What is it about indie that sticks? The jangling chords or chiming arpeggios, the pulse of the rhythm section or the angst & longing in the vocal. Ah, it'll be all of the above and then some. Remember these classics or here first time? Welcome in...
I spent some of 2008/09 in a major label that had been acquired by, of all things, a private equity firm. I won’t go into it here but if you did want a detailed account of such an odd (and ultimately disastrous) marriage and the shenanigans therein, may I point you to one of the best business stories you might read, by my friend and writer Eamon Forde: Selling The Pig, The Final Days Of EMI.
During my time there I had some ‘interesting conversations’ about certain artists that were up on the chopping block - artists I happened to think had just released bona fide masterpieces. One of the conundrums in the way the music business works, is the way that some artists reach the peak of their creative powers just as their commercial appeal starts to wane. It’s happened a countless number of times with artists in all genres of music. Career defining work can literally be career declining work. It must baffle the hell out of artists who have been there, going through what Elbow’s lead singer Guy Garvey described in an interview as “The Mangle”.
The art of longevity for artists is down to whether or not they can cross this rubicon, and not just once either - the longest surviving and thriving artists find themselves in the throws of the mangle and somehow come through it. Speaking of which and specifically Guy Garvey - Elbow is one of those bands that went through the mangle and out the other end in much better shape career wise (though it’s interesting that Elbow’s latest album was seen by many as a return to form by sounding much less like a commercial record). The band’s first three albums were progressively better works, but each sold less than the one before - in other words very much in the hole. Then they pulled a rabbit out of the hat with album number four, The Seldom Seen Kid. That rabbit was the song ‘One Day Like This’, which became a chart hit as well as long-lasting British (mmm, even better, Northern) Anthem. Such is the uncertainty of the way commercial music works, One Day Like This may well have ended up on a lost indie classics playlist but no, you’ll still hear it most weeks if you pay attention. Such has been Elbow’s relative success since, they don’t belong on a list like this.
So, let’s get to the songs that did make this list and why. It’s not that the bands are ‘lost’ exactly - many of them are still very much around today, but more tucked into the long grass. Two stories here, both related to that spell of madness at EMI in 2008.
Thems The Brakes
Turin Brakes released the album Dark On Fire in late 2007 and it’s one of those career defining/declining records I mentioned earlier. It’s a creatively fantastic record that just didn’t live up to commercial expectations at the time. Once the newly resident bankers at EMI had finished being starstruck and got to crunching the numbers on the lower profile artists, the writing was on the wall for the band. Greatly disturbing and somewhat cold to assess a band’s trajectory based purely on sales (a marker that no longer even exists in the music business), but there it is. Music is a business after all.
Dark On Fire was an album written for stadiums: expansive, anthemic and powerful. The band had stepped up from a two-piece rock-folk affair to a full band with a large personnel of guest players that filled out the album’s sound to something epic (though interestingly it wasn’t one of those studio tricks-laden records and was largely recorded live under the guidance of sought after producer Ethan Johns). Sadly, they never got to play the songs in stadiums. Fast-forward five years and I saw the band play live at Hampton Pool (capacity circa 1000) in the leafy suburbs of South-West London. By then they were on a rehabilitative road back from the bottom of the pit, having signed to indie label Cooking Vinyl with a more recent record (2010’s Outbursts) that had the band returning to their earlier indie-folk stylings. At that show they played two tracks from Dark On Fire, both of which simply filled my heart with joy. Not played to a stadium but in a drizzly grounds of a municipal lido, sounding magnificent. And that my friends, is why For The Fire makes this list.
Stars All At Sea
The name Starsailor may evoke some mixed views among music fans. Their first LP Love Is Here was a massive UK success. Propelled by the songwriting and vocals of James Walsh, the band had a sound very much associated with classic guitar band indie and were swept along in the Britpop wave that rolled on into the 2000s. Yet the quality of the songwriting set them apart somewhat, and was a throwback to earlier times, influenced as Walsh was by classic American pop of the 70s. Such was their early ascendance, the title track of the band’s follow up album Silence Is Easy was recorded & produced in LA by none other than Phil Spector, who had taken a shine to the band. By album three (also recorded in LA), the band was developing musically, but sliding into the aforementioned hole, commercially speaking. Despite supporting the Rolling Stones and The Killers on the road, the band’s sales faltered and they failed to have any success in the USA, despite Walsh’s American references and their records being recorded there.
Then came the band’s fourth LP All The Plans. The album was pure class from start to finish. Walsh’s voice had deepened and become more world-weary and so had the songs, all fine to a fault. And the band’s musicianship stepped up too. I listened to it repeatedly at the time and loved it - a great demonstration of the power of the long-form album for bands with real songs. It was a shift towards an expansive, Americana style brand of indie rock. Sadly, the LP was released deep in EMI’s crisis period and probably suffered for that. It reached number 26 in the UK Album Charts while the lead single and opening track "Tell Me It's Not Over" spent one week in the UK song chart, reaching no. 73. It got to number No. 5 in Belgium, and all I can say is, Belgians - you have excellent taste. After the release of All the Plans, the band broke up until a reformation in 2014.
So there you go, some vignettes on lost indie classics. I guess if there is a genre to pick that you could listen to the most, indie might be it for me. Maybe it’s the jangling guitar chords or the chiming arpeggios or the pulsing rhythm section. Or the angsty vocals. Then again, it’s the whole package I suppose.
There are some wonderful examples to listen out for in this list - all the tracks in fact. Sadly, there are not enough words to go around, but in future volumes we will no doubt get to why you absolutely must spend more time listening to I Am Kloot, The Walkmen, The Mighty Lemon Drops and those truly lost to us - Elliot Smith, Sparklehorse, Fountains Of Wayne (Adam Schlesinger), The Go-Betweens (Grant McLellan). Or how you can check out very recent records by some others in this list such as Nada Surf, Ride, Tindersticks or Slowdive. And revisit (perhaps on new vinyl reissue), the lost classic Longpigs 1996 album The Sun Is Often Out, or The Hours’ vital debut Narcissus Road. Or try Catherine Wheel, whose album Chrome was said to influence two non-lost indie giants Interpol and Death Cab For Cutie. On this collection I’ve gone for my favourite track of theirs ‘Future Boy’ from 1997’s Adam & Eve.
However, we kick Volume 1 off with yet another of those truly lost indie giants, the Canadian band The Stills. Their third album Oceans Will Rise, was released 2008 and featured in many critics ‘best-of’ lists that year. It picked up two ‘Juno’ awards - the Canadian industry’s badge of honour. Three years later, the band split and that was that. As a final statement, or in any circumstances, Oceans Will Rise is yet another classic indie album, one that embeds itself into your ears and your head and gets better with every listen. More from the record in volume 2 perhaps as the album contains one of my favourite pop songs ever, but for now, it seemed appropriate to open Lost Indie Classic’s with that album’s opener, “Don’t Talk Down”. It’ll draw you in.
Lost Indie Classics is a new series that takes in classic indie (of course), with a bit of shoegaze, dreampop and some of the best from the outlands of Britpop. It covers all the decades, with the 90s perhaps punching above their weight a bit. Mmm, speaking of which, our 90s series is in the pipeline.