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.
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.
Peak position: 15
Peak position: 15
Week Two
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.
Peak position: 8
Peak position: 26
Week Three
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.
Three minutes of slide guitars, big boy angst and towering balladry from a group who almost sound too accomplished for the indie charts.
Peak position: 11
As the eighties progressed, Frank Tovey sought to drop his Fad Gadget moniker, perhaps seeing its novelty futuristic associations as a relic from another era.
The keyboards remain dominant here, but in common with that other synth pioneer Gary Numan, he appears to be veering towards the funkier side of the street. "Luxury" has fat basslines, shuffling rhythms and a pop surface shinier the jewels he sings about, but in all honesty, it lacks the strangeness of his earlier work and the hooks of his most successful labelmates, landing in a brightly produced no man's land as a result.
Peak position: 19
Peak position: 8
More spindly Twilight Zone post-punk from the macabre Things, soundtracking the bewildered thoughts of a child finding his dishevelled mother collapsed among sinister sounding household debris. "Mummy, have you been to the dogs, or have the dogs been here?" asks The Shend with concern.
It's marvellous, obviously, and possibly an even better single than "The Bushes Scream". Witty, daft, one-of-a-kind - although the group arguably owed a debt to sixties novelty exotica - yet strangely not in any way a throwaway novelty number. The lyrical descriptions of a household wreck are good enough to seriously get your teeth into once the jokes start to run flat, and the clanging discords will keep you baffled for weeks.
Peak position: 12
Week Four
26. Shop Assistants - All Day Long (Subway)
14. The Only Ones - Baby's Got A Gun (Vengeance)
Peak position: 14
For most the eighties, The Only Ones seemed to be the group to quote if you were a music critic who needed a cult act to pin your credibility on. Lead singer Peter Perrett was the kind of dreamy and dishevelled lead singer who fired the imaginations of everyone who wanted a fey seventies glam hero for the new decade, and the group's dreamy waywardness inspired tons of fevered press.
"Baby's Got A Gun" was actually their last single in 1983, and was reissued in 1985 for reasons which have subsequently become unclear. Its a cheap but persuasive dream which tutors a number of other indie bands how to sound like a star on little more than a budget of reimbursed money-off coupons - Perrett's mannerisms carry the song far higher than anyone else would manage. Sadly, due to personal complications he has only started to release material again more recently.
Peak position: 3
When I saw The Shop Assistants name in the chart rundown, my eyes widened. Oh, that lot. Why do we hear so little about them now? It's not as if other tuneful yet twee C86 bands didn't get to the formula first, but The Shop Assistants seemed to nail key components of at least half the groups that fell into our laps in the couple of years following the release of "All Day Long" - understated female vocals, simple backbeats. cheap guitars and unashamed poppiness. Their style was cribbed endlessly from groups like The Primitives, The Darling Buds, Talulah Gosh, The Flatmates and more besides, all of whom we'll be colliding with soon.
Sadly, their time in the spotlight was cruelly brief, offering the world only one album (which spent a solitary week at the bottom of the chart at number 100) and a low stack of singles, never fully capitalising on their promise despite signing a major label contract later. "All Day Long" is short (less than two minutes long), sweet and was declared Morrissey's favourite single of 1985. At the time, it also felt strangely fresh and new, bending lo-fi sounds in new post-Mary Chain directions.
Peak position: 20
Week Five
No new entries
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Number One In The Official Charts
Madonna: "Into The Groove" (Sire)
UB40/Chrissie Hynde: "I Got You Babe" (DEP International/ Virgin)
David Bowie/ Mick Jagger: "Dancing In The Street" (EMI America)
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