The School - I Want You Back

Cardiff band. Dreadful name, Heavenly music. And I do mean capital-H Heavenly.

This was originally released on a 2008 EP and subsequently reappeared on their 2010 debut album, Loveless Unbeliever, on the wonderful Elefant Records.

Super Furry Animals - Inaugural Trams

I remember how excited we all were about SFA when they first appeared in the mid-1990s but I doubt any of us expected that a decade and a half later they would still be putting out records as strong as this. The whole Dark Days/Light Years album (2009) is excellent, but this track in particular is remarkable for how effortlessly it plants itself under your skin.

There's an element of the novelty song here, as there always is with SFA, but again they manage to transcend that and turn it into what is simply an irresistible piece of electro-bubblegum pop (with suitably insane lyrics). In the hands of a lesser band it would probably be just as infectious, but not in a good way.

The Sweetest Ache - Briaris

The Sweetest Ache were one of Sarah's underachievers: the quality of their output never really matched the quantity, and too many of their songs sounded like minor album tracks, even the A-sides. Basically I think they just didn't really have the songwriting skills to cut it. Which is a shame, because I always wanted to like them more.

So how they managed to come up with this astonishing thing of beauty is a bit of a mystery. It's not just the female vocals, although they would improve anything in the band's catalogue; the song itself sounds like nothing else they ever recorded. In fact, it sounds like almost nothing else in the world.

Simply gorgeous.

It's from their 1991 debut album Jaguar.

Snowbirds - Beautiful Morning

Early '90s twee band from Cardiff, sounding a lot like Talulah Gosh. With more off-key vocals.

The song is an unreleased demo, but I can't find any actual photos of the band so the one I've used is from a split 7" they released with Les Poissons Solubles. You can download all of it here.

Jack - I Didn't Mean It Marie

Jack were a Welsh band based in London, which is where I encountered them in the mid-1990s. They were a lot like the Tindersticks but with less distinctive vocals. Less success, too, which was really quite unfortunate and undeserved.

Here's a particularly impressive track from their fine 1996 debut, Pioneer Soundtracks.

Young Marble Giants - Final Day

Here's another, slightly overlooked now, essential piece of indiepop history. The Young Marble Giants' music would probably be dismissed by the twee-haters today but when they emerged in the late '70s I imagine they must have been considered rather unusual, even by the standards of the time.

YMG's distinctive sound derived from the combination of electric organ, rather choppy guitar and Alison Statton's lovely haunting vocals, expertly (under-)produced by the band themselves. Colossal Youth, their only album, is a lo-fi classic from before anything called "lo-fi" even existed.

This was one of the singles from that album, released in 1980.

The Partisans - Police Story

On a more somber note, here's an old punk tune that's been running through my head a lot lately for some reason. It was one of my favourites in my spikey-hair days, although it was a long time before I learned what it was actually about: the violent death of 54-year-old Jimmy Kelly in the custody of the Liverpool police. It was recorded as "death by misadventure", because he was drunk when he was lifted - despite eyewitness testimony of police brutality and the (reluctant) admission by one of the arresting officers that he had punched him in the head several times. Were any of the police involved punished or disciplined in any way over this event? What do you think?