The music business remains a mysterious entity even after 20+ years working near it and writing about it. Some weeks you’re scrounging to come up with four new albums to write about, and then there are weeks like this one where you’re up to your ears in them. This is an Indie Basement record, with 16 reviews this week, including albums from Helena Deland, Land of Talk, The Drums, The Feelies‘ Velvet Underground tribute, Goat, Wimps, MUNYA and more. Also among the 16 are new reissues from Tricky and Babybird. It’s a week where flutes come up three separate times and I struggle to not overuse the many forms of the word “groove.”

Meanwhile, it’s not much less voluminous for Andrew in Notable Releases who takes on 15 albums, including L’Rain, Jamila Woods, Spencer Krug, boygenius, Jenn Champion, and MIKE. That’s 31 between the two of us and there were plenty of releases that we didn’t review. A nuts week.

With so many albums this week, I’ll keep the idle chit chat to a minimum. Head below for this week’s reviews.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Helena Deland – Goodnight Summerland (Chivi Chivi)
Knockout second album from this Montreal singer-songwriter confronts grief head-on with gorgeous songs and arrangements

Up until now Montreal singer-songwriter Helena Deland has carved out a unique style, part organic and part electronic, with elements of folk, trip hop and classical commingling in harmony. For her second album, though, she mostly keeps her laptop and synthesizers stored away. Made with Sam “Evian” Owens at his Upstate NY studio, Goodnight Summerland is a lush, gorgeous and fully realized work that is a step up and over from her great 2020 debut.

Goodbye Summerland is titled after the town in British Columbia where Deland was born, and the album is an examination of her life and family, prompted by the death of her mother in 2021 which colors everything here (even though some of the songs were written before). “It has been a pure encounter with mystery,” Deland says. “I have felt alone with questions unanswered, and I have come to believe that these questions mean more than their answers could.” Even if you’re not paying close attention to the lyrics, Deland’s melodies and dexterous voice — which have never been more expressive — could bring you to tears. Her falsetto harmonies on “Drawbridge,” alongside flute and acoustic guitar backing, may elevate you off the ground, or at least make you feel like it.

Together, the words and music make for a powerful, moving work. “I love this idea that music starts where language leaves off,” Helena says. “Writing and recording Goodnight Summerland felt like an act of letting go, of living in that space with the lights turned off. It was a ‘Goodnight’ more than a ‘Goodbye.’ Music said it better than words could.”

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Wimps – City Lights (Youth Riot)
Seattle trio find pathos and punk rock in the mundane on their excellent sixth album

Like in country music, punk rock songs can be about anything as long as you approach it with the right attitude. Take Seattle trio Wimps who have been tearing it up, and singing about everyday life for a decade now. City Lights is their sixth album and the only thing young and snotty here are singer-guitarist Rachel Ratner’s kids who pop up on “Mom” which details the ups, downs and humiliations of motherhood. “I haven’t washed my hair in a week,” Rachel snarls, “Everytime I run I start to pee / gonna win the prize for least sleep.” On, “Doin’ It,” a song about making it through the day, she wonders “How am I a parent when I’m really just a kid? / When did I forget to do everything I did?” before admitting, “Don’t know what I’m doin’, but I’m doing it.”

Elsewhere on the record, Ratner looks for the Big Dipper though on another song realizes you can’t really see it in the city due to light pollution. She’s also battling lethargy and existential woes, like on “Gravity” when she sings “We are made of matter, but it feels like we don’t,” adding in the chorus, “gravity’s been getting very heavy lately.” Despite lyrical subjects about barely being able to get out of bed, City Lights is ripper after ripper in a ’90s indie rock / garage punk style, with melodic twists to rival Ratner’s turns of phrase, resulting in a very good time that’s all about being bummed out. That’s pretty punk rock.

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Goat – Medicine (Rocket Recordings)
Enigmatic Swedish psych-rock group unleash sitars and woodwinds on their fifth and most nuanced album yet

Let there be flutes! Enigmatic Swedish psych-rock collective Goat, who if you believe their bio existed in one form or another in the small village of Korpilombolo for decades before releasing their 2012 debut album, are back with their fifth long-player. It’s also maybe their best. If Medicine lacks the frenzied voodoo ritual energy of World Music, they have settled into a groove still worthy of a cult. The relaxed vibe this time pulls particularly from Scandinavian folk, krautrock, prog, and doomy metal alongside their signature blend of globe-pilfering influences. Goat feel especially dialed-in this time, with terrific performances, and production that, as usual, sounds like this record was found in a junkshop in Morocco where it’s been sitting for 50 years. Sitars flitter and tabla makes their beats all the more funky, while overdriven guitars rip wild solos and the anonymous singers conjure spirits from beyond. Those flutes, which adorn nearly every song, are the gravy that ties the whole thing together.

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MUNYA – Jardin (Luminelle)
Second album from Montreal musician Jessie Boivin is a garden of sonic delights

Jessie Boivin is back with her second full-length LP and is another charmer. Though the Montreal musician currently calls Brooklyn home, she hasn’t lost that French touch, mixing Fracophone elements with ’80s synthpop and soft rock for a distinctive, breezy sound. Light as it is, Jessie’s got style and grooves for miles and the smooth, effervescent arrangements are a perfect match for her breathy voice, from Ennio Morricone homage “Un Deux Trois” to her cover of New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” (that owes a little to Frente’s hit remake, too), and the irresistible “Once Again” which features Kainalu who coproduced the album. Jardin is a garden of many delights

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The Drums – Jonny (ANTI-)
Don’t count The Drums out — their sixth album might be their best yet

Jonny, the sixth long-player from The Drums and first in four years, wasn’t initially meant to be an album. These 16 songs were recorded at Jonny Pierce’s cabin in Upstate NY during the pandemic and after he started therapy. This was as much an exercise in release as much as anything. When his label asked to hear what he’d been working on, he sent them saying he hadn’t actually begun working on an album yet; they countered that he’d just delivered a great one.

I agree. As much as I think upon the announce of a new Drums album that there are already enough Drums albums in the world, I end up loving the new one. Pierce hasn’t changed things up musically too much — The Wake’s 1987 single “Pale Spectre” feels like the blueprint for almost everything he’s ever done — but he never fails to deliver new hooky earworms full of snappy basslines, guitar lines that shimmer and snake, and big memorable choruses. “Obvious,” “Plastic Envelope,” and “Isolette” are among the most immediate songs Pierce has ever recorded, and he branches out a little on songs like swoony “Protect Him Always” and the connected, gentle “Harms” and “Little Jonny” which are the centerpiece of the album.

Lyrically, these are the most personal songs he’s ever written, which is saying a lot given most Drums songs sound like diary entries. Pierce bares all — we’re not just talking about the album art, a nude self-portrait taken in the office of his pentecostal preacher father at his childhood home — saying most of them are like letters to younger versions of himself, including “Isolette” which goes all the way back to his birth. They’re full of drama and trauma and occasionally joy but all with a level of empathy we haven’t had before on a Drums album. “In making this album, I finally felt strong enough to shed some armor,” Pierce says, “and in doing that began the process of writing from the deepest parts of my heart.”

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Tricky – Maxinquaye (Reincarnated) (Universal / Island)
Tricky’s endlessly influential debut sounds better, remastered at Abbey road and joined by new versions of the songs as bonus material

This Saturday (10/14) is Album Day in the UK, which is kind of like Record Store Day, but just celebrates vinyl in general. (I think?) This year, it’s celebrating the ’90s which was a decade where CD was king and a lot of albums were either never released on vinyl or only got a very limited (and often sonically lacking) pressing that now fetches for big bucks on the secondary market. So this year’s crop is especially welcome and there are a lot of Basement favorites on the list. Unfortunately, most of them are not available outside the UK but one that is is this reissue of Tricky’s entirely essential 1995 debut album, Maxinquaye. Even if you were familiar with him on Massive Attack’s Blue Lines and Protection (before he split off from the Bristol, UK group), most people were caught off guard by his mastery of creepy atmosphere, the mix of styles into a unique sound (“trip hop” was still six months away from being coined as a genre), and the abundant slippery, whispery magnatism heard on every second of the album. Maxinquaye also introduced the world to Martina Topley-Bird, who was Tricky’s muse for his first two albums and who provides a perfect vocal counterpoint to his gravelly vocal style. (Alison Goldfrapp and the late Pop Group frontman Mark Stewart also appear on the record.) While a lot of the trip hop this inspired feels cemented in ’90s amber, Maxinquaye still sounds groundbreaking, from opener “Ponderosa,” through his incredible reimagining of Public Enemy’s  “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” “Aftermath,” “Pumpkin,” “Hell is Just Around the Corner,” “Abbaon Fat Tracks,” “Brand New You’re Retro,” to closer “Feed.” It’s a perfect album.

This new 3-LP “Reincarnated” edition features the US tracklist of the album, remastered at Abbey Road, and spread out across three sides of vinyl for the first time for maximum fidelity on this three-LP set. The other three sides include six new “reincarnated” versions of Maxinquaye songs that Tricky recorded in 2022 that are more in line with the minimal direction of his last few albums, plus BBC sessions and rough mixes. If you just want the album, there’s a remastered single-LP edition, too. If you’ve never listened, now’s a great time to remedy that.

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Babybird – Ugly Beautiful vinyl reissue (BMG)
Britpop-adjacent 1996 cult classic gets a surprising, if welcome, vinyl repress

Another of this year’s Album Week reissues is Babybird’s 1996 full-length studio debut, Ugly Beautiful. Stephen Jones was a DIY artist who recorded hundreds and hundreds of songs on his four-track portastudio in the early-to-mid-’90s. Between July 1995 and May 1996 he released five compilations of those songs — many decidedly weird, but compelling and often loaded with pop hooks — as Baby Bird (two words) which became instant cult hits. (I’m particularly fond of Fatherhood and The Happiest Man Alive. They’re all on streaming services.) Jones also asked people who bought the albums to let him know their favorite songs, and those became the basis for Ugly Beautiful by the full-band Babybird (one word).

Babybird got lumped in with Britpop but he had more in common with fellow weirdo Julian Cope who was also signed in the mid-’90s to UK label Echo Records (also home to Moloko, Subcircus, Denim, and more). He scored a Top 10 UK hit with “You’re Gorgeous,” an effortlessly catchy song about a creepy photographer mistreating his model that most people entirely misinterpreted as a love song. Jones considers it an albatross around his neck to this day.

Ugly Beautiful is a breezy, if decidedly quirky listen, including equally excellent singles “Cornershop,” “Goodnight,” and “Candy Girl,” plus great deep cuts like “45 & Fat,” “Jesus is My Girlfriend,” “I Didn’t Want to Wake You Up” and the decidedly demented 10-minute “King Bing” which finds Jones in admittedly Jim Morrison territory and was taken off the belated US release of the album. Jones turned his back, mostly, on those poppy sounds on subsequent albums — though his excellent 2000 single “The F Word” did end up as the theme song to the early-’00s Gordon Ramsay food series of the same name — but he has remained Robert Pollard prolific, as his Bandcamp page, which feels like it gets updated hourly, can attest. But Ugly Beautiful remains Babybird’s finest moment.

While this is only available in the UK, paying international shipping is still cheaper than buying OG vinyl copies. If nothing else give this lost “Britpop” classic a spin.

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Cupid & Psyche – Romantic Music (felte)
Former members of Abe Vigoda reteam to make shoegaze sophistipop that works like gangbusters

NOTE: I reviewed this album a few weeks ago but it’s wasn’t actually released till this week. (Keeping up with fluctuating pandemic supply chain release schedules is hard!) I gave it Album of the Week then which kinda worked out given how overstuffed this week is but here’s the review again now that the album is actually out:

Michael Vidal and Juan Velasquez spent the late-’00s and early-’10s in California band Abe Vigoda and now, a decade later, they’ve re-teamed for new project Cupid & Psyche which has through-lines to what they did before but is also very different. “Michael makes these very long chord progressions that are so strange to me,” Velasquez says of their collaboration. “Then I have to cut my way through it and weave in my own thing…it’s almost like I don’t know what parts are his or mine.” Taking their name from Scritti Politti’s hit 1985 album, Cupid & Psyche are a decidedly friendlier group, with echoes of ’80s sophistipop and ’90s shoegaze. Their debut album is terrific, with influences worn boldly on their sleeves but with great original songs, and clever, spot-on production. Romantic Music grabs you right from the start with the dreamy title track, then pulls you closer with the soaring “Angels on the Phone,” and never lets go. Vidal and Velasquez are savvy at mixing synths and drum machines with organic instruments — this thing sounds sublime — and the whole album plays in high style, with lots of heart, hooks, and just the right amount of melodrama for an album titled Romantic Music.

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Uni Boys – Buy This Now! (Curation Records)
Superior vintage style power-pop, produced by The Lemon Twigs

The current power-pop resurgence rolls on, and for fans of the classics (Alex Chilton, The Nerves, The dB’s) who may not totally connect with lauded eccentrics like Mo Troper, the Uni Boys are here with hooks, harmonies and jangly guitars in under-three-minute nuggets. Originally from Aliso Viejo, CA the four-piece moved to Los Angeles and signed to Curation Records, the label run by Brent Rademaker of Beachwood Sparks and The Tyde for their third album. Unlike their first two LPs, which were made DIY style on four-track and GarageBand, they headed to Brooklyn to make Buy This Now! with The Lemon Twigs’ Brian and Michael D’Addario who certainly know their way around late-’70s sonics. Songs like “Let’s Watch a Movie,” “Don’t Wanna Be Like You,” “I’m Alright,” and “Be My Baby Tonight” all deliver the goods, loading these earworms with soaring choruses, “bah bah bahs,” “whoa oh ohs,” and tight twin-lead solos. The D’Addario’s production cleans up Uni Boys’ sound just enough while still giving everything that satisfying, compressed AM radio sound.

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A Beacon School – yoyo (Grind Select)
Terrific second album from Brooklynite Patrick J Smith is another delightful blend of the dreamy and danceable

Patrick J Smith has been making music as A Beacon School for nearly 15 years but didn’t release his debut album, Cola, until 2018. He’s cut down on the time between albums considerably for its follow-up which only took five years. Like his debut, Smith’s music falls somewhere between dreampop and dancepop, but I was not expecting a track like “Jon,” a full-on techno-house banger leavened by ethereal guitarwork. Daniel Avery, watch out! There’s nothing else like it on yoyo, but there are many other delights to be found, from the bright, airy “Honeyed (Stay Forever)” to the euphoric rush of closer “Mantra” that hypnotizes with the repeated couplet “Everything I want to change is staying the same / Everyone I want to stay is leaving” over swirling guitars and a driving motorik beat. Let’s hope the third album comes sooner than later, but when the songs are as good as this, he can take as long as he needs.

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ONYON – Last Days on Earth (Trouble in Mind)
German post-punks ponder end times with fun mutant rippers on their energized debut

Not all genres work in in all languages. French rock? Notsomuch. French hip-hop? Yes please. Germany created its own genre, komische (krautrock), but they’re also very good at postpunk. Leipzig’s ONYON put the emphasis on “punk,” but with splodgy ’80s keyboards, shring-y, overdriven guitars, and gothy overtones, it is of a distinctly mutant variety. The four-piece self-released their first cassette last year which then got rereleased by Chicago tastemakers Trouble in Mind; now they’re back with their proper debut album. Frontperson Maria Untheim is very good at hollering, both in her native tongue and English (often within the same song), and her wail gives Last Days on Earth a lot of its flare, whether it’s songs like “Mower” that are descendents of Kleenex/Liliput’s catchy and minimal charm, or “O.U.T.” which with its pounding toms and chorus-drenched guitar/keyboard leads leans closer to the black eyeshadow of Xmal Deutschland. Across all of it, punchy and melodic basslines are at the center, frequently whipping songs into a frenzy. There is a lot of angst but it’s also a lot of fun. If these are the Last Days of Earth — and it’s hard not to at least wonder anymore — ONYON are taking things out with a bang.

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Land of Talk – Performances (Saddle Creek)
Turns out Elizabeth Powell is just as good with keyboards as guitars, as Land of Talk’s fifth album shows

Land of Talk’s Elizabeth Powell is known for their guitar prowess, but axes stay mostly in their cases on their fifth album. Mostly. A ragged solo rips through the middle of opening number “Your Beautiful Self,” but otherwise the song is almost entirely keyboards and drums and the rest of the album follows suit. “It’s the weirdest, mightiest little record I’ve made since I used to write music on my four-track when I was 14,” says Powell. “I needed to make a love letter to my teenage self by being more vulnerable and doing all the production myself.” The keyboard of choice is usually soft electric piano which gives songs a distinct ’80s feel. In fact, “Sitcom” is named for the TV theme songs, like Family Ties, that influenced its sound. Powell embraces these new sounds, and makes them a natural inhabitant of the Land of Talk.

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Blue Ocean – Fertile State (Slumberland)
Heavy, droney and occasionally poppy shoegaze from Oakland, CA

Slumberland Records continues to do a great job spotlighting its hometown Oakland, CA indiepop scene which continues to be fertile. While there’s a lot of striped-tee and cardigan wearing artists as part of it, Blue Ocean live on the darker side of town, with a moody, hazy vibe that is not dissimilar to early Echo & the Bunnymen, Flying Saucer Attack and Slowdive. Slumberland PR namechecks Bark Psychosis and I can hear that too. You might also get them confused, at first, with alt-rock vets The Ocean Blue (who also owe a lot to The Bunnymen) but that will only be till you hit play. Fertile State sets a murky mise-en-scène with lots of fog, layer upon layer of guitars dipped in delay and reverb, and mopey harmony vocals. It’s more about the vibe, which they nail, than the songs but there are a few single-worthy gems here like the very catchy “Take Care.” Mostly, though, this is an album for those who like zoning out in the dark to a wall of oceanic guitar grandeur. I mean, that was enough for Slowdive fans in the ’90s, so why not them?

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Mike Donovan – Meets the Mighty Flashlight (Drag City)
The Sic Alps / Peacers frontman teams with Mike Fellows (Royal Trux / Silver Jews) for his least reverby album ever

Through his many groups over the last 25 years — Sic Alps, Peacers, The Hospitals, etc — Mike Donovan has cultivated his own brand of the blues that’s often drowning in reverb, but deployed with such purpose it never felt like he was hiding anything. This is Donovan’s first record in four years, and is decidedly different than anything he’s done before. Not radically different — Mike has a distinct melodic and vocal style — but teaming with old pal The Mighty Flashlight, aka Mike Fellows (Royal Trux, Silver Jews), his sonic world has opened, with much of the usual haze burned off, and new instrumention implemented. There are still a few old-style Sic Alps slow-burners like “Wild Strip ／ Beeline Subway” where acoustic guitars are warped into deep space, but we also get the Tom Waits-y “A Capitol Pitch,” weird synth workout “Amalgam Wagon,” and cello-assisted “Whistledown.” Are two Mikes better than one? In this case, yes.

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Futuropaco – Fortezza di Vetro vol. 1 (El Paraiso)
Amazing drumming highlights this cinematic album from one-man-band Justin Pinkerton

Justin Pinkerton has played in a number of Bay Area groups over the years, including The Roots of Orchis, Golden Void, and The Finches, but on his own as Futuropaco he paints cinematic, phantasmagoric tableaus worthy of Jodorowsky or Argento. He plays everything on Fortezza di Vetro vol. 1 and the first thing you notice is the awesome, fill-heavy drumming that recalls Can’s Jaki Liebezeit. But the rest of it is rad too, from the basslines to the vintage synths, flutes, Turkish stringed instrument saz, and Morricone-esque surf/spy/spaghetti guitar lines. (Yes, this would make a good double-feature with Goat’s new LP Medicine [see above] or the Khruangbin record of your choice.) It’s a concept album, too, about the fragile facades the power-that-be construct around them, but he tells his tale entirely through the music. The drums are certainly mighty enough to topple a few oligarchs and despots.

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The Feelies – Some Kinda Love: Performing The Music Of The Velvet Underground (Bar-None)

Back in October 2018, The Feelies played a special show at Jersey City’s White Eagle Hall where their main set was all Velvet Underground covers. That performance is now a live album. I actually went to that show:

It’s not unusual for The Feelies to put a one or two Velvet Underground songs in their sets. In fact it would be more unusual for the band — whose sound owes a lot to Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Mo Tucker (and Doug Yule) — not to play a VU song. Saturday night, however, The Feelies played a whole set of Velvet Underground songs at Jersey City’s White Eagle Hall, a very special show to celebrate opening week of The Velvet Underground Experience exhibit in Manhattan. The 18-song set opened with “Sunday Morning” and included spirited takes of “Who Loves the Sun,” “There She Goes Again,” “What Goes On,” “I’m Waiting for the Man,” “Rock n’ Roll” and “Run Run Run,” all of which they’d played live before. Bassist Brenda Sauter took lead on “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “After Hours,” and they brought out a couple members of fellow Hoboken band The Bongos at the end: James Mastro for “I Can’t Stand it” and Richard Barone for “Oh Sweet Nuthin.” (The band’s percussion maestro Dave Weckerman played keyboards on a few songs.) This was clearly fun for them and the audience, and a real all-around treat.

The Feelies doing a full VU set is kinda like putting a hat on a hat, but Some Kind of Love is a delight and a document of their continued love and acknowledgement of their biggest inspiration.

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Creation Records’ 21 Best Records

21. Biff Bang Pow! – Oblivion (1987)

Alan McGee wasn't just the head of Creation Records, he was also one its musical artists, involved in a few projects over the years, including Laughing Apple, Revolving Paint Dream and his longest-running group, Biff Bang Pow! that also featured, at various points, label co-founders Dick Green and Joe Foster, as well as Primal Scream's Andrew Innes. Oblivion, the second of two albums Biff Bang Pow! released in 1987, is the group's best record, full of the sort of jangly pastiche psychedelia you'd expect from a band that, like his label, were named after '60s beat group The Creation. McGee's a better songwriter than he is a singer but his fey vocal style works just fine on terrifically titled tracks like "A Girl Called Destruction," "The Only Colour in the World is Love" and "She's Got Diamonds in Her Hair." The band's other 1987 album, The Girl Who Runs the Beat Hotel, is worth checking out too and contains the band's best-ever single, the Andrew Innes-sung "Someone Stole My Wheels."

20. Various Artists – Creation Soup Vol 1-5 (1990)

Most people associate Creation Records with their '90s heyday of Oasis, Primal Scream, Ride, Super Furry Animals and My Bloody Valentine, but the label's first five years were full of singles from jangly, '60s-inspired bands who most people have probably never heard of, most of which were only released on 7". In 1990 Creation gathered them all up for a five volume CD set. McGee notes that "The first twenty came in hand folded sleeves which Joe Foster and I used to stay up and fold all night four or five times a week." They include great early singles by Primal Scream, Felt, The Loft, The Weather Prophets, The Jasmine Minks, The Pastels, House of Love, Biff Bang Pow!, The Bodines, and more. Noticeably absent from these, though, is the label's breakthrough -- The Jesus & Mary Chain's 1984 debut single "Upside Down" (due to rights issues). Creation Soup is still a fascinating look at the formative years of a label that would become an indie powerhouse.

19. The Jesus & Mary Chain – Munki (1998)

The Jesus and Mary Chain's 1984 debut single, "Upside Down," turned the UK indie scene upside down with its then-novel approach of taking a Phil Spector-eque pop song and wrapping it in pummeling noise and feedback. It also put Creation Records on the map, paving the way for House of Love, My Bloody Valentine, Ride and many more of the label's most famous groups. JAMC made the leap to Warner Bros immediately after this single but Creation founder Alan McGee stayed the band's manager, and JAMC quickly became alt-rock stars. By the late-'90s, though, Jim and William Reid felt chewed up and spit out by the music industry and weren't getting along with each other so well, either. If Warner had lost interest in the band after five albums, McGee had not, and welcomed the Reids back to Creation with open arms. Bookended by the supercatchy "I Love Rock N' Roll" and tinnitus-inducing "I Hate Rock N' Roll," the sprawling, 17-track Munki plays like a career retrospective, including buzzsaw pop, semi-acoustic numbers, duets with Hope Sandoval, and dissonant noise jams. Munki served as a great final word on the JAMC...till they reformed and made a new album 19 years later.

18. The Loft – One Round the Fair (1989) / The Weather Prophets – Diesel River (1988)

You can't really tell the story of Creation Records without including Peter Astor, the label's first shining star, who wrote charming, literate songs with his Television/VU-esque bands The Loft and The Weather Prophets. (The Loft's original name was The Living Room, which was also the name of Alan McGee's pre-Creation London club night; Astor changed it to avoid confusion.) Astor also had a face meant for magazine covers, as well as a fine if not exceptional Tom Verlaine-esque voice that probably kept his groups from crossing over into more mainstream success. Not that Creation Records' Alan McGee didn't try. The Loft broke up before making a full length record but their excellent singles "Why Does the Rain" (which Astor recorded with The Weather Prophets, too) and "Up the Hill and Down the Slope" are among Creation's best early singles and, along with the b-sides, make up compilation Once Round The Fair. Astor and Loft bandmate Dave Morgan formed The Weather Prophets who continued in much the same direction, releasing three albums that never quite captured the magic of the band's Creation singles, most of which are collected on Diesel River (though your best bet is 2004 best-of comp Blue Skies & Free-Rides).

17. Adorable – Against Perfection (1993)

Making their debut with the undeniable "Sunshine Smile," Adorable were initially lumped in with the shoegaze scene, because almost everything on Creation in 1992 was kinda shoegaze, but the band were closer in spirit to House of Love's textured, romantic pop than My Bloody Valentine or Swervedriver. They owed a lot to the Pixies and The Wedding Present, too, held Echo & The Bunnymen in the highest regard, and Fijalkowski had no shortage of big hooks and mile-wide choruses in his arsenal. Their debut album, Against Perfection, is one of the great, underrated UK indie records of the early '90s, jam-packed with memorable melodies, roaring/chiming guitars, clever/heartfelt lyrics and lots of swagger. The American release, via SBK records, betters the UK version by adding "Sunshine Smile" and another early single, "I'll Be Your Saint," alongside killer album cuts like "A to Fade In," "Homeboy," "Favorite Fallen Idol" and "Still Life."

16. The Jazz Butcher – Fishcotheque (1988)

With the Jazz Butcher's mid-'80s albums for Glass Records, which featured a band that included bassist (and ex Bauhaus member) David J, The Jazz Butcher (Pat Fish) had gained the reputation for whimsical indie a la Robyn Hitchcock. Signing to Creation, Pat started a new version of the group with collaborator Kizzy O'Callahan, intent on changing his image. That makeover began with 1988's Fishcotheque, one of his best albums that showed a new, more serious side to The Jazz Butcher. "I was keen to get as far away from all those 'w, words that had followed my group around," Fish wrote later of the album, "to make it as clear as I could that this was a rock & roll thing, not some 'eccentricity.' I had my shades and I had my fringed suede jacket and I had the Weather Prophets rhythm section." Witty without being wacky, Fishcotheque is loaded with great songs, including the punky "Looking for Lot 49," the wistful "Swell" and "The Next Move Sideways," terrific pop number "Let's Get it Wrong," and one of his best-ever songs, "Susie," which features Sonic Boom on feedback. Pat didn't entirely abandon his "w" side, though, which rears its head on "Living in a Village" and vegan rap song "The Best Way" (which isn't as kooky as it may seem).

15. Momus – The Tender Pervert (1988)

Named after the Greek god of satire and mockery, Momus (aka Scottish artist Nic Currie) was Creation's most idiosyncratic artist on record*, writing almost exclusively about sex and death but in a high-minded style that was likely to quote the bible or ancient literature, and playing in a style somewhere between Donovan and Jacques Brel. (Most eccentric in real life: Felt's Lawrence.) As the '80s went on, Currie would incorporate Pet Shop Boys-style synthpop into the Momus sound. The Tender Pervert was his first real flirtation with drum machines, and was a deeply twisted, angry record fueled by disgust with Margaret Thatcher's response to the AIDS crisis. "I'm so furious about this that I decide that, if gay people are not only dying but being gagged by the government while dying, it's up to straight people to promote homosexuality in their place," Currie wrote reflecting on the record. Momus is at the height of his witty, erudite powers here on tracks like "The Angels Are Voyeurs," "The Homosexual," "A Complete History of Sexual Jealousy (Parts 17-24)" and the elegant, complex "Bishonen." Currie is not wrong when he writes that The Tender Pervert is "my best and most definitive album" -- it's also the best place to start for this artist who is definitely an acquired taste.

14. Swervedriver – Ejector Seat Reservation (1995)

Swervedriver were one of the best groups of the original shoegaze era, but by 1995 interest in the genre in their home country (and label, Creation) had fully moved on to Britpop. Unlike some bands (Ride, Lush), Swervedriver stuck to their guitar pedals while trying to expand upon their sound with their third album, Ejector Seat Reservation. It was still heavy, but there was an equal emphasis on melody and maelstrom, adding elements of Bowie and Bolan to the mix, not to mention a string and horn section. It's Swervedriver's best album and loaded with memorable songs, including pile-driver "Bring Me the Head of the Fortune Teller," the poppy/heavy "The Other Jesus," elegant first single "Last Day on Earth," and soaring closing cut "To the Birds." Unfortunately there was no time to celebrate: Creation Records dropped Swervedriver the week after Ejector Seat Reservation was released and deleted the album from their catalog, making it for years the band's hardest-to-find album.

13. Saint Etienne – Good Humor (1997)

Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs formed Saint Etienne in 1990 as a way to mix their obsession with '60s and '70s pop, R&B, soul and reggae with the indie dance and rave culture that had taken over the UK at the time. They originally envisioned the group as having a different vocalist for every single, but that changed when they met Sarah Cracknell, and Saint Etienne became a trio. After three albums of sample-based dance pop, Saint Etienne changed course, and decamped to Malmo, Sweden to make a full-band album with Cardigans producer Tore Johannsen at his famed Tambourine Studios. Armed with a group of crack session musicians, Good Humor is unlike any other record in Saint Etienne's catalog before or since, working in elements of exotica, acid jazz and Beach Boys/Phil Spector wall of sound pop. While Saint Etienne's previous albums had been released by Heavenly Recordings through Creation, Good Humor was the first -- and last -- to be released by Creation proper. Singles "Sylvie" and "The Bad Photographer" were both Top 30 UK hits and Good Humor remains Saint Etienne's biggest seller in the US (where it was released by Sub Pop).

12. The Boo Radleys – Giant Steps (1993)

Liverpool band The Boo Radleys began as one of the noisiest of the '90s shoegazers, with some songs on their 1991 Creation debut, Everything's Alright Forever, sounding like a garbage truck in a rockslide. But deep down, guitarist Martin Carr was a lover of the classics -- The Beatles, Kinks and other late-'60s psychedelic pop -- and that side of him was ready to emerge. The watershed moment was the title track of 1992's Lazarus EP which took a roaring, anthemic melody and built it up slowly with an extended, dubbed-out intro. It's one of their best-ever tracks. "Lazarus" turned out to be the first taste of what would be their magnum opus -- the boundary pushing, Coltrane-referencing, appropriately named third album, Giant Steps. Noise and hazy effects still rang through songs like "I Hang Suspended," "Butterfly McQueen," "Rodney King - Song for Lenny Bruce" and "Take the Time Around," but nothing was obscuring the massive hooks Carr loaded the songs with. There were also just straight-up pop songs like "Wishin' I Was Skinny," "Barney and Me," and "If You Want it, Take It." It's a record that, in its own way, is every bit as ambitious as Screamadelica or Loveless, and one that opened Creation's door for Britpop's coming surge. "I felt that everything was moving towards this big pop thing," Carr says in David Cavanagh's The Creation Records Story. "Loads of bands -- young bands with guitars -- were getting into the charts. Blur were getting there. Suede were having hits. We didn’t sell that many records with Giant Steps but everyone was dying to see what we were going to do next." Next would net them a massive UK hit single -- 1995's "Wake Up Boo!" -- but Giant Steps is still their finest hour.

11. Super Furry Animals – Radiator (1997)

Oasis may have been Creation's biggest selling act of the '90s (by a mile) but, pound for pound, Super Furry Animals were probably the best. The band were proudly Welsh, not afraid to sing in their native tongue, and wildly creative, with a wide anarchic streak. Their terrific 1996 debut album, Fuzzy Logic, paid tribute to Welsh drug smuggler (and national hero) Howard Marks both on the cover art and on song "Hanging With Howard Marks," and the same year they released single "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" which sampled Steely Dan and held the record, at 50 utterances, for most "fucks" given in a song (till Insane Clown Posse's "Fuck the World" beat it in 1999). Just a year later, SFA were back with Radiator, a record that was leaps and bounds better than their debut, and where they went from being a lot of fun to one of the more consistently great, wildly creative bands of the era. (They still are.) Radiator incorporates Madchester-y shuffle ("Play it Cool," "The Placid Casual"), Bowie-style spacerock ("Demons," "Bass tuned to DEAD"), punk, and mutant pop ("Herman Loves Pauline") into a style that became distinctly their own.

10. Slowdive – Souvlaki (1993)

Influenced by the Cocteau Twins' ethereal style, not to mention The Jesus and Mary Chain and probably a fair amount of goth, Pink Floyd and prog, Slowdive didn’t really sound like any other group from the original shoegaze era, riding a massive wave of shimmering guitars that were at times so transformed by effects pedals, they resembled synthesizers. Like their early EPs, the band's debut album, Just for a Day, was hypnotic and sensuous, wrapping listeners in layer upon layer of gorgeous haze, but it was maybe a little lacking in focus and A-level material. Not a problem with their sophomore album that nestles memorable songs and a stronger rhythmic backbone into their signature aural cloudwork. Their best album to date, Souvlaki features some of their catchiest songs ("Alison," "When the Sun Hits," "40 Days") with muscular material like "Machine Gun," vivid trip-out "Yellow Melon" and two songs ( "Sing," "Here She Comes") featuring keyboards and treatments by Brian Eno. Best of all, though, is "Souvlaki Space Station" which takes their spiraling sound deep into dub territory. Never as popular at the time as their shoegaze contemporaries Ride or Lush, Slowdive's records have aged better than most things from the '90s, and the group have led one of the most satisfying second acts in recent memory.

9. Teenage Fanclub – Grand Prix (1995)

Teenage Fanclub's third album, Bandwagonesque, is one of the three pillars in Creation's 1991 crown (the other two are slightly higher up on this list), and an album that, along with Ride's Nowhere, helped the label realize its place as a home for classic guitar pop done in new and exciting ways, or at least by new and exciting groups. What Teenage Fanclub did wasn't exactly new -- they drank deep from the well of Big Star and Dinosaur Jr. -- but they did it very well and had three three talented singer-songwriters who had yet to reach their creative potential. That hit with 1995's Grand Prix that, to carry on the Formula One racing theme, had Norman Blake, Gerrard Love and Raymond McGinley firing on all cylinders, with such instant earworms as "Sparky's Dream," "Neil Jung," "Mellow Doubt," "Verisimilitude," and "Don't Look Back." The album was also released at the height of Britpop and pulled the Fannies into that orbit, even though they were never really part of that scene. While they may not equal Oasis in the ambition and swagger department, Grand Prix delivers just as many classics as (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, just in a more humble way.

8. Sugar – Copper Blue (1992)

Spoiler alert: this is the only American-made album on this list. Creation did release a few records by U.S. acts (Medicine, Guided by Voices, The Cramps) but not many, and most were more licensing deals than actual signings. But Bob Mould put together separate deals with Creation in the UK and Rykodisc in North America for his new band Sugar who rivaled MBV for being loudest-ever group on the label. With their roaring, punk-injected guitar pop sound, the trio (Mould, bassist David Barbe and drummer Malcolm Travis) were definitely a more natural fit with a label of noisemakers like Creation than Rykodisc (who were mainly known for being the first CD-only label). In any case, Sugar's classic debut album is one of 1992's best, and one of the greatest albums Creation Records released, with Mould's signature mix of rippers ("Changes," "A Good Idea") and pop songs ("Helpless," "If I Can't Change Your Mind") and even a little prog ("Hoover Dam"). Copper Blue was actually more of a hit across the pond first, reaching #10 in the UK album charts and with NME naming it the Best Album of 1992; the record really caught on with American alt-rock radio and MTV in 1993. Sugar burned bright and hot, releasing Beaster a mere six months later, yet flamed out during sessions for their second album. Still, Copper Blue remains one of Mould's best collection of songs.

7. Felt – Forever Breathes the Lonely Word (1986)

Led by the decidedly eccentric but frequently brilliant Lawrence Hayward who was prone to 2 AM vacuuming and still only goes by his first name, Felt set out to release 10 albums and 10 singles in 10 years -- "In and out in a decade," he put it. He accomplished his goal, making crystalline guitar pop that owed much to Tom Verlaine (and just a little to Bob Dylan) with two sharply defined eras of the band. Felt's first four albums were on Cherry Red and featured guitarist Maurice Deebank's distinctive arpeggiated guitar style; the second began with the group's move to Creation, with Deebank out and keyboardist Martin Duffy in, adding wonderful, rich organ to the band's sound. Forever Breathes the Lonely Word was Felt's first album for Creation and is Felt's masterwork, with shimmering production, Lawrence at his most lyrically romantic, and Duffy's brilliant playing all over it. It's just great song after great song, including "Rain of Crystal Spires," "Down But Not Out," "All The People I Like And Those That Are Dead," and "A Wave Crashed on the Rocks," being particular highlights. Creation's first great album.

6. Ride – Nowhere (1990)

Oxford's Ride released their debut album in 1990 and perfectly split Creation Records' two decades in existence down the middle. The band were clearly a product of the student indie scene that Creation was at the center of, owing much to House of Love, My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus & Mary Chain and early Primal Scream, but they were a half step generation younger, savvy, and ambitious. You could easily imagine songs like "Seagull" and "Kaleidoscope" being released with thinner production by the label just a couple years earlier, but Ride were not a group who just wanted to play to 150 people the rest of their lives. While undeniably part of the psychedelic shoegaze scene -- they remain of the genre's most iconic bands -- Andy Bell and Mark Gardner were great songwriters, too, and underneath Nowhere's beautiful murk, haze and feedback is some serious musicianship and craft. Nowhere owes as much to The Byrds as it does MBV and is loaded with great tunes, as can be heard on the undeniable classic "Vapour Trail" -- perhaps the greatest song to come out on Creation Records and not get released as a single. Ride would get more ambitious (and pop-savvy) on 1992's excellent Going Blank Again, and would make a grab for the Britpop ring on 1994's Carnival of Light, but Nowhere is the sound of a scene and a label at the dawn of the '90s.

5. House of Love – House of Love (1988)

While The Jesus & Mary Chain's "Upside Down" put Creation Records on the map, The House of Love's debut album was the first album released by the label that really registered shockwaves beyond the indie charts. Led by Guy Chadwick, whose deep voice matched his high cheekbones, House of Love had some of JAMC's squall but fed it through Chadwick's graceful songwriting and guitarist Terry Bickers' inventive playing. Opening salvo "Christine" is such a stunner, from the roaring guitars to the "Bah bah be dah dah" hook, if the rest of the album had been a dud it still might've made this list. But House of Love is all hits, from the dark, sexy cool of "Road" and "Hope" to the riff-heavy "Sulfur" and "Salome" to the ethereal grandeur of "Man to Child," and the album's second best song, "Love in a Car." The album was also as big an influence on the burgeoning shoegaze scene as My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything, and it's hard to imagine groups like Ride and Catherine Wheel existing without House of Love.

4. Oasis – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? (1995)

As Andy Bell of Ride, who would end up joining Oasis by the end of the '90s, told us, Oasis "were the band Creation had been waiting for, and I think the label was also exactly what the band needed." Oasis fit Creation head Alan McGee's rock n' roll ethos, ticking every box possible with a cup-runneth-over mix of attitude, razor-sharp wit, hedonistic joie-de-vivre and arrogance. It might've all been too much if Noel Gallagher wasn't a one-man hit factory, losing songs in the couch that were better than many bands wrote in their whole career. They were definitely the guitar band McGee had always wanted, turning out singles like his '60s and '70s heroes, but putting a fresh face on them just in time to lead in the new Britpop movement that pushed grunge out of the country much like the USA had done to the King's army some 200+ years before. While 1994's Definitely Maybe was a fantastic debut, Oasis managed to follow it up just a year later with an even better album, one of the best of 1995 and without a doubt the peak of Gallaghers' powers. (What's the Story) Morning Glory? even managed to be a hit in America, something a British rock band hadn't done in years. The album is filthy with classics, from singles like "Wonderwall," "Don't Look Back in Anger," "Champagne Supernova," and "Roll With It" to deep cuts like "Cast No Shadow," and "She's Electric." While Oasis stayed popular throughout their existence, creatively, it was diminishing returns after this -- but in 1995 the band could do no wrong.

3. My Bloody Valentine – Isn’t Anything (1988)

If Loveless was the sound of "how'd they do that?," Isn't Anything was the sound of "I wanna do that!" It's hard to imagine Ride, Swervedriver, The Boo Radleys or any of the rest of the soon-to-erupt shoegaze scene -- or half the indie rock of the '90s -- happening the way it did without the visceral impact of My Bloody Valentine's first album for Creation. Songs like "(When You Wake (You're Still in a Dream," "Feed Me With Your Kiss" and "Sueisfine" hit like a brick and sound like you've already been knocked senseless. Kevin Shield's glide guitar sound -- a unique mix of tuning and playing style -- was mysterious, instantly distinctive and deceptively attainable. The band used less effects pedals than most people thought. "The sound is purely physical," MBV Svengali Kevin Shields said at the time. "It's movement, a manual moving of the string: the short travel of he Jazzmaster and Jaguar tremolo that gives it that characteristic sort of upwards drone to the chord." My Bloody Valentine even managed to make acoustic guitars seem heavy ("Come Cupid") and the band's more ethereal tracks like "Lose My Breath" were aptly named. The album has a reputation for thin, tinny sonics, but Kevin Shields' all-analog 2018 remastered edition really shows what a gorgeous monster it is.

2. My Bloody Valentine – Loveless (1991)

A record so monumentally important to popular music it's all but impossible to overstate its importance, Loveless is a bonafide classic. It's also a record that took forever and somewhere around £250,000 to complete, that nearly bankrupted Creation, forcing the label to drop the band shortly after Loveless' release, and sell 49% of its stake to Sony Music. ("Overdue" and "over budget," meanwhile, are words associated with the band to this day.) Even though countless artists have stolen from Kevin Shields' signature "glide guitar" style, what the band get from their instruments on Loveless still sounds like nothing else. The four dry snare hits that open the album do not prepare you for the sludgy, white-dwarf heavy riff of opener "Only Shallow," or when the song shifts into pure beauty and back again. Moments like that happen throughout Loveless, from the ethereal slipstream of "To Here Knows When" to the poppy indie rock of "When You Sleep," to the dreamy, danceable perfection of "Soon." So many rock critic cliches and adjectives were created -- and wore out their welcome -- with folks trying to describe Loveless, yet you can't not be in awe 30 years on. It nearly destroyed the label but has always stood as one of its finest moments.

1. Primal Scream – Screamadelica (1991)

Led by gangly, cocksure Bobby Gillespie (who was The Jesus & Mary Chain's original drummer and grew up with Creation boss Alan McGee), Primal Scream were Creation Records' longest-running band, having released their debut single, "All Fall Down" on the label in 1985, and XTRMNTR in 2000, the last album released by the label before it dissolved. Like McGee, Gillespie seemed to live and breathe rock n' roll and he and his bandmates, including the invaluable Andrew Innes, at times managed to stay cool purely on attitude while releasing less-than-stellar early records. Things for them changed, though, when they gave their lackluster, Stonesy single "I'm Losing More Than I Ever Had" to DJ Andrew Weatherall to remix. He took out almost all the vocals, threw a beat under it and added a sample of Peter Fonda From The Wild Angels yelling "We wanna be free to do what we wanna do! We wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time!" Released in February 1990, "Loaded" was one of the cornerstones of the acid house/Madchester scene and forever changed Primal Scream's trajectory. They spent nearly two years on one continuous party, working with Weatherall, Jah Wobble, Stones producer Jimmy Miller -- whatever suited their fancy and vibe -- and releasing singles along the way which would eventually be collected as the era-defining Screamadelica. It shouldn't have worked, but that sense of freedom made it come together beautifully. "Instead of having two guitars, bass, drums, vocals... we destroyed that," Gillespie said in The Creation Records Story. "It was anything goes - synth, tabla, drum machine, no vocals, instrumentals, gospel singers, sitars. The whole range of anything goes noises and suddenly the band were freed. It was a much looser approach to making music. And then getting people like Andy and Hugo, and Alex Patterson and Thrash from The Orb, Jimmy Miller, Wobble, you know – these people, Messing with our music, taking it somewhere else, making it more interstellar, as far out as… It was incredible. The greatest time." You still feel that listening to Screamadelica, too.