Pale Saints - She Rides the Waves

Pale Saints were another band lumped in with the shoegaze scene by happenstance although always seeming a little bit outside it. Their debut album The Comforts of Madness was an underrated gem of a record, Ian's mournful vocals hovering awkwardly over intricate layers which you can actually pick out thanks to the rather minimalist production (one of the factors that distinguished them - in a good way - from so many of their contemporaries). At the time I remember most of the shoegazeheads I knew worshipped them but they seem to have been largely forgotten now, which is quite a shame.

This is a B-side from their debut EP, Barging into the Presence of God, and when it was released towards the end of 1989 NME proclaimed this particular track as "The Best Song Anywhere This Week", which it was. Probably still is, in fact.

Frightened Rabbit - I Feel Better

It's been a while since I posted anything recent so here's one that proves Scotland is still just as adept as ever at producing great indie music. I saw this band for the first time at last year's Hard Working Class Heroes Festival; it was a disappointing festival overall but they were one of the highlights. (In fairness to the bands, it wasn't their fault so much as the bucketing rain. I'm sure better weather has been ordered for this year.) Nice video, too.

The Stranglers - Straighten Out

The Stranglers are another band that I've kind of always had mixed feelings about. They lasted a long time, and obviously survived in much better shape than some of their contemporaries, and of course I appreciate their willingness to go outside the box in terms of musical styles (even labelling them as "punk" doesn't seem quite right, but I don't really know what else to do with them). It's just that I've never tended to get too excited by their songs. Even the classics like "No More Heroes" to me have mostly nostalgia value, and of course at my age the nostalgia factor is only of discovering them half a decade or so after the fact. For the most part, I wouldn't consider it great music in its own right.

As is so often the case, however, there is the odd exception and this is definitely one of them. Originally released as a B-side to "Something Better Change", it's the far better song of the two, the A-side being one of those slices of '70s punk mediocrity that would have disappeared into compilationland if it had been released by anyone else. I hadn't actually listened to this one for a long time until very recently and I was amazed at how powerful it still was. I wish they'd had more like it.

Straighten Out en Yahoo! Video

The Motors - Airport

I suppose this would probably fall into the category of "pub rock", a term I've never particularly liked. But what a great song it is. Remember the days when chart songs were actually good? OK, I don't really either, but there was a time when something like this could get to #4 on the British charts. Know what's #4 on the British charts this week? You guessed it, something crap. That's all the publicity I'm going to give to it.

Anyway, have a listen to this Motors song. Isn't it great?

The House of Love - Safe

I'm not a huge House of Love fan. Adored "Christine", liked one or two other singles but mostly I thought they were just average. However, I absolutely love their B-sides and outtakes collection, Spy in the House of Love. Why did they hold most of their best stuff back and put the boring stuff on the albums?

Lunch Meat - Under the Glare

Here's another DC punk band from the mid-1980s. I could refer to this as another in the "roots of emo" series, but since I don't really like the concept of emo, I won't.

Lunch Meat were a young and briefly quite popular group (locally) who later changed their name to Soulside and developed a bit of a reputation on the national punk scene. Most of Soulside later became Girls Against Boys, who've had a reasonable amount of success in the US indie-rock scene, although I can't say they've ever done much for me.

This is from a split 7" they released in 1985 with a band called Mission Impossible, who were so emo they actually apologised on the sleeve for the overwrought lyrics. The most notable thing about Mission Impossible was their drummer, a certain Dave Grohl.

The 7" was originally titled Thanks and then reissued as Getting Shit for Growing Up. It's the original that I have (of course), but my scanner is banjaxed and the only sleeve I can find online is the reissue. Both were released in extremely limited quantities, so it would certainly be a good investment if you happened to stumble across one anywhere.

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Just Like Honey

Here's another one in the category of not-shoegaze-per-se-but-going-there-anyway. For quite obvious reasons, if you listen to it.

An acquaintance of mine, a younger fella, heard this album for the first time not too long ago and really didn't understand why it was such a big deal. Of course he'd already heard everything that came after it, so it was nothing new to him. But I remember when it came out and believe you me it was very new at the time. Groundbreaking, even. There were plenty of bands who sounded like the second Velvet Underground album, and plenty who sounded like the third, but nobody had yet thought of sounding like both of them at the exact same time. Or at least if they had, they never managed to get anyone to listen to them.

The use of feedback was what drew most people's attention to them. But for me, the big attraction was always the songs that lay beneath the noise. Strip away the feedback and you'd have a perfect Scottish pop band - and if there's one thing I love above all else, it's perfect Scottish pop.

This song remains their crowning achievement, its effortless beauty still managing to blow me away every time.

The Jesus And Mary chain - Just Like Honey