64b. The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary (Beggars Banquet)

 

Five more weeks at number one from w/e 10th August 1985

If there's one consistent pattern on this journey through the indie charts, it's that the summer period sees a reduction in new releases combined with a general sales slump. 

On an interesting week, this will allow relatively minor groups (such as The Men They Couldn't Hang or March Violets) to claim the top slot. On less fascinating occasions, it just means that a dominant single can reclaim the crown again for a longer period, and by jingo, that's exactly what The Cult do on this occasion, gluing themselves to number one for a further five weeks.

As always, we'll pass the time by looking at what was stirring lower down the charts.

Week One

8. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Tupelo (Mute)

Peak position: 2

Frontrunners to kick The Cult off the top spot, Nick Cave and his bad blokes nonetheless failed to do the necessary with "Tupelo". In its own strange way, the single has perhaps been just as enduring as "She Sells Sanctuary", its stomping, stropping, thumping and snarling core defining what the average casual music listener probably thinks the Bad Seeds are all about - a kind of agitated, gibbering modern blues. 

"Tupelo" is one of those unusual records which sounds as if it could have been recorded and released in any decade before or since. The fact it's loosely based on a John Lee Hooker track gives it a certain amount of that timelessness, but the dirt, grime and agitation stretches far beyond those basic roots. 

12. Terry and Gerry - Banking on Simon (In Tape)

Peak position: 4

1985 seemed to be riddled with indie performers whose visibility was largely limited to that single year, and here are our favourite skiffling twosome back again with another whipsmart ditty. "Banking On Simon" is like "Making Plans For Nigel" if it had emerged on Pye Nixa in 1956 rather than on Virgin in 1979, and you can probably already imagine how it goes - it almost feels as if the duo are grinning and winking at you through the stereo speakers. 

While they were indisputably bloody good at this sort of thing, you can easily understand how they became a novelty flash rather than a long-term smoulder; in the absence of any kind of surrounding skiffle revival, they were strange outliers, a retro peculiarity for the anti-fashion kids and an easy and unusual topic for the music press to write about that summer. 

15. APB - Summer Love (Big River)

Peak position: 15

APB got funkier as time went on, and "Summer Love" is their most commercial single yet, mixing fat distorted guitars with superb grooves, orchestral hits and vocals which are oddly celebratory for a post-punk record. Had it been released a year or two earlier, this probably would have been an actual proper hit, but no matter - it still caught enough ears in 1985 to make a vague dent in the public consciousness.

20. Icicle Works - Seven Horses (Beggars Banquet)

Peak position: 15

28. Minor Threat - Salad Days (Discord)

Peak position: 15

Week Two

16. The Janitors - Chicken Stew (In Tape)

Peak position: 10

We're nearly three quarters of the way through the year at this point, and the C86 beacon is starting to flash with greater intensity. Primal Scream and The Pastels have already covered off the twee jangly end of the spectrum, and while The Janitors here may never have found space on that "seminal" (TM) cassette compilation, their approach here echoes the wigged out treble-heavy earfuck of the more experimental end. 

Guitars bend and squeal, the Casio click track shuffles, and "Chicken Stew" sounds cheap and might even be nasty, but only in the rock and roll sense of the word. Whatever blues Nick Cave is going through on "Tupelo", The Janitors are arguably also kinda feeling here, but on a Fostex Four Track with a drum machine. Proper indie, in other words, as opposed to Depeche Mode bankrolled indie - if such things matter to you. 

23. Peter and the Test Tube Babies - Rotting in the Fart Sack (Metal Knob)

Peak position: 8

26. The Bomb Party - New Messiah (Abstract)

Peak position: 26

 

Week Three

12. The Triffids - You Don't Miss Your Water (Til Your Well Runs Dry) (Hot)

Peak position: 7

By 1985, Australians were beginning to take up more and more space in the music press as the groundswell of talent from the country made itself internationally known. That Triffids seem to have subsequently have become a footnote isn't really indicative of the fuss they stirred up at the time, and "You Don't Miss Your Water" showcased a band with almost head-spinning confidence. While a number of UK post-punk bands occasionally nervously licked the outer edges of country rock, this single sees the group confidently plunge the depths, and they return to the surface with reluctance, as if they always belonged deep down there.

65. Men They Couldn't Hang - Ironmasters (Demon)

One week at number one on w/e 3rd August 1985

Even if folk music had an unequivocal - if increasingly marginal - place in British music during the first half of the eighties, a whiff of mothballs was beginning to envelope many of the artists. If we want to indulge in simple generalisations for just a second, folk artists in the sixties often felt outspoken and rebellious, and their early seventies brethren felt scholarly and wise. By 1980, however, folk’s mainstream presence felt fusty, synonymous with Foster and Allen wearing glitzy showbiz jackets on Pebble Mill at One.

As a kid, I had no notion of the fact that there were many facets to folk music. All I knew and understood were the brief examples that fell under my nose – “Daytrip To Bangor”, “A Bunch Of Thyme”, “Streets of London”. Admittedly the latter should have given me a few clues to help me understand that folk could address common social issues with a sense of outrage, but it was hard to read too much into something that was regularly put on the overhead projector during school assemblies. It whiffed too much of school plimsolls and the baked beans being cooked down the hall in preparation for the next school dinner. 

One day, my parents left “Folk On Two” on the radio – they would often lose patience with the show and angrily put a cassette on instead – and the presenter suddenly exclaimed with some enthusiasm that they were going to play the new one by The Men They Couldn’t Hang. “They’re a new group of folk performers, very big with critics in the music press right now, and personally I think it’s marvellous that they’re introducing so many young people to the form”.

The group’s cover of Eric Bogle’s “The Green Fields Of France” seeped out of the radio’s speakers, and to my untutored ears at the time, I couldn’t hear much difference between their style and some of the other tracks played on the show. I understood that they were meant to be rougher, punkier and scrappier, but “Green Fields” wasn’t the MTCH track you needed to hear if you wanted to understand how raucous they could be. Their second single “Ironmasters” did the job better.

Opening gently but forebodingly on the lines “This is an old story that’s rarely ever told/ of the raping of the country, of the valley” the group slowly up the speed and the ferocity before ranting and raving about William Crawshay, a 19th Century iron merchant. Born to a wealthy father ‘affectionately’ known as “The Tyrant”, who was also one of Britain’s few 18th Century millionaires, William was an even more troublesome man. In May 1831 many who worked for him took to the streets of Merthyr Tydfil in protest at the lowering of their wages and the levels of unemployment. Upwards of 10,000 workers from Merthyr and the surrounding area marched under a red flag (believed to be the first time it was used a symbol of socialism or communism) eventually commandeering military explosives. British troops were eventually called up by the Government and the rebellion was dispersed, control of the town wrested back again by force on 7th June.

Crawshay was deeply unmoved by this spectacle, showing little sympathy for his workers or remorse for the explosive situation his industry had created. He seemingly resolved to continue as usual; history makes much more noise about the insurrectionists who were punished and hung than any moment of doubt Crawshay might have had.

“Ironmasters” takes this moment and loads it into a cannon, The Men They Couldn’t Hang opening fire and seething their way through a complex historical event in just over four minutes, throwing in the hypocrisy of the church as subtext (“Give generously!”) as well as the obvious war cry of the rest of the single. It’s a rattling, bashing, remorseless high tempo howl of defiance, close to fellow folk modernisers The Pogues in execution, but having a much more pronounced purpose and agitation.

It’s fairly obvious why a song like this might have seemed apt for 1985. The Thatcher Government’s push back against the mining unions appeared to have brought us full circle, making “Ironmasters” and the ghosts of 1831 feel far closer to the current day mood than ever. If the initial purpose of folk music was to spread present day news, “Ironmasters” proves that the stories of old also told us more about the present than we may have given them credit for. The mobs under the red flag in 1831 must have truly thought they had wrestled control back from the millionaires and the Government and were running their own free state. The miners of the mid-eighties were less ambitious, wanting only a fair wage. As time moves on, and expectations sink, so our demands become ever more modest and limp, and yet still are pushed back by the “powers-that-be” with ease. Even The Men They Couldn’t Hang had to change the final line of this song – originally “Oh that iron bastard, she still gets her way” in reference to Thatcher – to ensure radio play.

By choosing their subjects carefully and styling their music to mirror the fury of the day, The Men They Couldn’t Hang did indeed make folk music relevant to younger audiences – although I’m not sure the insurrection of “Ironmasters” would have been something Radio Two would have been keen to broadcast at the time.

64. The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary (Beggars Banquet)

Five weeks at number one from w/e 29th June 1985

There’s an elephant in the room we really need to address before talking about this single; namely the small problem of Beggars Banquet not really being an indie label, and its products having no real place in the indie charts. While Beggars were certainly an indie when they began in the late seventies, they rapidly inked a marketing and distribution deal with Warner Brothers who, whatever the size of Beggars own offices or staff-force, made them no more or less independent than Sire, Atlantic or Elektra.

The official MRIB indie charts recognised this state of affairs and barred them from entry. The NME, Melody Maker and Record Mirror indie charts all seemed to be in a state of confusion over it, though, letting Beggars in at some point in the mid-eighties before booting them out again a year or two later. So far as I can tell, this wasn’t a hot topic among the readers of those magazines, who probably didn’t care about these trifles; such discussions were fit only for industry types in the pages of Music Week. It must have been galling if you were in with a shot of getting an indie number one during The Cult's reign at the top, though – so commiserations to Doctor and the Medics who suffered that blow during this single’s initial stay there.

In other respects too, “She Sells Sanctuary” feels like something more than a modest little independent release. Every time we’ve met The Cult on our travels through these charts, there have been subtle shifts and progressions, sometimes interrupted by a fanbase-pleasing 45 before they increased their levels of stomp and bluesy strum a little further. “Sanctuary” is the sound of borders not just being fully breached, but the group sprinting across them screaming about their arrival. Held in place by one of the better rock riffs of the eighties - a mutant cross between Big Country’s bagpiping guitar and a classic Keith Richards refrain - Astbury sounds as if he’s screaming for sanctuary while running from one rock genre to the other.

While I doubt the group were being overly cynical in the construction of this one, it is fascinating just how many styles and tropes it wraps into one neat bundle. The incoherent post-punk vocalisations are intact – of all The Cult’s singles, it’s interesting that their biggest hit so far should be the most incomprehensible – but while there’s a Kirk Brandon-esque wail in the mix, there are also moments where Astbury’s voice finds the clench teethed scream of basic metal.

Elsewhere, Duffy’s hoedown hook is consistently interrupted at the tail end by the brief strums of a folky acoustic guitar, so regular, simple and predictable that almost feels like a sample. I’m a sucker for this bit, actually; I love the way it keeps interrupting the busy nature of the rest of the song with its polite, understated tick of approval, as if its visiting from another song entirely. Then there’s that instrumental break, mellow and toying with psychedelia, shoving the central riff underwater and filling it with the whine and buzz of sitar strings.

The end result is that “She Sells Sanctuary” sounded like everything that was going on in alternative rock in 1985 happening at once. At the time, I couldn’t help but be very conscious of its existence; it felt as if it spent most of the summer school holidays slowly crawling around the Top 40, never quite reaching the top ten but refusing to leave. At certain hours on Radio One, its riff needled away on the airwaves, sounding so familiar that it begged doubts as to whether somebody had written it many years before [post-script: It does admittedly sound somewhat like the intro to "Cats In The Cradle"]

Years later, when I became old enough to be let into alternative rock clubs, it still hadn’t gone away. It remained the barnstormer the DJ would utilise at the key moment everyone had consumed enough Snakebite and Black, only to watch the dancefloor seethe with the disordered movements of a hundred grebos, crusties and goths (and some of the metallers too). Some tracks spoke only to small segments of the audience and created vacuums in the corners of the dancefloor, but “She Sells Sanctuary” – like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Firestarter” after it – seemingly spoke to everyone.

63. New Order - The Perfect Kiss (Factory)

Four weeks at number one from w/e 1st June 1985

Until very recently, I always assumed “The Perfect Kiss” had a long gestation period. Everything about it smacks of perfectionism and contemplation, feeling like a record which, without once being boring or indulgent, knows precisely what is needed and when.

It opens with fairly basic drum patterns, but it soon unfolds, introducing Peter Hook’s bassline boldly, followed by a beautifully twittering sequenced synth pattern, a second layer of bass level sequencing, a strong, triumphant chorus hook, then once you’ve finally succumbed to the idea that the song has a traditional structure, it reaches the halfway mark and decides to pull every conceivable melodic variation out of the bag. Peter Hook suddenly gets the idea that he needs to rock out and produce what can only be described as a Miami Vice chase sequence riff, then there’s a gentle rhythmic and ambient melodic breakdown involving ribbeting toads (nobody had that pegged on their New Order bingo card at the time), then skiffled kitchen noises, before the track becomes borderline symphonic.

Seven minutes in it decides it hasn’t said everything it wants to say, exploding into a crescendo of lasers and bright melodies. The group seldom sounded like Jean Michel Jarre, and probably wouldn’t take the comparison as a compliment, but this is the closest they came to exploring the idea of seventies progressive electronics, where being bold and exploratory, letting ideas sprawl and breathe and taking your own sweet time to sniff every avenue weren’t things to apologise for. If that makes “The Perfect Kiss” in danger of sounding like a chore or a bore, it’s actually anything but – every moment of it is a joy. It’s a rare example of a long, drawn out single which feels half the length of its actual playing time.

While the above may cause readers to conclude that “The Perfect Kiss” was a labour of love, in fact it wasn't - the track was recorded in a rush before they set off on tour. The only real clue to this frenzy lies in Sumner’s lyrics, which are even more half-arsed and disjointed than usual, offering fragmentary and contradictory ideas such as “Pretending not to see his gun/ I said let’s go out and have some fun” and “I know, you know/ we believe in a land of love” which never quite glue together in any meaningful way. Sumner later informed journalists that he actually didn’t know what the song was about and could only account for what inspired certain fragments, so it’s a series of torn up lyric book ideas thrown into the air, a jagged breadcumb trail of notions which ultimately lead nowhere.

Beyond that, it’s an unconventional and ambitious groove which may not have been as accessible as “Blue Monday”, but was certainly the first post- “Blue Monday” single to prove that the group still had the ability to produce something that was both epic and majestic – that it was obviously effortless for them to do so remains astonishing.

Both British radio and the record buying public seemed unimpressed, however, causing the single to be the first New Order single which wasn’t an import to fail to reach the Top 40. If Depeche Mode’s fortunes waned in the synth pop unfriendly mid-eighties, New Order’s crashed – Radio One, which later became a huge champion of the group, largely snubbed it despite its obvious strengths, turning their focus towards the slickly produced rock and soul of the day.

62. Depeche Mode - Shake The Disease (Mute)

One week at number one on w/e 25th May 1985

Synth-pop had been a dominant presence in the singles chart through the early eighties, with everyone from old hands (Kraftwerk) to populist pioneers (Human League, OMD) to latecomers and shape-shifting chancers spilling hits out of their keyboards.

1984 felt as if it had been, primarily thanks to Trevor Horn, the year of the Fairlight, taking the original pulsing rinky-dink tunesmithery to a grander, more explosive level. By 1985, though, strange things had begun to brew and the revenge of the “proper musician” was afoot. Most of the successful synth acts either took breaks, or went slightly mad and/or began to go off the boil, becoming exposed to reduced album sales and less prominent singles chart positions.

The number ones of the year tell a tale of huge productions and big ballads from mature artists with synths only being used subtly in the mix. Honourable exceptions here are Dead or Alive, Midge Ure and Eurythmics, but even in the latter two cases there was a sense of a slick maturity emerging; more emotive and less artful and playful (in particular, Ure’s “If I Was” contained lyrics somewhere between a couple of snippets of “Your Song” and a twee romantic Athena poster poem. It certainly meant nothing to me, anyway). 1985 felt like the year all the heartbreak songs and wedding slow dance songs were created en masse, with Jennifer Rush’s “The Power Of Love” doing the platinum honours for biggest selling single of the year.

Numerous factors (including Live Aid) have been blamed for this wave of earnestness, but whatever the true reasons, Depeche Mode were catapulting a fresh single into a strangely unsympathetic marketplace. When they launched in 1981, tracks with synths were almost guaranteed some attention, no matter how quirky, gimmicky or even experimental they were. By 1985, nobody seemed to want plucky electronic bedroom stars; they wanted old-fashioned pop stars again with serious session players behind them. A few seasoned performers seemed to relish this situation. “I don’t like Spandau Ballet or Depeche Mode”, Mick Jagger archly sneered on television at the time, seemingly mistakenly believing them to be similar acts (or people who gave a shit what he thought).

It was in this environment that Depeche Mode released arguably one of their finest singles, only to see it slowly crawl up the bottom end of the Top 40 to an undeservingly low number 18 peak. This state of affairs is one reason why its seldom heard these days; another is that it was orphaned from a proper studio album, instead being one of the two fresh tracks on their compilation “Singles 81-85”, released later that autumn. Shorn of a surrounding conceptual environment and used only as a teaser track for fans who already owned most of the band’s work, it’s always looked a little lost among their other releases.

The single feels like the first time the band have managed to celebrate and combine all their strengths. The gentle breathy intro feels as if it’s borrowed some of the pop shine of “See You”, but after a few bars of that we’re treated to harsher metallic clangs (possibly from a shopping trolley?) in the background, a pulsing, grumbling bassline, and a melancholic, minimal two note synth line. This is followed by Gahan’s opening line “I’m not going down on my knees begging you to adore me”, which sounds rather too drastically lovelorn, almost worthy of Jennifer Rush, until the context becomes clear: “I’ve tried as hard as I could/ to make you see/ how important it is for me”. This isn’t desperation on his part – it’s exhaustion. The chorus is clearer still: “You know how hard it is for me/ to shake the disease/ that takes a hold of my tongue/ in situations like these”.

Melody Maker’s Caroline Sullivan was quick to stick the knife into the single for this reason alone, describing it as the sentiments of “football hooligans as sensitive wimps” in a tart review (do football hooligans usually wear make-up and leather in the manner of Martin Gore, I wonder?) Even if the ideas expressed left her cold, though, the song blankets itself in some of the most complex arrangements of their career. The melodies constantly find new ways to twist themselves around the central hook, dropping out and re-emerging again with new force and intricacy, flowering with every repetition of the chorus rather than letting matters settle. By the point of the outro, the song feels ambitiously busy but not breathless, fading just as all the ideas unite. Even the shopping trollies sound somehow romantic when they’re up close next to that bold cello sound.