Chin Chin - Dark Days

Here's a very obscure little gem from Chin Chin, probably Switzerland's finest all-girl C86 type band. (If anyone knows of a better one, by all means pass on the info!) They released only one album, 1985's Sound of the Westway, which was reissued on Slumberland earlier this year. Go get it.

Apologies for the audio quality, but I think the essentialness of it shines through.

Disco Inferno - Love Stepping Out

I know I just posted a DI song last week but they're so good, here's another. Besides, this is quite different to the previous one, pointing more in the direction of AR Kane or what Butterfly Child would soon be doing than of Wire or Joy Division like their earlier works. Acknowledged more or less universally by DI fans as something of a watershed in their recording career, it was, amazingly, only a B-side; the A-side, "Summer's Last Sound", treads much the same ground sonically but not quite as enthrallingly.

It's a little slow to get off the ground, but keep listening. You'll be glad you did.

Boo Radleys - Firesky

I've mentioned before that Everything's Alright Forever is my favourite Boos album but I haven't yet posted anything from it, I think. The reason I depart from the general consensus on this is I simply think the tunes are better, it isn't as self-consciously clever as the usual favourite Giant Steps and it just sounds so bloody amazing. There's so much going on here, I think I hear something new every time I listen to it.

This was never a single, but for me is the album's high point.

Mocrac - Happy

Here's another Dublin band. I went bananas when I first heard this song, a delightful piece of twee indie dance pop, but was really disappointed the one time I saw them live as it turned out that none of the rest of their songs sound remotely like this and what's more, they aren't very good. I hate it when that happens.

Still love this track. That's Cathy Davey on vocals BTW.

Cocteau Twins - Wax and Wane

Here's an early one from the Cocteau Twins, off their debut album Garlands. It's my favourite Cocteaus album, which might be kind of surprising, since it's overall the darkest and least pop-like thing they've ever done. But I just find it more interesting than their later work, which always seemed a bit samey and gimmicky to me. Though still pretty good, most of the time.

Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees

I've never been one for the cult of Radiohead, but I admit that I almost fell into that hole with the release of The Bends, which is really a remarkable album worth all the hype that surrounded it. It's not innovative or ground-breaking in any way; it is very mainstream and major-label sounding; but the sheer quality of the songwriting puts it miles ahead of most of what you'd consider its contemporaries. Put simply, nearly all of its songs are superb individually and when you put them together into a single package, well, you just have an absolute, utter classic of an album. I'll never get tired of it.

And I'll equally never understand why their later albums are so highly rated. To me, they just sound like a band whose ambitions got the better of them and led them to overlook the things that they were really good at. And Thom Yorke's voice has just seemed to get whinier and whinier. I still think as far as huge superstar "alternative" bands go they're one of the better ones, but The Bends is the only album I'd go out of my way to hear.

Here's an acoustic version of the song that I still consider to be their crowning achievement.

The Go-Betweens - Hammer the Hammer

Here's an early single by the wonderful Go-Betweens. It was released in-between their first and second albums in 1982 and has since been made available on some re-issues of Before Hollywood, as well as on the 1978-1990 collection.

It's quite dark, lyrically, which is kind of fitting for the mood I'm in today. Great track.