is no mere nostalgia kick -- it's just solid, ageless rock & roll with attitude and brains