Close Lobsters - Let's Make Some Plans

Here's a deadly single from another C86 band, who really should have been mega-stars on the strength of this song alone. I remember actually thinking they just might do it with this one but oddly it didn't even end up being one of their higher indie chart placings, which is mad. I mean just listen to it. It's fecking great.

From 1987.

Pulp - Love Is Blind

Here's a great track from Pulp's third album, Separations, released in 1992. It's Pulp at their flamboyant, exuberant best...and they were only getting started, really.

This is a fan video. Quite nicely done.

1000 Mexicans - Teaching Fish to Swim

An obscure English band from the mid-1980s. I'm not sure exactly where they were from. Mildly atmospheric new wave pop with a few "exotic" instruments. They were ok.

This was from their 1985 debut album.

The Rose of Avalanche - Velveteen

The Rose of Avalanche were one of those silly commercial goth bands of the mid-1980s, like the Sisters of Mercy and Gene Loves Jezebel. The type of band it would be embarrassing now to admit to ever listening to - except that this song is still really quite good. At least if you ignore the lyrics. And stop before it gets to the "woo ooo ooo" part.

Anyway, nothing embarrasses me, that ought to be obvious by now.

Close Lobsters - Don't Worry (Violently Pretty Face)

Another great C86 band. For a while there they actually seemed poised to break through to alt-rock stardom - this was at the time of their brilliant 1987 single, "Let's Make Some Plans", which had the advantage of a superb video as well - but alas it never happened and instead they broke up after a somewhat disappointing (but, in fairness, not bad) second LP. They are very fondly remembered by indie fans everywhere. If only the Soup Dragons had met the same fate.

This song was released on the What Is There to Smile About? EP, alongside "Let's Make Some Plans", but I've posted an earlier (and renamed) version from a demo album I gratefully obtained from Wilfully Obscure. There's a touching innocence to this particular recording, which fits the song really nicely.

Spacemen 3 - May the Circle Be Unbroken

I was never much of a Spacemen fan, although I like a lot of shoegazey stuff. They were just too droney and unmelodic for my tastes. Maybe if I was a better guitarist (i.e. more of a muso) and could appreciate their ability to get noises out of their instruments that their instruments were never intended to produce, which is usually the argument my musician friends give me as to why they like this kind of thing. Unfortunately I will probably never know.

So, I don't care much for the A-side of the single this appeared on, "Revolution", nor for the first B-side, a cover of Suicide's "Che" - Suicide being, of course, the Spacemen's most obvious predecessor, with a similar lack of any discernible songs behind the noise.

More interesting is the EP's final track, a dreamy version of an old hymn from the turn of the century. It's a lot closer to what Jason Pierce went on to do with the infinitely superior Spiritualized, I think.