Before the rise of so-called Britpop in the mid 90s, there was the British indie scene, made up mostly of bands that were -- for the first time -- mixing rave culture, sampling, hip-hop, heavy guitars and raw energy to form a sound and look that was unusual and unprecedented.
I was a big fan of this period. At the risk of sounding like Patrick Bateman proclaiming the musical genius Huey Lewis, here are a few of those bands.
Jesus Jones
Yes, everyone on this side of the Atlantic remembers Jesus Jones for the gutless pop fluff of Right Here, Right Now -- a hopelessly dated hit made even more annoying recently by Hillary Clinton's decision to use it as one of her campaign themes. The truth is though that a good portion of JJ's catalog sounded nothing like that song. Mike Edwards and company's overall sound was a swirling, unstoppable wall of chaotic guitars and sequencers. Just listen to the opening track on their 1991 album Doubt -- a song called Trust Me. It sat just four clicks up from Right Here, Right Now, and yet the two songs were light years apart style-wise -- the former opening with a thunderous rapid-fire drum beat that propelled a monster sonic siren-blast lasting barely more than two minutes. NME even went so far as to call another of the band's songs -- Spiral, released two years later -- "The first techno death-metal song."
This single is nowhere near as heavy as any of that, but it gives you an idea what Jesus Jones were capable of.
From their Liquidizer album, this is Never Enough.
EMF
Once again, all anyone remembers from EMF is the instantly catchy but ultimately annoying-as-all-hell single Unbelievable. This is honestly a shame, because the band's second album, Stigma, was excellent and saw them branching out in a much more powerful and much less dancefloor-ready direction. I shit you not, Stigma is one of those albums I find myself going back to over and over again -- and songs like this are why.
This is They're Here.
Also from that album, a live version of Getting Through.
Ned's Atomic Dustbin
I interviewed these guys back in 1995, but I was a fan of them long before that. Besides, I used to have a California license plate hanging on my office wall that read "KLLYRTV".
This is Kill Your Television.
Pop Will Eat Itself
One of the things I love all to hell about bands from this particular era: At the time, they were almost impossible to describe. No one -- no one -- proved this better than Pop Will Eat Itself. Fronted by Clint Mansell, who went on to become the brilliant, Oscar-nominated composer of scores for movies like Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain, PWEI were an almost maddening acid-trip amalgam of different sounds and styles -- at turns violently chaotic, at others beautifully melodic, but always with an underlying lack of pretension which let you know that they weren't taking themselves too seriously.
I started this work-week off with a live performance by Peter Murphy and Nine Inch Nails, and I'll close it with one from Pop Will Eat Itself and Nine Inch Nails. Recorded at Irving Plaza here in New York City, this is Wise Up, Sucker.
Next: The Charlatans, The Stone Roses, Black Grape and Lush
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