79. The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again (Rough Trade)

One week at number one from 7th June 1986

“I'm not going to drag people down anymore. Everybody within this curious profession has to do their own thing, however obnoxious that may be. And nothing I can say is going to change that. Besides, I've too many enemies. It's quite distressing. It's a bit of a strain because one is welcome almost nowhere. I don't want to go to parties or go skiing with Spandau Ballet or anything but still it's become quite tiresome, this constant barrier of hate.” - Morrissey, Smash Hits, January 1985

“We're still at that stage where if I rescued a kitten from drowning, they'd say: 'Morrissey Mauls Kitten's Body'. So what can you do?" - Morrissey – NME, June 1986.

The Smiths opened 1985 with their signature single “How Soon Is Now?”, but it was a peculiar and somewhat understated year for them otherwise (certainly in singles chart terms). “Shakespeare’s Sister”, that odd stepchild of a single, arguably over-performed sales-wise, but “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” failed to reach the Top 40 at all, and despite its exquisite warmth, the return-to-form effort “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side” didn’t push them back into the Top 20 either.

It’s impossible for us to guess at how Morrissey truly felt about his continued role as an antagonist and tormentor of the old New Romantics, although I suspect he privately enjoyed it; in other words, I’m reading the two quotes at the start of this entry as being so tongue in cheek that they’re in danger of disfiguring the side of his face. The Smiths were the kings of the IPC music press, adored by most of the groups in their royal orbit, and Morrissey was frequently overly generous with praise where his direct peers were concerned (unless you truly believe Raymonde, Easterhouse and Terry & Gerry were cruelly overlooked superstars at the time). The people he reserved his tongue-lashings for were the Proper Pop Stars – the beautiful boys and girls in Smash Hits who were unlikely to be backstage at a Smiths show. Slagging off Modern Romance and Duran Duran must have been a fairly risk-free endeavour, rather than making Morrissey the Larry David of rock.

What undoubtedly hurt Morrissey, however, was his status as a mere cult figure. It’s addressed on “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”, and his continued complaints about the group’s fringe status in interviews are notable. There was never a hint of staged angst, nor frequently any clever wordplay, when he came to the subject of the group’s marginal status in interviews. Despite the success of the “Meat Is Murder” album, Morrissey was not one to ignore the importance or the cultural impact of the singles chart or daytime radio play. Why be Al Stewart when you could be Marc Bolan?

Or even – why be T Rex when you could be The Rolling Stones? The groundwork for “Bigmouth Strikes Again” was laid by Johnny Marr whose initial riff was inspired by “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” before the lyrics were handled by Morrissey. It’s the first single since “William, It Was Really Nothing” to have a significant spike to it, a brio and a hook which screams in your face. Morrissey plays the wounded victim, but this time it’s very clearly for comedic effect. In fact, the lines “Sweetness I was only joking when I said/ By rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed” are almost too obvious, too try-hard – a protesting wail from an end-of-pier farce. The follow-up lines “Now I know how Joan of Arc felt/ As the flames rose to her Roman nose/ And her Walkman started to melt” are better, showing that however immediate “Bigmouth” wanted to be, he still had a keen sense of the absurd.

Behind him, Marr and the group play furiously. Marr’s guitar lines are an intricate, speedy rush as always, but it’s Mike Joyce who has one of the best moments on the record – the staccato rattling of his drums during the instrumental break sounding (unintentionally?) like the soundtrack to Billy Liar imagining himself machine-gunning another foe.

In fact, the whole damn thing is very Billy Liar-esque, Morrissey setting himself up as a comedic stooge rather than a wounded artiste – it suits him surprisingly well to be the self-parodying foil to the track as opposed to the unrecognised genius. The song itself, meanwhile, hammers and smashes in a way which almost recalls the height of glam rock.

78. We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It - Rules and Regulations (Vindaloo)

Number one for five weeks from 3rd May 1986

“Some people do think we’re stupid, but that’s quite understandable really, isn’t it? I can’t think why people would want to come and see us” – Vicky, Record Mirror, May 1986.

“I’ve got this theory that we’re actually providing employment, because if we can’t play our instruments very well, we have to employ other people, like orchestras, to come and do it. So in fact, it’s quite politically and ideologically sound not to be able to play very well.” – Mags, Record Mirror, February 1987

Those two quotes, taken nine months apart, probably say more about Fuzzbox (and their attitude to the world and the music business) than anything I could possibly throw at my keyboard for the next few hours. It’s no wonder some music journalists found them infuriating – it was the job of the eighties rock press to peddle the idea that music has importance in either a technical or “revolutionary” way; if a record isn’t competently or artfully performed, then it should be offending someone in its attempts to rebel (usually parents, the powers-that-be or “the straights”).

We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Going To Use It (we’ll call them Fuzzbox after this point; they chose that abbreviated name for themselves eventually anyway) fitted the bill in theory. The “Rules And Regulations” EP was their debut release on Robert Lloyd’s Vindaloo Records, and lead track “XX Sex” was, beneath its chaotically fuzzy clatter, straightforwardly political. “XX sex sex gets ex-exploited” they chant, referencing page three girls and ranting “Cookery and hookery/ Exploit desolation and isolation”. If Huggy Bear had released that one in 1993, nobody would have questioned it – they sound similar enough, with only Vicky’s surprisingly clear and powerful post-punk vocals setting them apart (she's the only conventional musical talent evident on the track).

Title track “Rules and Regulations”, however, was the one with the home-made promo video which ended up picking up most of the airplay, and continued the usual punkish themes of a bleak pre-mapped journey through life, including workplace alienation, and the obviously feminist reference to a husband who “tied you down so you’re housebound”. It’s the ace on the EP, containing pounding drums without the use of metalwork, a central buzzing riff, and a chorus chant which isn’t a thousand miles away from Adam Ant, but taken as a whole, it clearly owes much more significant debts to The Slits and X Ray Spex.

When journalists saw the promotional photographs of Fuzzbox with brightly coloured, electrified hair and thickly made up faces, they must have already written their articles before interviewing the group or getting any quotes. It seemed a simple case; more punk rock, more anarchy, angry young women desperate to be heard in a society which hadn’t given them a voice…

And yet Fuzzbox usually didn’t want to be drawn. They were too busy having fun. They openly sniggered on stage and gurned in their videos. Their politics were left-leaning, perhaps not atypically for an eighties band from a major industrial city like Birmingham, but they clearly hadn’t pored over Sociology textbooks seeking to justify their views to journalists; Easterhouse they weren’t. They had a tendency to regard themselves as ridiculous as the world they inhabited, and were far enough away from the initial impact of punk rock to be able to use bright hair dye and super strength hairspray and seem cartoonish, rather than menaces to society.

And yet – there was something strangely exciting and confrontational about all this anyway. Four women who were self-confessed musical amateurs, making a noise like that and having FUN, not attempting to justify their mere existence to the rock press? The very thought seemed powerful enough to propel this EP up the official national charts so that it peaked just one space clear of the National Top 40 – and only two spaces away from Freddie Mercury’s latest single - despite being released on a tiny indie label set up by the lead singer of The Nightingales (it’s notable that when Robert Lloyd decided to finance this initial release, some friends assumed he was having a mental crisis).

77. New Order - Shellshock (Factory)

Four weeks at number one from 5th April 1986

After four successive indie number ones from bands who had never graced the top spot before, here we are, back with the big boys on terra firma, gazing with wonder at their luxurious Peter Savile sleeves. Right from the start of this blog, New Order have had a dominant presence, scoring the eighth number one with “Everything’s Gone Green” then afterwards failing to reach the top (with a non-import release) only once.

Both they and Depeche Mode have been the two constant presences throughout, and that throws us a distinct challenge; whereas Depeche grew up in public and reacted against their earliest material in some interesting – and very occasionally misguided – ways, New Order eventually became (and indeed remain) comparatively staid fellows on vinyl. Dressing up games and intense, friendly interviews with the media were not their thing; the group’s lack of tolerance for the latter was summed up neatly when Peter Hook roared with laughter at an innocent business question following the collapse of Factory, then said “You journalists. You think you know it all”.

What that leaves us with is the recorded evidence and its gentle, unforced evolution (yeah, I know - the fiends) and also the reaction from outside their fanbase, which tended to vary from bowled over (“Blue Monday”) to frankly indifferent – their previous single “Sub-Culture” failed to even get inside the National Top 60.

“Shellshock” marks something of an about-turn in their declining commercial performance. Possibly helped by its appearance in the “Pretty In Pink” soundtrack and the fact that it wasn’t available on any other album, the single returned them to the Sunday chart rundown with a number 28 peak. Perhaps mindful of the fact that they’d pushed the twitch and groove of modern club music into the background of their more recent singles, they collaborated with producer John Robie whose 1983 club hit “One More Shot” they had admired.

It subsequently becomes the basis for “Shellshock” without a single riff being wholly lifted; but its ghost is there in that jerky, propulsive beat, in the continued sense of peril and danger (though it eschews the broken glass noises, which perhaps felt as if they were tempting fate on the dancefloor). The cries of “One! More! Shot!” get replaced by the blare of “Shellshock!” and the track stammers into life, introducing the symphonic touches New Order were always compelled to use when they were at their most ambitious. Picked strings meet autumnal, world-weary melodies, thrashed guitars, a stuttering drum machine and one of their most powerful and purposeful choruses in a long time. While I prefer the “Substance” edit of the 12 inch for taking the correct decision to cut the most hesitant verse and leave it on the studio floor, ten minutes doesn’t necessarily feel too long for this track. It has enough drama and enough of a groove to hold its own.

What it also has throughout is a noticeable itchiness and irritation. New Order singles were very often led by Sumner sulking about life’s personal disappointments like a moping child – a tendency some critics were keen to mock. “Shellshock” positively bristles, though, with Sumner discovering he can actually growl. Listen to the almost Jon Bon Jovi-esque snarl of “Another day goes by and ALL I do is cry”, or the finger-stabbing delivery of “All I get from YOU is Shellshock”. This isn’t an insolent, murmured objection behind the privacy of a closed bedroom door. It’s the sound of a tin can being hurled down the street, a young adult man’s stomp loud enough to get the neighbour’s curtains twitching.

76. Half Man Half Biscuit - The Trumpton Riots (Probe Plus)

Two weeks at number one from 22nd March 1986

If you love neatly splicing things into sub-genres, and you feel very strongly that groups and artists have clear "neighbourhoods" which cannot be disputed, here’s where things get awkward. Way back at the end of 1984, The Toy Dolls climbed to number one in the indie charts with “Nellie The Elephant”. Not only was that the last major punk hit in the National Charts, I was also going to argue that it was the last big gasp of the Punk Pathetique sub-genre of Oi! Except…

There are critics and punk fans out there who will argue that Half Man Half Biscuit are part of that Gary Bushell adjacent patch. I can’t find any evidence to suggest that the group referred to themselves as such, but even if they didn’t, these views exist. The counter-claims against them are obviously numerous; the differences between The Toy Dolls, The Test Tube Babies, Splodgenessabounds and Half Man Half Biscuit couldn’t be more obvious. The Splodges looked quite striking in their own way, but indulged in facile dingbattery. The Dolls were/are hyper, whacky, squeaky and cartoonish, overgrown excitable children kicking each other’s tricycles whose handlebars were smeared in melted chocolate. 

HMHB, on the other hand, were – and are – another prospect altogether. Dour, scruffy, despondent, moping and despairing they may have been, but they often churned out comedic lyrical phrases which seemed anything but lazy and effortless. Their debut album “Back In The DHSS” was a shambling cornucopia of observations about children’s television, ageing comic actors (Bob Todd) and “Give Us A Clue” approved national treasures (Nerys Hughes, Una Stubbs, Lionel Blair), spliffs and snooker referees (Len Gangley). Punk Pathetique? I'd argue their styles and methods bore more resemblance to their fellow city-dwellers and beat poets The Liverpool Scene (give "Baby" a virtual spin to get the idea). 

The album was recorded as the test-run of a new eight-track facility in Liverpool where Nigel Blackwell worked as a caretaker following seven years of unemployment. “The caretaker’s band”, as they were somewhat disparagingly known by his colleagues, were allowed to give the desk its first dummy run and the album was recorded for the mate’s rate of £40. They handed the resulting tape around to record companies more in hope than expectation; Factory Records politely and predictably passed on it, but local record store Probe picked it up for their backroom label.

“Back In The DHSS” has a slightly rushed, demo-level sound as a result of its thrifty beginnings, but that only works in its favour. The underproduced sounds collide perfectly with lyrics which provide endless hints to Blackwell’s lifestyle (and possibly the band’s) – his world is one of front room televisions being switched on in the daytime at the height of summer, the heavy curtains fully drawn to stop the sun’s rude interruptions. Spliff and tobacco smoke hang in the air, while he sits on a pouffe passively absorbing the day’s televisual offerings, occasionally getting frustrated but feeling too powerless and groggy to even change the station. Trumpton comes on. He laughs his first stoned giggle of the day, imagining the central characters to be dabbling with drugs. We've all been there. 

As a result, the album felt as if it accidentally found three target markets – students, the unemployed, and stoners. All were able to recognise themselves in these beaten-up novelty folk-punk ditties, able to not only laugh along but rub their eyes in despair. Here’s where the punk pathetique comparisons fall apart; The Toy Dolls and Splodgenessabounds were celebrations of stupidity and passive consumption. HMHB seemed, consciously or otherwise, to be wanting to walk away from it but found they were snookered at every turn, empty-pocketed prisoners to the worst of eighties light entertainment culture.

They were also strangely obsessed with the gentle stop-motion children’s programme “Trumpton”, which besides forming part of the album in “Time Flies By (When You’re The Driver Of A Train)” (“speeding out of Trumpton with a cargo of cocaine”) now became the backdrop to their debut single “The Trumpton Riots”. In many respects, it’s more of the same, except perhaps even more lo-fi. 

75. Shop Assistants - Safety Net (53rd and 3rd)

Three weeks at number one from 1st March 1986

At the time of writing this, I’m ploughing through Justin Lewis’s marvellous book “Into The Groove”, which performs the unenviable job of trying to tie together the hundreds of narratives around eighties music. How you remember the decade probably depends an awful lot on a wide variety of factors besides the big headline events – how old you were, where you lived, how much money you had, and ultimately what mattered to you most; the microscopic silk threads that weave in a dizzying number of directions. 

It’s not that the eighties is the decade where audience fragmentation becomes the norm, but you can just about see the 21st Century and its cornucopia of unmixed, niche experiences on the horizon. Underground and DIY movements, started by people with perhaps more ideas than financial sense, and invisible to most but their small target audiences, began to feel more viable. For club music, urban pirate stations cropped up which were avidly followed by those in the know, creating surprise hit singles for artists nobody in the mainstream media (apart from the likes of James Hamilton) were writing about. Numerous low-budget indie labels, fanzines and club nights also popped up, all collectively pushing a roughly shared agenda and creating a scene which could see a good single by a relatively new band selling 10,000 copies with only minimal bites of mainstream exposure.

Amidst the avalanche of short-lived indie labels around the period, 53rd and 3rd is one which seldom seems to get written about, despite having an enormous cultural clout for a couple of years, almost exclusively releasing records by the kind of groups we would refer to as “indiepop” these days (and far ahead of bigger cult labels like Sarah Records).

Launched in Scotland in 1985 with Stephen McRobbie (of The Pastels), David Keegan (of The Shop Assistants) and Sandy McLean (of early indie Fast Product) running affairs, their sleeves were amateurish and none-more-indie, usually consisting of smudged designs in two colours. The contents inside matched the artwork, being simple, frequently fey, cheaply recorded and sometimes scratchy pop tunes performed by usually very young or naive bands. Their roster, if you could call it that, is essentially everyone any self-respecting indie kid of the era has heard of; Talulah Gosh, BMX Bandits, The Vaselines, The Pooh Sticks and Beat Happening all at least passed through. Their catalogue numbers usually began with AGARR, which stood for “As Good As Ramones Records”, thereby solidly etching a firm ambition on all their output, right in the middle of the run-out grooves.

For Stephen McRobbie aka Stephen Pastel, the enterprise might have been motivated by his recent experiences on Creation Records (although we’d have to ask him). His group had recently been booted off the label alongside a number of others during an Alan McGee organised clear-out, partly motivated by criticisms from his artists about what the label now represented and how he was handling their affairs. If Creation had once seemed like a convenient safehouse for oddballs and mavericks, the artists residing there had perhaps not appreciated how ambitious McGee truly was, which became only too apparent during the Jesus & Mary Chain’s first run of success. He suddenly stopped being the over-excitable man who folded single sleeves with his friends and associates until the early morning, and instead became a sunglasses-at-night wannabe McLaren figure.

53rd and 3rd backed completely away from grand statements and kept themselves firmly on the amateur side of the street. Despite this, their first release “Safety Net” quickly climbed to the top of the indie charts, and unlike The Sisterhood or Easterhouse before it, remained there for more than one token week, far above the current Depeche Mode single “Stripped” and also outpacing new contenders such as The Wedding Present and The Mighty Lemon Drops. 

It was, despite their amateur aesthetic, a strong opening statement for the label. The Shop Assistants had been slowly building up an audience since 1984 with releases on various labels, and their previous single “Shopping Parade” had peaked at number 3 in the indie listings. The group – a mixed gender quintet – had also spent some of 1985 benefitting from national support slots with Jesus & Mary Chain, bringing them to much larger audiences than they would have experienced had they been stuck on pub bills with the Jasmine Minks or A Witness. On top of that, their work and live shows were cut through with a bonhomie which didn’t seem fake; without seemingly even trying, their interviews, video clips and even the records themselves made them sound like a joyful gang of people who could be your new best friends. In underground circles, where bands toured the country bumping into the same fanatical individuals in Norwich, Leeds and Bristol, that mattered. There was a sense of belonging. 

If you were so minded, you could see “Safety Net” as being a very cynical move as a result. “Lucky you’ve a safety net/ lucky you’ve somewhere to go,” the song begins. The indiepop community was by this point becoming tight and solid friendships were forming – like most small music based cults, it contained people who may only have had a few slabs of vinyl and a surplus of idealism in common, but that seemed like enough to forge lasting bonds. The opening lines, then, could be addressed to the “lucky people” in the audience. “Afraid of dying and afraid of life/ But wishing we could stand around the stars again,” lead singer Alex Taylor sings again later on, addressing the simultaneous neuroses and child-like wonder of a lot of their fans.

It would be harsh to call it calculated, though. Musically, it’s poppy and sweet but undercut by the thorny scrape of cheap guitars and a bare, Mary Chain-esque backbeat. It couldn’t be trying less hard. If it’s an anthem, I’d argue it gets there by chance rather than strategic manoeuvres, purely by sharing themes common to twenty-somethings in an increasingly harsh economic environment.

74. The Sisterhood - Giving Ground (Merciful Release)

One week at number one on w/e 22^nd February 1986

When we last visited the NME Indie Number One spot, we bore witness to a group riding the wave of some arguably unjustified hype with a nonetheless marvellous single. If Easterhouse have since become largely forgotten, nobody could fairly begrudge them their one moment in the sun. “Giving Ground”, on the other hand, is a bird of a different feather, a one-off indie hit created through gossip and confusion with some of the public potentially not understanding who the group even were.

The Sisters Of Mercy began to have some serious wobbles while recording their second (aborted) album, the prophetically and provisionally titled “Left On Mission And Revenge”. Guitarist Wayne Hussey offered a series of songs to Andrew Eldritch for potential inclusion, all of which were promptly rejected by either Eldritch or guitarist Craig Adams. Eldritch then put forward his minimal ideas, one of which, according to Hussey, consisted of just one chord. Adams and Hussey promptly left the group due to the usual (and in this case not inaccurate) claim of “musical differences”, and formed their own group The Sisterhood, announcing their plans to the music press and releasing news of a forthcoming live show and radio session with Janice Long.

Eldritch, however, was rattled by this, seeing the name The Sisterhood as a deliberate continuation of The Sisters of Mercy brand, which all parties had agreed not to use after the group’s dissolution. As a result, he considered his limited options, and decided to put a single out using that band name himself – later stating in Melody Maker that they “patently had to be stopped. And when they wanted to be called the Sisterhood, there was nothing I could do but be the Sisterhood before them – the only way to kill that name was to use it, then kill it.”

He promptly registered a company under the name and spent five days recording the single “Giving Ground”, playing all the instruments himself and giving lead vocal duties to recent Merciful Release signing James Ray (of James Ray & The Performance) to avoid any contractual complications.

Meanwhile, Hussey and Adams were left at a sticky wicket, and had to record their Radio One session under the ungainly pub rock name The Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams Band, reverting to the name The Mission at the end of February. Eldritch responded with a press release stating “We assume that their choice of name is entirely unconnected with the forthcoming Andrew Eldritch album that for some months has had the working title ‘Left on Mission and Revenge’”. This might have suggested further legal brouhaha was to follow, but fortunately the bickering stopped there (in public at least; Hussey has since said that various solicitor’s letters still circulated in private).

This soap opera played out in the press and on the airwaves across a number of weeks, and gave both parties more gossip column and news section inches than they would ordinarily receive – for some reason, there is little music fans enjoy more than two stubborn, egocentric band members at loggerheads with each other. Such things are usually the preserve of rock monsters rather than cult goth bands who had yet to score a single hit, but the subsequent publicity seemed to drive fans into record stores out of curiosity. As well as those swept along by the press, there may also have been a few confused fans in the mix who thought they were buying Hussey’s new record due to his earlier announcement.

And what were these unfortunate souls getting for their money? Not much. “Giving Ground” suffers from being a rushed creation recorded with a strategy, rather than a strong creative outcome, in mind. Opening with a minute of Numanoid synths before introducing a somewhat tedious bassline and basic drum machine track, it takes an indulgent two minutes to bring Ray’s vocals properly into the mix, which are hesitant and slightly too bright, failing to sell the idea (such as it is). The song then spends seven-and-a-half minutes going nowhere in particular. You wait and wait for something to emerge – a chorus, a change of mood, a rush of adrenalin or fury, or even some ambience - but the track bumps along the seabed, a flatulent seacow mooing along a dull, non-divergent course.

73. Easterhouse - Whistling In The Dark (Rough Trade)

One week at number one from 15th February 1986

Regardless of their claims otherwise, the “serious” music press have always been just as susceptible to hype as glossy teen magazines. Unlike Smash Hits and their metaphorical "dumper", however, they have often been more coy about their failings, crowing about their successes while hastily burying their dud predictions. The itinerary of NME hopefuls whose subsequent careers were either cruelly brief or never got off the ground is long; from Department S to Gay Dad to Terris to Brother (all of whom were cover stars) sometimes it's been hard not to wince at the risky long shots or desperate decisions.

As 1985 drew to a close, Easterhouse began to be sold as a solid proposition. Formed by brothers Ivor and Andy Perry in 1982, their credentials were impeccable – the group's association with The Smiths was strong, beginning with a Manchester support slot in 1983, and Morrissey and Marr had loudly proclaimed their brilliance to anyone willing to listen. The band also gave socialist diatribes to a music press happy to run over the word count for such things, and their first two Martin Hannett produced singles on London Records, while poor sellers, indicated a charged yet serious band.

Despite having all these credits on their side, London Records didn’t feel it was worth the effort investing further and dropped them, leaving them to be rescued by Rough Trade where, somewhat miraculously, the press enthusiasm continued unabated. One listen to “Whistling In The Dark” gives the game away as to why; this is an incredibly good and staggeringly robust record. It opens on a swinging Motown beat which subsequently dominates throughout, but that beat is augmented with hard, heavy guitar sounds – walloped metallic bass lines meet rhythm guitar lines which sound as if they’re echoing around a steelworks. “Let’s get to the point/ Get to the heart of it” bellows Andy Perry at the start, making it immediately clear that this was a band for whom toughness and directness were seen as virtues.

In a world where a band’s presence in the indie charts increasingly meant either deeply experimental music or delicate whimsy (or in the case of the Cocteau Twins, both) “Whistling” suggests that the powerful ideas birthed by punk rock weren’t necessarily exhausted. The music press were quick to suggest that Easterhouse may be Rough Trade’s Clash to The Smiths’ Pistols as a result, but in reality the bark and swing of the track feels as if it owes a bigger debt to The Jam; there’s the same strident, hectoring edge combined with a muscular but nonetheless irresistible delivery. 

Just when you think the track has shot its load and made its point, the final few moments turn out to be among the finest – “Don’t get caught the same way twice/ You give them money for old rage” yells Perry and the group completely let loose, thrashing, jangling and upping the dynamism past the point you thought it possible for them to go. It is, in short, a fine single and one I still play to this day.

Despite this, Easterhouse’s problem in the long term was multi-faceted. Firstly, a straightforward political punk revival clearly wasn't going to happen; even Paul Weller didn't want his records to sound like The Jam by this point. Besides that, the mid-eighties were a confused period in the music business, and nobody at either Rough Trade or any of the major labels seemed to effectively predict the way the wind was blowing. One of the common bets being placed by journalists and A&R reps was that if alternative music was going to crossover, it was going to have to adopt mainstream arena rock's production values and delivery. Throughout 1986 and slightly beyond, groups such as Goodbye Mr Mackenzie and Love And Money took the attitude and the sound of the alternative sector but turned their noise on vinyl into something airbrushed, vast and blown out. In the mid-eighties, any indie band getting signed to a major may have ended up sounding faintly like Big Country or Simple Minds in the end.

1986

Well, what other image did you want me to use to illustrate this entry? British Alternative music in 1986 was, after all, synonymous with the NME’s C86 cassette – a ragbag of independent sounds ranging from the unapologetically light-hearted, cheap and jangly (and some would also argue “twee”) to the utterly demented and Beefheart influenced. From Byrds approximations on your kid brother’s Argos catalogue guitar followed by A Witness thrashing discords and screaming hysterically about sharpened sticks and then early Grebo, the tape was a rather broader tent than it’s often given credit for. 

It’s been reissued on vinyl and CD numerous times since and eventually became shorthand for a certain kind of sound (generally the indiepop end of the spectrum), though rival music magazines to the NME preferred other labels; Record Mirror, for example, slightly sneeringly but consistently called many of the artistes “shambling bands”.

C86 is really only half the story, though. The tape didn’t emerge until May, and while the NME were happy to brag about their ability to underline the best DIY and homebrew talents across the land, it took a while for that hype to sink in. The first half of the 1986 indie charts therefore feel, in places, like a continuation of the year before; lots of earnestness, angularity and anarchic noise dominates, though the likes of the Wedding Present, June Brides and The Shop Assistants put in early bids for the near future.

Goth rock also sweeps its way right across the charts like a thick, black housepaint brush through the year, with the old hands continuing their schtick while forceful newcomers such as The Mission and Fields Of Nephilim emerge who would make more significant commercial breakthroughs. Their close cousins in the Industrial movement also shouldn’t be entirely dismissed; they don’t cross over at this stage, but they certainly make their presence felt.

Above all, though, to me 1986 feels like the first chart year I completely understand. Listening to the playlist on the right hand side of this page (more than 100 songs long, so please do click through to Spotify) I’m whisked back to John Peel playing on the kitchen radio, ten second snippets of fascinating noise appearing on the Chart Show Indie Chart rundown on Channel 4, and the music press featuring pictures of dorky kids with guitars strapped across their chunky jumpers. I can almost smell the ferric tape as I pop another cassette into the stereo to record a known favourite off late night radio. For me, this is where things start to get really interesting. For others among you, it may possibly act as a jumping off point. 

It will also become noticeable just how much competition there now is for the number one spot in the indie charts. Whereas previous years have sometimes felt like a coronation exercise for the half a dozen crossover artists who dominated at any given time, now it's thrown wide open for excitable newcomers on tiny bedroom labels, as well as the New Orders, Depeche Modes and Cocteau Twins of this world.

As for 1985, let’s wave goodbye with one last look at the playlist below. 

(If you're struggling to access them due to Spotify's strange "upstream" issues, the 1985 playlist can be found here, whereas the 1986 one is here).

71/72 - Cocteau Twins - Tiny Dynamine/ Echoes In A Shallow Bay (4AD)

Tiny Dynamine – number one for one week on w/e 7th December 1985

Echoes – number one for seven weeks from w/e 14th December 1985

Tiny Dynamine – number one again for one week from w/e 1st February 1986

Echoes – number one again for one week from w/e 8th February 1986

My Mum was idly browsing through the charts in my copy of Record Mirror in 1985 – uncharacteristic behaviour for her, but you’ll have to trust me on this one – and kept muttering the same group’s name as she went through the indie section. “Cocteau Twins” she murmured. “And there they are again. And again. And again. David, do you know this group? I’ve never heard of them but they’re all over these charts in here. They’re doing very well”.

Sometimes flippant comments made by people who aren’t invested in a band or genre reveal truths, and indeed, the Cocteaus were an utterly unshiftable force in alternative music in 1985. Unlike the Morrisseys, McCullochs and (Robert) Smiths of that world, though, their presence was often only felt through mentions in the music press, plays on evening radio, and their largely unintentional farming of the indie listings. Their records frequently slowly drifted around both the singles and album charts, gumming up the works and leaving long, murky pastel trails.

The absolute peak of this phenomenon occurred at the end of 1985, when 4AD saw fit to release two of their EPs in quick succession. Both “Tiny Dynamine” and “Echoes In A Shallow Bay” were recorded in short order as the group tested the facilities of their new recording studio, producing results they felt were good enough for public consumption in the process. The two records were not particularly stylistically distinct and could easily have been mashed together to create a mini-LP without losing any coherence, and history doesn’t record why the EP approach was taken instead.

Even if you didn’t already know that the songs featured here began life in a laboratory-like, testing environment, it becomes clear that something fresh is afoot almost immediately. Whereas previous Cocteaus singles had a sense of openness and vastness, particularly their previous release “Aikea-Guinea”, with both these records you feel – or at least I feel (never assume!) - as if a glass dome is being pulled over the group. The production begins to take on a radiated indoor warmth as thick basslines meet airy but artificial sounding washes. It’s hardly Dire Straits, but there’s a precision and slickness to the sound which causes you to imagine wandering around an empty shopping mall where only brief glimpses of natural light are seen through occasional tiny windows on the edges. The rest is strip lights, potted plants and tasteful muted colours.

You can hear this particularly strongly on tracks like “Pale Clouded White” on “Echoes”, where the ambient whine of treated guitars constantly linger in the background like the gentle echo of unoiled machinery, or on “Great Spangled Fritillary” where the background instruments approximate creaks, clicks, groans and distant foghorn blasts rather than providing any traditional anchor. In a sense, this is industrial music, but it sounds nothing like Foetus. Instead, it cuddles up to the machinery, accepting it as a tool which can be something other than a weapon.

It’s not as if “Tiny Dynamine” offers anything vastly different. The epitome of the phenomenon can possibly be found on there first, the instrumental “Ribbed and Veined” offering artificial cricket clicks alongside hazy muzak hums, occasional touches of wow and flutter, and a steady, unchallenging backbeat. If anything, this track almost sounds close to the modern idea of Vaporwave, where relaxing, smooth melodies meet cavernous echoes and badly recalled memories of the wonders of the eighties indoor shopping centre; it’s just that while those songs generally veer towards the bright and even groovy, “Ribbed and Veined” is closer to the music you hear in a jammed elevator just as the place is due to close for the evening; a gentle, unobtrusive thing wobbling its way towards the unintentionally nightmarish. Nor is the Cocteau’s music ever as straightforward as some dork pushing a few Garageband effects buttons over a loop of an instrumental break from some dinner party soul album.

70. The Cramps - Can Your Pussy Do The Dog (Big Beat)

Three weeks at number one from 16th November 1985

Of all the groups to visit the NME Indie Number One spot, The Cramps have been the slowest to peak so far (unless we count Robert Wyatt). Formed in 1976, their wait for a stint at the summit position – and indeed a debut within the UK National Top 75 – feels sluggish to say the least. If it were any other veteran punk group, you would assume it was something of a Toy Dolls situation; a freak novelty breakout hit pestering the peak slot.

The Cramps were a strange group, though; their obsession with trashy, furious old school rock and roll and B movies made them seem a heavy influence on the psychobilly scene, which by 1985 was only just shifting downwards from its 83/84 peak. Then their proclivity towards PVC stagewear and even on-stage nudity, plus the use of heavy make up and the aforementioned horror flicks, gave them an appeal to the more vampish goths. Punks also appreciated the high-paced attacks they threw into all their songs, and then there were weirdos like Mark E Smith who appreciated them purely for being fellow outsiders.

Alan McGee was also a fan, and when they inevitably signed to Creation in the mid-nineties, bouyed up by the label’s influx of Oasis cash, I was astonished by all the number of my friends who suddenly came out of the woodwork saying they’d always been fans. Once again, the sexier and camper goths, anarchists and leather jacketed rock and roll boys who rolled their own tobacco nipped down to the local record shop to buy “Naked Girl Falling Down The Stairs”. “Ha ha!” a friend of mine barked delightedly on learning of the title. “You couldn’t get a more Cramps song title than that”.

I’m in danger of making them sound like a gargantuan cult, though, one of those bands who accidentally pulled in so many freaks and art school kids that they were a constant Top 40 threat. That’s far from the truth. The Cramps played the club circuit and lived in the cracks and airless caverns of society, supported by a loyal fanbase but never making sense to quite enough people to come close to being called a phenomenon.

In 1985, “Can Your Pussy Do The Dog” proved to be the closest they’d come so far to a breakthrough, and given that, it’s surprising how much of a step backwards it sounds. It has the same wide-eyed swaggering rock vocals of The Damned in their punk prime, a similar hollow, under-produced yet heavy duty whack to last year’s psychobilly movement, and very faint echoes of The Fall at their rawest and scratchiest (in other words, the group The Fall had ceased to be). The key thing to remember when pulling these various similarities together, though, is The Cramps were on the opposite side of the ocean in New York while all these things were occurring in Britain. The psychobilly scene owed them a debt, and similarities to any other punk bands were usually either coincidental, or entirely due to transatlantic admiration of their work.

69. The Cult - Rain (Beggars Banquet)

Two weeks at number one from w/e 2nd November 1985

Back in the days when such things commonly existed, I sometimes wrote for a radical politics and music fanzine called “Splintered”. I haven’t kept any of my copies, but from memory, it was a ragbag of rants, reviews, articles and occasionally heartfelt opinion pieces from people with nowhere else to sensibly place their grievances; like most zines in that era, if somebody had a bee in their bonnet about anything from body image to the fact that Gaye Bykers on Acid had signed to a major label, the well-meaning editor often gave it the green light, typing it up then cutting, pasting and photocopying it into that fuzzy, washed out grey copy common to such organs.

One opinion piece in “Splintered” had such a lasting effect on the impressionable teenage me that I would quote it to friends endlessly. It talked about the rapid passing of time, and the way that youth wasn’t a period of life to be drifted through. Why, it argued, it’s literally the only period of your life when you’re likely to have the Energy to Experience new things and the gumption to create, so Do It Now. Pick up the pen, the guitar or the paintbrush – or even all three! - at once, or end up becoming one of those old, crabby no-marks who either did nothing, or has only just started to try, and has found out that in the winter of their lives, they are flapping, empty binbags with nothing left to say.

There were a number of individuals the article could have picked on to prove its point, but for some reason it zeroed in on Ian Astbury for particular abuse, pointing out that he had started his career as an innovative, considered lyricist for a sharp and original post-punk band, then reached his late twenties and found himself capable of little more than some monosyllabic “yeahs” and “babes”. What a disgrace he now was, we were told, and what more evidence did we need of the undignified effects of the ageing process, which removed all poetry from the soul.

I wonder what the author of that piece thinks now he’s in his fifties (or possibly even his sixties). I hope he’s kinder to himself, and also gentle to every other writer who is still compulsively Just Doing It and never knew how to stop.

Should he have been kinder to Ian Astbury? When Southern Death Cult first emerged in 1982, there was definitely something primitive and spiky about the group, the hard right angles of the rhythm section meeting Astbury’s commanding howls. His lyrics couldn’t really be described as poetry, but fulfilled the dank, morbid brief the group’s austere clattering provided him; the frame needed to be filled with theatric wordplay rather than flowery verse.

As the years progressed and the group’s membership changed, The Cult simplified not just their name, but their whole approach – gradually, at first, then by the point of “She Sells Sanctuary” the metamorphosis was complete. The Cult became not “just” a rock and roll band – they didn’t look like another Motley Crue, Poison or Twisted Sister, and they certainly didn’t sound like them either – but certainly something closer to one than not. For all the flowing goth clothes and mystic hand shapes they displayed onstage, their reliance on anthemic riffs, almost meaninglessly simple lyrics and the good, solid thunder of a reliable backbeat became central. They emerged from the confused tarpit of early British goth and ended up somehow influencing Guns N’ Roses. It seems an unlikely story.

If “She Sells Sanctuary” was a glorious mix of everything great about the commercial and underground aspects of mid-eighties rock music, “Rain” is just Desert Rock – an attempt at a rousing stomper tailor-made for a video featuring the band rolling through an arid landscape in a jeep (in the event, the promo defies your expectations and just sees the group pouting and throwing shapes on a studio stage set, so obviously Beggars Banquet’s budget didn’t stretch to a shoot in the outback).

Lyrically speaking, its complete rock conservatism, riddled with cliches - “Hot sticky scenes/ you know what I mean”, begins Astbury, “I've been waiting for her for so long/ Open the sky, and let her come down”. The rest of the song just repeats the lines “Here comes the rain”, “I love the rain”, “here she comes again” and the words in the first verse over and over, making it deeply minimalistic. Clearly the lyrics do their job and allow the listener to forge an accurate impression, but they’re so effortless as to be almost childlike.

68. The Smiths - The Boy With The Thorn In His Side (Rough Trade)

Number one for three weeks from w/e 12th October 1985

Many journalists and media pundits will tell you that Morrissey’s lyrics are supposed to strike you “at an impressionable age”. The cliched image is of the confused teenager, plain, lonely, probably bullied at school, spots on his or her chin oozing a custard-like substance, listening to The Smiths alone, hearing words from a man they believed felt the same.

NME and Melody Maker journalists tended to pull these ideas out of their hats mockingly, though it’s hard to understand why. Most people’s teenage years are confused, bewildering and ghastly, and it’s not as if most of the journalists working for those papers would have been immune from that (odds on that most of them were classroom underdogs for most of their schooldays).  I didn't hold Morrissey up as an understanding idol, though; I loathed him as a teen and looked for any group or performer, anywhere, who was holding up a bright primary coloured sign with “Way Out” printed on it. I didn’t want to wallow in my situation, I wanted promise and to be told there was escape.

Escape finally came in the form of sixth form college (not all I’d hoped it would be), university (closer to what I’d expected, but not quite) then… oh shit. Seemingly I hadn’t quite worked out the next step yet. Or perhaps I thought I had, but I’d chosen some of the toughest career options imaginable, and none were working out. Each year led me into dingier and grimmer circumstances, until by my mid-twenties I was in such a volatile situation that a number of people had to do their best to both bail me out and pull me back together.

It was at this point that “The Boy With The Thorn Is In His Side” got plucked off a Smiths “Best Of” and played by me again and again, the words “And when you want to live/ How do you start?/ Where do you go?/ Who do you need to know?” ringing in my ears a lot. My own negative disposition was also addressed by the song, as I upset friend after friend with my frustrations and misdirected anger. Did I, for a few months, think I was the character in the song in the same manner the average, unimpressive fourteen-year old thinks they’re the man with the punctured bicycle in “This Charming Man”? Probably. Was I at least ten years too old to be wading around in these waters? Certainly.

Life is seldom straightforward, but in complete truth, there were escape routes open to me I could have taken if I hadn’t been both too stubborn and too proud. I also had a distinct inability to recognise my own strengths and privileges and turn them to my advantage (if I’d actually been more honest in my phone calls home to Mum and Dad, for example, I think help would have been forthcoming). Imagine my surprise, then, when years later I found out that the main inspiration behind “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side” was Morrissey’s frustration about how he wasn’t yet a proper pop star, and The Smiths were locked outside the establishment’s drinking clubs, awards ceremonies and ballrooms. Oh the fucking irony.

By the time this single was released, The Smiths were having a shaky spell. Their last single “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” hadn’t entered the Top 40, and while the pop world of 1984 seemed to at least tolerate Morrissey’s unorthodox behaviour and camp spikiness, 1985 was as unkind to him as many of the other alternative groups we’ve covered here. It allowed him space in inky periodicals largely read by students and young twenty-somethings, but interest among the glossy magazines and prime time radio and TV shows was beginning to shut down. They’d all distilled Morrissey into a basic and unflattering black and white caricature - a pale, sexless, vegetarian streak who was hardly about to turn on the horny teenagers or suddenly write a smash adult album like “Brothers In Arms”. There was just not enough cash or glamour in the quiffmeister.

At the point of this single’s release, Smash Hits gave him a front cover, but he shared it with Pete Burns of Dead Or Alive, and the accompanying interview saw the pair of them camping it up like two ageing actors in an end-of-pier farce (they both seemed rather quick to subsequently distance themselves both from the final printed article and each other).

“It’s a big step for us, doing this piece together,” Pete Burns said. “We could have done it for The Sun”. No they couldn’t – both their careers seemed on the wane and a tabloid wouldn’t have run it unless they came out as lovers.

If ever a promotional step underlined a central problem, and even accidentally revealed the focus of “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”, it was that. Morrissey’s grievances in the song entirely related to his own misgivings about where he expected to be at this point in his career (a central cultural figure) and where he was potentially sliding. No matter that The Smiths were one of a handful of alternative bands in with a shot at getting chart hits in 1985, and regardless of the fact that he had already achieved more than most of his peers could dream of, it wasn’t enough. Morrissey was not a man to consider his strengths and privileges either; being something of a success wasn’t the aim. He needed the adoration huge success could bring him. His “murderous desire for love” was all about ambition.

If that makes the single sound like a self-pitying indie take on Dudley Moore’s parodical “Love Me”, Johnny Marr once again picks golden threads out of the frustrated, tightly pinched embroidery. The guitar line isn’t just wonderful, it’s almost too beautiful for such a self-serving lyric; like one of Maurice Deebank’s most stunning runs for Felt pulled apart, slightly simplified and repeated, it becomes almost the focus, softening the message and making the indulgence deeply human and relatable. If the lyrics read bare and without melody seem like a tantrum, Marr turns them into a tight hug from an old friend. It’s a piece of spin so marvellous that you’ll rarely encounter anything so transformative outside of party politics, and it’s indicative of how well the Morrissey/Marr partnership worked.

67. Depeche Mode - It's Called A Heart (Mute)

One week at number one on w/e 6th October 1985

From about 1983 until the end of the decade, it felt as if every Christmas came accompanied with a Big Present; the desirable item that someone in my family (not always my parents) decided to treat me to that year. One year I hit the jackpot and got a home computer, a treasured Commodore 64 which kept me company until the space bar literally fell off it. Other years I was given brilliant gifts whose value I didn’t always appreciate at first sight – as with 1985, when I unwrapped an unpromisingly small parcel and a dolby equipped Sony Walkman fell out.

“Wow, that’s nice!” I said, before quickly moving on.
“But it’s a Sony Walkman!” my brother said. “Aren’t you excited?” (luckily the present buyer was not in the room at this point).
“Yeah, like I said, it’s nice!”
“It’s more than nice, that’s a fantastic Walkman!” he continued to protest, almost offended by my mild enthusiasm. “I’d love one like that!”

My casual enthusiasm was due to the fact that I already had a radio/cassette player upstairs and couldn’t understand the difference. I soon came round. Also among my presents were two albums I’d wanted for months – Art Of Noise’s “Who’s Afraid Of…?” and Depeche Mode’s “Singles 81-85”. I pushed the button down on my new Walkman and pressed play, straight into “Dreaming Of Me”… and BANG. The pulse and throb of the drum machine hammered around my head in pristine, shiny audio. Every deep bass note and synthetic twitter, breath and pulse felt as if it was plugging right into my heartbeat, blocking out the rest of the world and creating a slick, digital soundtrack for my daydreams.

Both the tapes and the Walkman barely left my side for weeks afterwards, and I familiarised myself with Depeche Mode’s singles like a scholarly monk, sometimes eating breakfast and lunch in the kitchen while they played, deaf to the humdrum family world (this period of my life was excellent heavy advance research for this blog, you could say). “Singles 81-85” is structured chronologically, which with a lesser group could be a mistake and might involve frontloading their flops and fumbles first, causing the listener to lose interest after the fifteenth minute. As Depeche emerged surprisingly well-formed and carefully produced for an indie group, what you got instead was a band slowly morphing before your ears as they go through adolescence (literally and metaphorically) and decide who they really are.

When Vince Clarke leaves after “Just Can’t Get Enough”, there’s no jarring change, but a noticeable shift in priorities as the digital bops and squeaks get slowly replaced by more lingering ambient textures. Then industrial sampling emerges by the point of “Everything Counts”, then suddenly they become a harsher, noisier group in 1984 – in common with many others at the time – before landing on “Shake The Disease” and finding a way of making all their influences cohere with beautifully and admirably intricate production and songwriting.

That wasn’t all, though. “Shake The Disease” was only the first out of two non-studio album tracks on the compilation. The second one, and the final track overall, was this single, which slowly drifted into my ears doing a spitting, hissing and huffing synthetic impersonation of a groovy stream train; how very disco of them. Then the bass burps emerged, the rhythms twitched, the song sprang into life, Dave Gahan sang “There’s something beating here inside my body and it’s called a heart!” and I found myself thinking… oh. Is that it? Is this the finale, the curtain closer on the first act of your great career?

When put up against the last two years of the group’s work, which under these circumstances you’re given no choice but to consider, “It’s Called A Heart” is a perplexing backwards shift. It’s lyrically coy and unbelievably simple; there’s no questioning of God or pondering the complexities of human relationships here, it’s all about putting your trust in someone romantically, just like so many other pop songs before it. “Hearts can never be owned/ hearts only come on loan” sings Gahan, like a speak-your-Clintons-Valentines-Card machine. The group jitter and bug in the background, sprightly and peppy, and they do a good job of approximating the adrenalin rush of fresh romance, but there’s nothing truly impressive going on here. We’ve all been led to believe that pop music is never “just” pop music, but there will always be middling moments where it ends up being little more than a happy jingle to make the day go by faster. While a top-of-the-range Sony Walkman isn’t merely “nice”, sometimes that’s all the singles you play on it are – competently delivered slices of mild catchiness.

If “It’s Called A Heart” feels like a surprisingly retrograde step, some hints were present in the interviews the group did to promote it at the time. Andy Fletcher and Martin Gore talked about the process in “One Two Testing” magazine in October 1985, and a sense of under-investment and uncertainty shines through. Each band member and producer Daniel Miller got a vote on what should be the next single from a demo tape Martin Gore provided them with.

66. The Woodentops - Well Well Well (Rough Trade)

Three weeks at number one from w/e 14th September 1985

In the Microdisney documentary “The Clock Comes Down The Stairs” – and indeed in some of the press interviews that surrounded its premiere – the group regularly mused on why they weren’t successful. The incendiary behaviour of their frontman Cathal Coughlan is frequently overlooked as an explanation in favour of other factors, such as the fact that The Smiths were dominating Rough Trade’s attention in the eighties.

I’m sure that this is largely true. Rough Trade were a small independent label often operating on creaky financial footing, and had to put the most money down on their leanest, speediest horse rather than gambling their lot on unknown quantities. The Smiths were certainly their prize filly, but what’s interesting is absolutely nobody in the documentary mentions The Woodentops, who were also rapidly catching up on the outside lane and were also stealing Rough Trade's attention.

The group, it seems, have largely been forgotten even by people who were actually in their vicinity at the time, but were distinct press favourites and earmarked as probable contenders even in the trade press. Rolo McGinty had previously unsuccessfully auditioned as the bass player for the Teardrop Explodes, and like that group, had a faint air of both the New Wave pop star and the magic mushroom guzzling hippy about him. His pixie-ish bopping made him a great English frontman in the Barrett/ Bolan tradition, while the group’s cocktail of influences made them a unique prospect.

McGinty’s rounded middle class English vowels met with frequently folky lead acoustic guitars, which mixed and matched with hyper post-punk tribal drums and squealing keyboards. The angular woodiness to their sound can’t have been unprecedented, but it felt simultaneously accessible and yet odd; the only real prior comparison I can think of is Unit 4+2 at the frantic and faintly psychedelic tail end of their career (give their final 45 “I Will” a spin to hear what I mean, but don’t ignore the better flipside). Even they never truly pushed the boat out this far, though.

McGinty made the approach sound very simple in a 1986 interview with “One Two Testing”, explaining “[There are] lots of different kinds of shapes but there's always this acoustic guitar and lots of backing vocals so it always has that kind of folkiness… The music of the drums, the bass, electric guitar and the keyboards is almost like a dream behind the acoustic guitar so the vocal and guitar are like Bob Dylan leaning against a tree, singing a song and the band is like a dream of the backing that's going on inside Bob Dylan's head when he's singing.

"He's not hearing this acoustic guitar, he's hearing this orchestra or something and he's singing with that. The acoustic guitar is just keeping his rhythm for him.”

They clearly weren’t approaching things from an orthodox direction, but the results could be astounding, and “Well Well Well” is marvellous. If you haven’t heard it in a long time, refreshing your memory is a valuable exercise – for one thing, it’s more intense than you remember, sounding polite and joyful but also faintly threatening. Rolo often sounds taunting while singing “Baby I know you like my way so wrap my soul and take it away” in the chorus, and the band pound, clatter and rattle like an old diesel train in danger of getting derailed behind him. It’s a steep downhill journey towards the buffers, or perhaps, in reality, towards a likely lady’s lap.

Usually when groups pick up acoustic guitars to enchant someone of the opposite sex, it’s done so with embarrassing displays of earnestness and passion rather than mischief, which is another way the group subvert expectations here. The fact that while doing so, they have a killer skiffling hook in the mix (Terry and Gerry would have undertaken unspeakable and possibly criminal dares to own this chorus) and know exactly when to stop is a sign that none of this is random, despite Rolo’s jazzy vagueness about their methods. It just feels eccentrically plotted, but unlike the off-kilter experiments of a lot of indie acts, it’s a scheme that Pops rather than jars.

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.