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.

51. March Violets - Walk Into The Sun

Three weeks at number one from w/e 11th August 1984

Back in my teens, I was a member of a twee indie trio who augmented their contemplative janglings about strange teenage girls and rainy days with a cheap Casio drum machine. We knew no drummers, saw no obvious way of getting acquainted with any, and in any case, we didn’t have and couldn’t afford a suitable rehearsal space to put a full drumkit in.

The band’s principle songwriter was strangely defensive of the crappy machine, though, constantly trying to make out it was a unique selling point rather than a hinderance, and had worked out ways of making it sound more interesting; piling on the reverb and ladening it with odd effects. I stood playing bass alongside the shuffling, precise, echoing thump and hiss of this digital steam engine and felt increasingly that this wasn’t what being in a rhythm section should be about. The other two members had each other to trade off and lean on – I had a machine I hated which just winked at me with one red LED eye. I obviously whined about this far too much, as one day they just stopped telling me when rehearsals were taking place.

Further back still than that, in the early eighties in the Leeds area, all kinds of goth-adjacent groups were choosing not to put little cards in the windows of music shops asking for drummers (or if they did, nobody replied). Sisters Of Mercy, Rose Of Avalanche and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry all decided this was a distinctly unnecessary and hassle-filled pre-eighties extravagance, and March Violets followed suit. The cavernous thwack of the drum machine therefore became synonymous with a particular brand of northern Goth rock, the lamp black musings of those groups always being anchored in place forcibly by that precise, immovable and sometimes unshifting rhythm pattern.

I’ve made my personal experiences plain from the outset here not as an excuse to waffle on about my embarrassing teenage years in groups – I barely give a shit about them now, so I fail to see why you should - but as a clear conflict of interest. I always hated the bloody machines in a rock context and now when I hear one on a professional rock recording, I often can’t get past it. The problem with drum machines wedded to anything predominantly guitar based is you’re usually going to have to work very hard to make a limitation sound like a positive feature.

The March Violets started, according to member Tom Ashton, as a “reaction to all the synthy pap that was filling the Top 40. We wanted to dance but we were also still punk rockers at heart. And we couldn’t be bothered to audition drummers, so we did what we did!”

Besides the fact that I obviously inwardly sighed when I read the slagging of “synthy pap”, there’s nothing wrong with this ambition it’s just – well – how do you dance to this single? To be fair to the group, they are ambitious with the beatbox. It shifts and changes and approximates a live drummer fairly decently throughout, but you can still tell. There’s a measuredness to it, a pulse without frills or fills or spontaneity. The guitars chunter and clang alongside it, and the added feature of the shifting but fussy beat just makes “Walk Into The Sun” sound leaden, too heavy to cavort around the dancefloor to, but also too far away from Proper Rock to mosh or throw yourself around.

Let’s not completely lose focus, though. More than many of their compatriots, The Violets have a distinctive sound of their own here, pulling politely away from theatrical doominess and towards something that almost allows some daylight in. You can hear it in singer Rosie Garland’s careful and almost gleeful annunciations during the chorus, or in the almost celebratory burst of sax towards the end. “The sun machine is coming down/ and we’re going to have a party” they declare, ripping off Bowie but at least making their intentions pretty clear. “Walk Into The Sun” makes it sound as if the kids in black were having a whale of a time after all.