Various Acts - 'Rough Trade Shops: Indiepop Volume 1' (Mute)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
In 2001, Bobbie Gillespie of Primal Scream sang on a song called 'Kill All Hippies'. We can only presume he'd completely forgotten having written 'All Fall Down', Primal Scream's 1985 uber-hippy couple of minutes of jangling nonsense that opens this fine compilation, otherwise he'd probably feel obliged to top himself. But the 'Scream aren't the only ones to have changed. If there's one thing that 'Indiepop 1' serves to make clear, it's that guitar music rarely sounds anything remotely like this anymore.
2 discs, 46 tracks, 2 hours and 10 minutes of utterly unadulterated indie pop music. After the first listen of both discs in their entirety back to back on one very slow day, your correspondent was so full to the brim of what at the time seemed insufferably inane, chirpy, whinging jangle-craft that he actually conducted a black mass just to balance out the good and evil in the universe a little. Upon regaining his senses, and the desire to press play for a second time, a convert was made.
Please let this be the case for everyone else. Yes, this is an incredible way to get into a lot of bands, a charming reminder of ones you had forgotten, but although it's not confrontational in any way, something of this sheer length, and it has to be said, lack of any real diversity is far from an easy listen. Although usually the case with sprawling, experimental pieces of dirge and not quirky little pop records like this, trying to find the gems here is a chore, but something of a case of not being able to see the wood for the trees. With very few exceptions, this is all very, very good.
What could begin here is a list of those highlights, and in part that is what will follow. The Popguns' 'Waiting For The Winter' is a sublime piece of proto-Elastica fringe shaking, The Jesus & Mary Chain do their best to cover the fact they actually write great tunes by slapping some incendiary white noise over every second of a marvellous 'You Trip Me Up', The Monochrome Set's tidily funky eponymous spasm is a joy to behold, and V-Twin's 'Gifted' possibly the nicest thing to have been written since Brian Wilson sang a song about wanting to grow up and marry someone and have kids and roll around in fwuffy little bunny wabbits all day, or something.
Chances are you'll be familiar with some of the names more than the sounds, so make sure you check out what the Television Personalities, Pop Will Eat Itself and The Wedding Present sound like (ace, if you hadn't already guessed), but please do not ignore some of the true highlights brought by the less (in)famous - for instance, probably the most joyful tale here is that of I, Ludicrous' 'Preposterous Tales', an hilarious tale of the unlikely yarns spun in the pub by one Ken McKenzie, reminiscing on such wondrous days gone by as the time he had a shower with two American Girls ('What, at the same time, Ken? Aah, that's preposterous!').
Things barely slow down, only taking an eerily weird rest for the Beat Happening's haunting 'Indian Summer', and that's pretty much it - for disc one. Forgive us, it is 46 tracks long, and like we said, it is all good.
In a slightly less exhaustive, but no less heartfelt endorsement of disc two then, My Bloody Valentine's characteristically enchanting 'Paint A Rainbow' gets a CD release for the first time, Talulah Gosh's charming, also eponymous effort is what would happen if a choir of castrati turned up on a Belle & Sebastian b-side, Aberfeldy's marvellous attempt to bring things up to date is a 'Vegetarian Restaurant' that won't leave you craving a nice big steak, and the Magnetic Fields' '100,000 Fireflies' jingles so majestically you'll open up your window to look for Santa Claus.
Whilst some of this reeks of the staff of the Rough Trade Shops trying to prove their own indie-worth (how many people have actually heard the original, non-Nirvana 'Molly's Lips' by The Vaselines?), there are just one or two flawed instances, namely Bis' 'Icky Poo Air Raid' being a little too blatant with its quirkiness and the Velvet Crush being a tad too brash for these delicate indie surroundings. If they'd wanted a theme to follow, the lyrics to the Pooh Sticks' marvellously cute 'I Know Someone Who Knows Someone Who Knows Alan McGee Quite Well' would have sorted them out - 'housemate said to me we couldn't be on Blast First, because we're not noisy enough and it doesn't hurt when you listen to us...'
So, has that much really changed? Yes. This is a bygone era. The music you grew up loving/ignoring/pretending you were into later when you finally got round to buying 'Parklife' is old enough to warrant such a lengthy retrospective. It's not bizarre, but it's certainly a lost art. Throw on a Ned's Atomic Dustbin T-shirt and relive those not so crazy times.
Artists in this article: Various Acts
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