It’s another bountiful Indie Basement, with reviews of new records by Fever Ray, Sleaford Mods, Ulrika Spacek, La Luz‘s Shana Cleveland, H. Hawkline, Frankie Rose, Super Furry Animals offshoot Das Koolies, and former Fall guitarist Brix Smith. That’s more than enough for one week.

But if somehow it is not enough, Andrew reviews MSPAINT, Manchester Orchestra, and more in Notable Releases. This was also a monster week for news: The Cure announced their North American tour (and Robert Smith remixed Noel Gallagher); two Indie Basement faves, Protomartyr and Baxter Dury, announced new albums; and I was knocked out by Weyes Blood’s current live show.

If you’re in NYC this weekend, the New Colossus Festival is upon us and I have some suggestions for who to see, and if you’re in Austin next week for SXSW, come to our free day parties.

If you’re in the mood for physical media, the Indie Basement corner of the BV online shop has vinyl, books and merch from Stereolab, Love & Rockets, The Raincoats, King Gizzard, Cocteau Twins, Grant Lee Buffalo, Sleaford Mods, Belle & Sebastian, New Pornographers, Naima Bock, Protomartyr, Mogwai, The Flaming Lips, and lots more.

Head below for this week’s reviews…

ALBUM OF THE WEEK #1: Fever Ray – Radical Romantics (Mute)
Collaborators on Fever Ray’s terrific third album include Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, and her brother and former Knife partner, but Radical Romantics is 100% Karin Dreijer

“We don’t come with a manual,” Karin Dreijer sings on “Looking for a Ghost” from their third album as Fever Ray, in a voice mutated by effects overtop ticking percussion, like a wind-up mechanical doll. Love is strange and it takes a lot of work to keep it aflame, a theme that runs through the entirety of Radical Romantics. If 2017’s Plunge was Dreijer, newly out and embracing the wonders of the heart, then this is the tough job of keeping it going after passions have cooled and the realities of life seep back in. Reality is a loaded word in Fever Ray’s world, full of distorted voices and unsettling characters (even moreso in their videos), but for all the creepy noises, Radical Romantics presents a lot of recognizably human emotions at its core. Love, anger and everything in between, all filtered through Dreijer’s distinctive style.

Dreijer enlisted the help of a number of musical collaborators on Radical Romantics, including Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross (Karin’s a fan of their Watchmen soundtrack), Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia, Johannes Berglund,  Aasthma (Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik), Vessel, longtime collaborator Martin Falck, and Karin’s brother and former partner in The. Knife, Olof Dreijer — all of whom bend to Karin’s will, making for a very cohesive LP. “The difference to me is that I get to have the last say on everything when it’s my track. I am directing much more,” Karin says on working with Olof again for the first time since 2013’s Shaking the Habitual. “With the Knife, it’s super, super democratic. We start together and we do everything together. Here, I had the songs and lyrics and melodies when we started.”

Unsurprisingly, the four songs written with their brother that open the album are the most Knife-like, especially the slinky standout “Kandy” which has synths that recall the steel drums all over 2002’s Deep Cuts, and the harrowing “What They Call Us” that might’ve fit on Silent Shout. Reznor & Ross contributed to two songs, one of which, “Even it Out,” is a takedown of a real life school bully worthy of Lydia Tár. “There’s no room for you,” Dreijer fumes over a steely, pummeling beat. “And we know where you live!”

While most of the album is more mood than movement, there are a couple proper bangers, chief among them Vessel collab “Carbon Dioxide” which features enthusiastic “Woos,” strings that swoop in seemingly from another song and, believe it or not, elements of Henry Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk.” It’s Radical Romantics‘ unabashed love song and dancefloor filler that also encapsulates the album and its many emotions in a single track. “Holding my heart,” she exclaims over scintillating techno backing, before completing the line, “while falling.”

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ALBUM OF THE WEEK #2: Sleaford Mods – UK GRIM (Rough Trade)
England’s going down the tubes but Sleaford Mods have never sounded better. Perry Farrell and Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw join the party.

Somehow, defying all music industry logic and the normal rules of rock and pop, UK duo Sleaford Mods — Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn, both over 50 and on album #8 — just keep getting better. Maybe it’s their metier; as long as there are idiots in charge to rail against, Williamson will never run out of bile, and Fearn will never run out of beats. Their home country is often the subject of their ire, but this time it’s specifically focused on the state of the nation, from the title down. “The UK is like one of those crazy golf courses, where you’ve got a windmill, and then the next one is a stately home and the next one is a bridge,” Williamson told The Guardian. “All we’ve got left are landmarks and characterizations of who we are, and examples of our architecture.”

England has been on metaphorical fire since at least Brexit, but so are Sleaford Mods who are at their hilarious, angry and profane best on UK GRIM. They’re trying to make sense of the last few years, and when there’s no sense to be made, creative swearing and insults do just fine. The title track, which is best experienced via its animated video made by satirical collagist Cold War Steve, comes in hot, working in everyone from a shirtless Vladimir Putin to shortlived British PM Liz Truss. “In England no one can hear you scream,” Williamson spews. “You’re just fucked, lads.”

It’s not all Boris Johnson and cronies, though, with Williamson painting a grim, darkly funny portrait of day-to-day life during Covid lockdown. “Apart from You” is a post-punk jam about getting by hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck; “PIt 2 Pit,” over a machinegun bassline, has Williamson looking in the mirror and coming face to face with his vintage clothes addiction; and “DIWhy” looks at our too-online world, Twitter specifically. Then there’s “Smash Each Other Up,” which takes the Mods into eerie, atmospheric territory, a late night tale of post-COVID rage, quiet on the streets until things explode.

“Smash Each Other Up” is also a showcase for Fearn’s ever-growing skill as a producer. Once happy to give WIlliamson bass-and-drum loops to rant over, UK Grim finds him working in increasingly nuanced melodic territory and clever, surprising arrangements, like “Force 10 From Navarone,” which features Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw, and sounds like dubstep Young Marble Giants.

Shaw’s hilarious, dry witted delivery makes a wonderful foil to Williamson’s phlegmatic barking, and she fits perfectly into Sleaford Mods’ world. Not quite as obvious is Perry Farrell who does a b-minus Mods’ impersonation but provides great backing vocals on the chorus of “So Trendy,” a nonetheless instant classic in their discography. Sleaford Mods seemed like a novelty, a gimmick to some when they started over 10 years ago, but have continued to persevere and evolve through tenacity and exasperation. With the world not running out of idiots in charge, probably ever, don’t expect Williamson and Fearn to go away any time soon. Thank fuck.

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ALBUM OF THE WEEK #3: Ulrika Spacek – Compact Trauma (Tough Love)
London quintet revel in the sound of inventive guitars on their first album in six years, also their best to date

In the year 2023, are guitars boring? Of course not, but for the sake of my own dumb argument I’ll say it depends on whose hands they’re in. (Obviously also true for any instrument, even the pan flute.) In London band Ulrika Spacek’s hands, guitars swoop and soar, sneak and creep, caress and roar. Frontman Rhys Edwards and bandmates Adam Beach and Joseph Stone are cut from the same cloth as Doug Martsch, Bradford Cox, Thurston Moore/Lee Ranaldo, and the Radiohead of your choice, working within rock and pop boundaries but still finding new things to do with their instrument and excited by the possibilities. Compact Trauma, the band’s first album in six years, plays off the promise of their 2018 Suggested Listening EP and is a glorious guitar record where even the two-minute songs feel epic, loaded with inventive riffs and clever filigrees. The album is very much a band effort, of course, with bassist Syd Kemp and drummer Callum Brown all adding to the wonderful, frequently thrilling din. The album opens with its best song, the swaggering “The Sheer Drop,” which swings from sultry cool to wild noise and back, all with big hooks and a stick-in-your-head chorus. Compact Trauma maintains its quality levels over the remaining nine songs, taking us through jazzy pop (“Lounge Angst”), dark romance (“If The Wheels Are Coming Off, The Wheels Are Coming Off”), and more epics (“Stuck at the Door”) before going out on the beautiful, dreamlike title track. Guitars? Here are 10 reasons to be excited.

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Shana Cleveland – Manzanita (Hardly Art)
The La Luz leader’s “supernatural love album set in the California wilderness” is another bewitching treat

As much as I enjoy La Luz’s albums — their 2021 self-titled fourth album is wonderful — the spectral folk bandleader Shana Cleveland makes on her solo albums is even better. Her debut, Night of the Worm Moon, was one of 2019’s more underrated albums and she’s now followed it up with the equally bewitching Manzanita. Named for the evergreen shrub that grows in California and is known for its medicinal properties, the record was made while embracing motherhood and beating breast cancer. “This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness,” Cleveland says. These 14 songs are alive with mellotron strings, otherworldly pedal steel, desert wildlife and insects, big skies and bigger hearts. Cleveland’s breathy voice is the perfect delivery device for it all.

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Frankie Rose – Love as Projection (Slumberland)
Frankie switches guitars for synths on her first album in six years, but her main instrument remains her voice.

Frankie Rose got her start playing drums, joining (and quitting!) Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts and Dum Dum Girls in rapid succession and was in many ways all three group’s secret weapon. (Vivian Girls in particular; she wrote their catchiest song.) She went solo in the early 2010s, first in the dark garage mold of her other groups and then flirted, less successfully, with modern electronic R&B on 2017’s Cage Tropical, but her true instrument is her voice and way with harmony. That was evident all the way back on that Vivian Girls song, “Where Do You Run To,” and her ability to stack vocals on a big hook remains impressive on all of her records. She may have found the perfect vehicle for that with her fourth solo album, Love as Projection, that sets her voice and songs in lush, noirish synthpop arrangements. She’s working again with Cage Tropical producer Jorge Elbrecht. but the gothier production suits both of them much better. They wisely avoid going full-’80s, making for an album with one foot in the past and the other in the future, with those harmonies connecting it all. With Love as Projection, Frankie Rose has found her voice.

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H. Hawkline – Milk for Flowers (Heavenly)
Cate Le Bon associate H. Hawkline makes his best record yet

Huw Evans (aka H. Hawkline) and Cate Le Bon have been in each other’s orbit since they both started writing songs in Cardiff, Wales. They also used to be a couple, and when they were living together Huw encouraged Cate to play her songs in public, and came up with her stage name (a nod to Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon). They moved to Los Angeles together in 2012 and broke up not long after, realizing they were always better friends than partners, but have kept working together since. Even if you didn’t know all this backstory or could see the the credits for their albums, you could feel it. Huw and Cate are of the same strange green world, intertwined. They also play on each other’s recordings, and Cate has produced all three of H. Hawkine’s albums for Heavenly, including Milk for Flowers which is his best yet. Made at the legendary Rockfield Studios just outside Cardiff, it’s also his least obtuse record to date, still decidedly odd but nothing a Bowie fan wouldn’t understand. The wonderful title track plays like a bizarre world version of Todd Rundgrun’s “I Saw the Light” (I bet Todd would dig it), while “Athens at Night” is mushroom tea glam featuring a wonderfully wigged-out guitar hook. If you’re already a Le Bon fan and haven’t checked out H. Hawkline, you need to complete this puzzle.

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Das Koolies – The Condemned (Amplify / Strangetown)
What would Super Furry Animals sound like without Gruff Rhys? Pretty great, it turns out

Das Koolies are a “parallel band” of Super Furry Animals that includes guitarist Huw Bunford, keyboardist Cian Ciarán, drummer Dafydd Ieuan and bassist Guto Pryce — that’s everyone except frontman Gruff Rhys. It’s an idea they’ve been threatening to do for years and they finally made it a reality in 2020, releasing debut single “It’s All About the Dolphins.” Three years later, slowed a little by the pandemic, they’re back with their first EP. The sounds are familiar, the mix of rock and electronics, but take away Gruff’s distinctive melodic and harmony style, and add in Cian and Bunf’s vocals and everyone’s songwriting, Das Koolies have a very different feel. The closest parallel would be 2005 SFA album Love Kraft, which featured songs from every member of the band, but this is actually more successful. Love Kraft suffered  because, by that point, fans had expectations of what an SFA record should sound like, and the other members’ lead vocals could never quite match Gruff’s; but without the SFA banner hanging over it, it’s easier to enjoy it all for what it is, a very fun, very creative 22 minute trip. What Das Koolies do share with their other band (still together, just hibernating) is a sense of playfulness. Seven-minute Welsh language track “Dim Byd Mawr” (“No Big World”) is a wild ride that goes from Giorgio Moroder electro-disco, into space rock and then back to the club for a bit of squelched out acid house before a Beatlesque finish. It’s brilliant. If the other three songs don’t quite hit those heights, they come pretty close. Cian’s keyboards are the real star here and if you wished the Furries had done more electronic music, like the intro to Phantom Power‘s “Slow Life” for instance, The Condemned is a bit of a “What If” fantasy realized. While I would really love for Super Furry Animals to make another album (surely they will), I hope Das Koolies make one too.

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Brix Smith – Valley of the Dolls (Grit Over Glamour)
The former Fall guitarist, and ex-wife of the late Mark E Smith, releases her first-ever solo album

A California native, Brix Smith met The Fall’s Mark E Smith on their 1983 tour and within days had joined the band, and not long after that married MES. Her time in the band, 1983 – 1989, is one of the most beloved periods of The Fall and she co-wrote many of their all-time best-known songs. Her pop sensibilities also gave The Fall actual UK chart hits. After leaving The Fall and divorcing Smith, Brix formed jangly group Adult Net, who released one album, The Honey Tangle, in 1989. She then spent time in the touring lineup of The Bangles and almost joined Hole (she was in the band for one day) before rejoining The Fall briefly in 1994-1995. After a 1997 solo EP, Happy Unbirthday, she gave up rock n’ roll, trading guitars for clothes as a fashion retailer.

Old habits die hard, though, and Smith began playing again in 2014 with Brix & The Extricated, which featured her former Fall bandmates bassist Steve Hanley and drummer Paul Hanley, and had them doing Fall classics, mainly for fun. Her ex-husband’s passing, along with writing a memoir, sparked the songwriting bug again, and here we are with her first-ever solo album. For it she worked with Killing Joke bassist Youth, who has made a career recently of producing post-punk comebacks, and the album includes contributions from Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles and Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama, Shakespeare’s Sister). “What came out here was probably the album I’ve been waiting to make since I was 15 years old,” Brix told Uncut, *but through the lens of a 60-year-old!” She can still write a hook, and describes Valley of the Dolls as a mix of Hole and The Breeders, but the album feels more like late-’90s commercial alt-punk. For someone who changed the sound of The Fall and went toe-to-toe with MES, this could use a little more post-punk personality.

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Creation Records’ 21 Best Records

21. Biff Bang Pow! – Oblivion (1987)

Alan McGee wasn't just the head of Creation Records, he was also one its musical artists, involved in a few projects over the years, including Laughing Apple, Revolving Paint Dream and his longest-running group, Biff Bang Pow! that also featured, at various points, label co-founders Dick Green and Joe Foster, as well as Primal Scream's Andrew Innes. Oblivion, the second of two albums Biff Bang Pow! released in 1987, is the group's best record, full of the sort of jangly pastiche psychedelia you'd expect from a band that, like his label, were named after '60s beat group The Creation. McGee's a better songwriter than he is a singer but his fey vocal style works just fine on terrifically titled tracks like "A Girl Called Destruction," "The Only Colour in the World is Love" and "She's Got Diamonds in Her Hair." The band's other 1987 album, The Girl Who Runs the Beat Hotel, is worth checking out too and contains the band's best-ever single, the Andrew Innes-sung "Someone Stole My Wheels."

20. Various Artists – Creation Soup Vol 1-5 (1990)

Most people associate Creation Records with their '90s heyday of Oasis, Primal Scream, Ride, Super Furry Animals and My Bloody Valentine, but the label's first five years were full of singles from jangly, '60s-inspired bands who most people have probably never heard of, most of which were only released on 7". In 1990 Creation gathered them all up for a five volume CD set. McGee notes that "The first twenty came in hand folded sleeves which Joe Foster and I used to stay up and fold all night four or five times a week." They include great early singles by Primal Scream, Felt, The Loft, The Weather Prophets, The Jasmine Minks, The Pastels, House of Love, Biff Bang Pow!, The Bodines, and more. Noticeably absent from these, though, is the label's breakthrough -- The Jesus & Mary Chain's 1984 debut single "Upside Down" (due to rights issues). Creation Soup is still a fascinating look at the formative years of a label that would become an indie powerhouse.

19. The Jesus & Mary Chain – Munki (1998)

The Jesus and Mary Chain's 1984 debut single, "Upside Down," turned the UK indie scene upside down with its then-novel approach of taking a Phil Spector-eque pop song and wrapping it in pummeling noise and feedback. It also put Creation Records on the map, paving the way for House of Love, My Bloody Valentine, Ride and many more of the label's most famous groups. JAMC made the leap to Warner Bros immediately after this single but Creation founder Alan McGee stayed the band's manager, and JAMC quickly became alt-rock stars. By the late-'90s, though, Jim and William Reid felt chewed up and spit out by the music industry and weren't getting along with each other so well, either. If Warner had lost interest in the band after five albums, McGee had not, and welcomed the Reids back to Creation with open arms. Bookended by the supercatchy "I Love Rock N' Roll" and tinnitus-inducing "I Hate Rock N' Roll," the sprawling, 17-track Munki plays like a career retrospective, including buzzsaw pop, semi-acoustic numbers, duets with Hope Sandoval, and dissonant noise jams. Munki served as a great final word on the JAMC...till they reformed and made a new album 19 years later.

18. The Loft – One Round the Fair (1989) / The Weather Prophets – Diesel River (1988)

You can't really tell the story of Creation Records without including Peter Astor, the label's first shining star, who wrote charming, literate songs with his Television/VU-esque bands The Loft and The Weather Prophets. (The Loft's original name was The Living Room, which was also the name of Alan McGee's pre-Creation London club night; Astor changed it to avoid confusion.) Astor also had a face meant for magazine covers, as well as a fine if not exceptional Tom Verlaine-esque voice that probably kept his groups from crossing over into more mainstream success. Not that Creation Records' Alan McGee didn't try. The Loft broke up before making a full length record but their excellent singles "Why Does the Rain" (which Astor recorded with The Weather Prophets, too) and "Up the Hill and Down the Slope" are among Creation's best early singles and, along with the b-sides, make up compilation Once Round The Fair. Astor and Loft bandmate Dave Morgan formed The Weather Prophets who continued in much the same direction, releasing three albums that never quite captured the magic of the band's Creation singles, most of which are collected on Diesel River (though your best bet is 2004 best-of comp Blue Skies & Free-Rides).

17. Adorable – Against Perfection (1993)

Making their debut with the undeniable "Sunshine Smile," Adorable were initially lumped in with the shoegaze scene, because almost everything on Creation in 1992 was kinda shoegaze, but the band were closer in spirit to House of Love's textured, romantic pop than My Bloody Valentine or Swervedriver. They owed a lot to the Pixies and The Wedding Present, too, held Echo & The Bunnymen in the highest regard, and Fijalkowski had no shortage of big hooks and mile-wide choruses in his arsenal. Their debut album, Against Perfection, is one of the great, underrated UK indie records of the early '90s, jam-packed with memorable melodies, roaring/chiming guitars, clever/heartfelt lyrics and lots of swagger. The American release, via SBK records, betters the UK version by adding "Sunshine Smile" and another early single, "I'll Be Your Saint," alongside killer album cuts like "A to Fade In," "Homeboy," "Favorite Fallen Idol" and "Still Life."

16. The Jazz Butcher – Fishcotheque (1988)

With the Jazz Butcher's mid-'80s albums for Glass Records, which featured a band that included bassist (and ex Bauhaus member) David J, The Jazz Butcher (Pat Fish) had gained the reputation for whimsical indie a la Robyn Hitchcock. Signing to Creation, Pat started a new version of the group with collaborator Kizzy O'Callahan, intent on changing his image. That makeover began with 1988's Fishcotheque, one of his best albums that showed a new, more serious side to The Jazz Butcher. "I was keen to get as far away from all those 'w, words that had followed my group around," Fish wrote later of the album, "to make it as clear as I could that this was a rock & roll thing, not some 'eccentricity.' I had my shades and I had my fringed suede jacket and I had the Weather Prophets rhythm section." Witty without being wacky, Fishcotheque is loaded with great songs, including the punky "Looking for Lot 49," the wistful "Swell" and "The Next Move Sideways," terrific pop number "Let's Get it Wrong," and one of his best-ever songs, "Susie," which features Sonic Boom on feedback. Pat didn't entirely abandon his "w" side, though, which rears its head on "Living in a Village" and vegan rap song "The Best Way" (which isn't as kooky as it may seem).

15. Momus – The Tender Pervert (1988)

Named after the Greek god of satire and mockery, Momus (aka Scottish artist Nic Currie) was Creation's most idiosyncratic artist on record*, writing almost exclusively about sex and death but in a high-minded style that was likely to quote the bible or ancient literature, and playing in a style somewhere between Donovan and Jacques Brel. (Most eccentric in real life: Felt's Lawrence.) As the '80s went on, Currie would incorporate Pet Shop Boys-style synthpop into the Momus sound. The Tender Pervert was his first real flirtation with drum machines, and was a deeply twisted, angry record fueled by disgust with Margaret Thatcher's response to the AIDS crisis. "I'm so furious about this that I decide that, if gay people are not only dying but being gagged by the government while dying, it's up to straight people to promote homosexuality in their place," Currie wrote reflecting on the record. Momus is at the height of his witty, erudite powers here on tracks like "The Angels Are Voyeurs," "The Homosexual," "A Complete History of Sexual Jealousy (Parts 17-24)" and the elegant, complex "Bishonen." Currie is not wrong when he writes that The Tender Pervert is "my best and most definitive album" -- it's also the best place to start for this artist who is definitely an acquired taste.

14. Swervedriver – Ejector Seat Reservation (1995)

Swervedriver were one of the best groups of the original shoegaze era, but by 1995 interest in the genre in their home country (and label, Creation) had fully moved on to Britpop. Unlike some bands (Ride, Lush), Swervedriver stuck to their guitar pedals while trying to expand upon their sound with their third album, Ejector Seat Reservation. It was still heavy, but there was an equal emphasis on melody and maelstrom, adding elements of Bowie and Bolan to the mix, not to mention a string and horn section. It's Swervedriver's best album and loaded with memorable songs, including pile-driver "Bring Me the Head of the Fortune Teller," the poppy/heavy "The Other Jesus," elegant first single "Last Day on Earth," and soaring closing cut "To the Birds." Unfortunately there was no time to celebrate: Creation Records dropped Swervedriver the week after Ejector Seat Reservation was released and deleted the album from their catalog, making it for years the band's hardest-to-find album.

13. Saint Etienne – Good Humor (1997)

Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs formed Saint Etienne in 1990 as a way to mix their obsession with '60s and '70s pop, R&B, soul and reggae with the indie dance and rave culture that had taken over the UK at the time. They originally envisioned the group as having a different vocalist for every single, but that changed when they met Sarah Cracknell, and Saint Etienne became a trio. After three albums of sample-based dance pop, Saint Etienne changed course, and decamped to Malmo, Sweden to make a full-band album with Cardigans producer Tore Johannsen at his famed Tambourine Studios. Armed with a group of crack session musicians, Good Humor is unlike any other record in Saint Etienne's catalog before or since, working in elements of exotica, acid jazz and Beach Boys/Phil Spector wall of sound pop. While Saint Etienne's previous albums had been released by Heavenly Recordings through Creation, Good Humor was the first -- and last -- to be released by Creation proper. Singles "Sylvie" and "The Bad Photographer" were both Top 30 UK hits and Good Humor remains Saint Etienne's biggest seller in the US (where it was released by Sub Pop).

12. The Boo Radleys – Giant Steps (1993)

Liverpool band The Boo Radleys began as one of the noisiest of the '90s shoegazers, with some songs on their 1991 Creation debut, Everything's Alright Forever, sounding like a garbage truck in a rockslide. But deep down, guitarist Martin Carr was a lover of the classics -- The Beatles, Kinks and other late-'60s psychedelic pop -- and that side of him was ready to emerge. The watershed moment was the title track of 1992's Lazarus EP which took a roaring, anthemic melody and built it up slowly with an extended, dubbed-out intro. It's one of their best-ever tracks. "Lazarus" turned out to be the first taste of what would be their magnum opus -- the boundary pushing, Coltrane-referencing, appropriately named third album, Giant Steps. Noise and hazy effects still rang through songs like "I Hang Suspended," "Butterfly McQueen," "Rodney King - Song for Lenny Bruce" and "Take the Time Around," but nothing was obscuring the massive hooks Carr loaded the songs with. There were also just straight-up pop songs like "Wishin' I Was Skinny," "Barney and Me," and "If You Want it, Take It." It's a record that, in its own way, is every bit as ambitious as Screamadelica or Loveless, and one that opened Creation's door for Britpop's coming surge. "I felt that everything was moving towards this big pop thing," Carr says in David Cavanagh's The Creation Records Story. "Loads of bands -- young bands with guitars -- were getting into the charts. Blur were getting there. Suede were having hits. We didn’t sell that many records with Giant Steps but everyone was dying to see what we were going to do next." Next would net them a massive UK hit single -- 1995's "Wake Up Boo!" -- but Giant Steps is still their finest hour.

11. Super Furry Animals – Radiator (1997)

Oasis may have been Creation's biggest selling act of the '90s (by a mile) but, pound for pound, Super Furry Animals were probably the best. The band were proudly Welsh, not afraid to sing in their native tongue, and wildly creative, with a wide anarchic streak. Their terrific 1996 debut album, Fuzzy Logic, paid tribute to Welsh drug smuggler (and national hero) Howard Marks both on the cover art and on song "Hanging With Howard Marks," and the same year they released single "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" which sampled Steely Dan and held the record, at 50 utterances, for most "fucks" given in a song (till Insane Clown Posse's "Fuck the World" beat it in 1999). Just a year later, SFA were back with Radiator, a record that was leaps and bounds better than their debut, and where they went from being a lot of fun to one of the more consistently great, wildly creative bands of the era. (They still are.) Radiator incorporates Madchester-y shuffle ("Play it Cool," "The Placid Casual"), Bowie-style spacerock ("Demons," "Bass tuned to DEAD"), punk, and mutant pop ("Herman Loves Pauline") into a style that became distinctly their own.

10. Slowdive – Souvlaki (1993)

Influenced by the Cocteau Twins' ethereal style, not to mention The Jesus and Mary Chain and probably a fair amount of goth, Pink Floyd and prog, Slowdive didn’t really sound like any other group from the original shoegaze era, riding a massive wave of shimmering guitars that were at times so transformed by effects pedals, they resembled synthesizers. Like their early EPs, the band's debut album, Just for a Day, was hypnotic and sensuous, wrapping listeners in layer upon layer of gorgeous haze, but it was maybe a little lacking in focus and A-level material. Not a problem with their sophomore album that nestles memorable songs and a stronger rhythmic backbone into their signature aural cloudwork. Their best album to date, Souvlaki features some of their catchiest songs ("Alison," "When the Sun Hits," "40 Days") with muscular material like "Machine Gun," vivid trip-out "Yellow Melon" and two songs ( "Sing," "Here She Comes") featuring keyboards and treatments by Brian Eno. Best of all, though, is "Souvlaki Space Station" which takes their spiraling sound deep into dub territory. Never as popular at the time as their shoegaze contemporaries Ride or Lush, Slowdive's records have aged better than most things from the '90s, and the group have led one of the most satisfying second acts in recent memory.

9. Teenage Fanclub – Grand Prix (1995)

Teenage Fanclub's third album, Bandwagonesque, is one of the three pillars in Creation's 1991 crown (the other two are slightly higher up on this list), and an album that, along with Ride's Nowhere, helped the label realize its place as a home for classic guitar pop done in new and exciting ways, or at least by new and exciting groups. What Teenage Fanclub did wasn't exactly new -- they drank deep from the well of Big Star and Dinosaur Jr. -- but they did it very well and had three three talented singer-songwriters who had yet to reach their creative potential. That hit with 1995's Grand Prix that, to carry on the Formula One racing theme, had Norman Blake, Gerrard Love and Raymond McGinley firing on all cylinders, with such instant earworms as "Sparky's Dream," "Neil Jung," "Mellow Doubt," "Verisimilitude," and "Don't Look Back." The album was also released at the height of Britpop and pulled the Fannies into that orbit, even though they were never really part of that scene. While they may not equal Oasis in the ambition and swagger department, Grand Prix delivers just as many classics as (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, just in a more humble way.

8. Sugar – Copper Blue (1992)

Spoiler alert: this is the only American-made album on this list. Creation did release a few records by U.S. acts (Medicine, Guided by Voices, The Cramps) but not many, and most were more licensing deals than actual signings. But Bob Mould put together separate deals with Creation in the UK and Rykodisc in North America for his new band Sugar who rivaled MBV for being loudest-ever group on the label. With their roaring, punk-injected guitar pop sound, the trio (Mould, bassist David Barbe and drummer Malcolm Travis) were definitely a more natural fit with a label of noisemakers like Creation than Rykodisc (who were mainly known for being the first CD-only label). In any case, Sugar's classic debut album is one of 1992's best, and one of the greatest albums Creation Records released, with Mould's signature mix of rippers ("Changes," "A Good Idea") and pop songs ("Helpless," "If I Can't Change Your Mind") and even a little prog ("Hoover Dam"). Copper Blue was actually more of a hit across the pond first, reaching #10 in the UK album charts and with NME naming it the Best Album of 1992; the record really caught on with American alt-rock radio and MTV in 1993. Sugar burned bright and hot, releasing Beaster a mere six months later, yet flamed out during sessions for their second album. Still, Copper Blue remains one of Mould's best collection of songs.

7. Felt – Forever Breathes the Lonely Word (1986)

Led by the decidedly eccentric but frequently brilliant Lawrence Hayward who was prone to 2 AM vacuuming and still only goes by his first name, Felt set out to release 10 albums and 10 singles in 10 years -- "In and out in a decade," he put it. He accomplished his goal, making crystalline guitar pop that owed much to Tom Verlaine (and just a little to Bob Dylan) with two sharply defined eras of the band. Felt's first four albums were on Cherry Red and featured guitarist Maurice Deebank's distinctive arpeggiated guitar style; the second began with the group's move to Creation, with Deebank out and keyboardist Martin Duffy in, adding wonderful, rich organ to the band's sound. Forever Breathes the Lonely Word was Felt's first album for Creation and is Felt's masterwork, with shimmering production, Lawrence at his most lyrically romantic, and Duffy's brilliant playing all over it. It's just great song after great song, including "Rain of Crystal Spires," "Down But Not Out," "All The People I Like And Those That Are Dead," and "A Wave Crashed on the Rocks," being particular highlights. Creation's first great album.

6. Ride – Nowhere (1990)

Oxford's Ride released their debut album in 1990 and perfectly split Creation Records' two decades in existence down the middle. The band were clearly a product of the student indie scene that Creation was at the center of, owing much to House of Love, My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus & Mary Chain and early Primal Scream, but they were a half step generation younger, savvy, and ambitious. You could easily imagine songs like "Seagull" and "Kaleidoscope" being released with thinner production by the label just a couple years earlier, but Ride were not a group who just wanted to play to 150 people the rest of their lives. While undeniably part of the psychedelic shoegaze scene -- they remain of the genre's most iconic bands -- Andy Bell and Mark Gardner were great songwriters, too, and underneath Nowhere's beautiful murk, haze and feedback is some serious musicianship and craft. Nowhere owes as much to The Byrds as it does MBV and is loaded with great tunes, as can be heard on the undeniable classic "Vapour Trail" -- perhaps the greatest song to come out on Creation Records and not get released as a single. Ride would get more ambitious (and pop-savvy) on 1992's excellent Going Blank Again, and would make a grab for the Britpop ring on 1994's Carnival of Light, but Nowhere is the sound of a scene and a label at the dawn of the '90s.

5. House of Love – House of Love (1988)

While The Jesus & Mary Chain's "Upside Down" put Creation Records on the map, The House of Love's debut album was the first album released by the label that really registered shockwaves beyond the indie charts. Led by Guy Chadwick, whose deep voice matched his high cheekbones, House of Love had some of JAMC's squall but fed it through Chadwick's graceful songwriting and guitarist Terry Bickers' inventive playing. Opening salvo "Christine" is such a stunner, from the roaring guitars to the "Bah bah be dah dah" hook, if the rest of the album had been a dud it still might've made this list. But House of Love is all hits, from the dark, sexy cool of "Road" and "Hope" to the riff-heavy "Sulfur" and "Salome" to the ethereal grandeur of "Man to Child," and the album's second best song, "Love in a Car." The album was also as big an influence on the burgeoning shoegaze scene as My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything, and it's hard to imagine groups like Ride and Catherine Wheel existing without House of Love.

4. Oasis – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? (1995)

As Andy Bell of Ride, who would end up joining Oasis by the end of the '90s, told us, Oasis "were the band Creation had been waiting for, and I think the label was also exactly what the band needed." Oasis fit Creation head Alan McGee's rock n' roll ethos, ticking every box possible with a cup-runneth-over mix of attitude, razor-sharp wit, hedonistic joie-de-vivre and arrogance. It might've all been too much if Noel Gallagher wasn't a one-man hit factory, losing songs in the couch that were better than many bands wrote in their whole career. They were definitely the guitar band McGee had always wanted, turning out singles like his '60s and '70s heroes, but putting a fresh face on them just in time to lead in the new Britpop movement that pushed grunge out of the country much like the USA had done to the King's army some 200+ years before. While 1994's Definitely Maybe was a fantastic debut, Oasis managed to follow it up just a year later with an even better album, one of the best of 1995 and without a doubt the peak of Gallaghers' powers. (What's the Story) Morning Glory? even managed to be a hit in America, something a British rock band hadn't done in years. The album is filthy with classics, from singles like "Wonderwall," "Don't Look Back in Anger," "Champagne Supernova," and "Roll With It" to deep cuts like "Cast No Shadow," and "She's Electric." While Oasis stayed popular throughout their existence, creatively, it was diminishing returns after this -- but in 1995 the band could do no wrong.

3. My Bloody Valentine – Isn’t Anything (1988)

If Loveless was the sound of "how'd they do that?," Isn't Anything was the sound of "I wanna do that!" It's hard to imagine Ride, Swervedriver, The Boo Radleys or any of the rest of the soon-to-erupt shoegaze scene -- or half the indie rock of the '90s -- happening the way it did without the visceral impact of My Bloody Valentine's first album for Creation. Songs like "(When You Wake (You're Still in a Dream," "Feed Me With Your Kiss" and "Sueisfine" hit like a brick and sound like you've already been knocked senseless. Kevin Shield's glide guitar sound -- a unique mix of tuning and playing style -- was mysterious, instantly distinctive and deceptively attainable. The band used less effects pedals than most people thought. "The sound is purely physical," MBV Svengali Kevin Shields said at the time. "It's movement, a manual moving of the string: the short travel of he Jazzmaster and Jaguar tremolo that gives it that characteristic sort of upwards drone to the chord." My Bloody Valentine even managed to make acoustic guitars seem heavy ("Come Cupid") and the band's more ethereal tracks like "Lose My Breath" were aptly named. The album has a reputation for thin, tinny sonics, but Kevin Shields' all-analog 2018 remastered edition really shows what a gorgeous monster it is.

2. My Bloody Valentine – Loveless (1991)

A record so monumentally important to popular music it's all but impossible to overstate its importance, Loveless is a bonafide classic. It's also a record that took forever and somewhere around £250,000 to complete, that nearly bankrupted Creation, forcing the label to drop the band shortly after Loveless' release, and sell 49% of its stake to Sony Music. ("Overdue" and "over budget," meanwhile, are words associated with the band to this day.) Even though countless artists have stolen from Kevin Shields' signature "glide guitar" style, what the band get from their instruments on Loveless still sounds like nothing else. The four dry snare hits that open the album do not prepare you for the sludgy, white-dwarf heavy riff of opener "Only Shallow," or when the song shifts into pure beauty and back again. Moments like that happen throughout Loveless, from the ethereal slipstream of "To Here Knows When" to the poppy indie rock of "When You Sleep," to the dreamy, danceable perfection of "Soon." So many rock critic cliches and adjectives were created -- and wore out their welcome -- with folks trying to describe Loveless, yet you can't not be in awe 30 years on. It nearly destroyed the label but has always stood as one of its finest moments.

1. Primal Scream – Screamadelica (1991)

Led by gangly, cocksure Bobby Gillespie (who was The Jesus & Mary Chain's original drummer and grew up with Creation boss Alan McGee), Primal Scream were Creation Records' longest-running band, having released their debut single, "All Fall Down" on the label in 1985, and XTRMNTR in 2000, the last album released by the label before it dissolved. Like McGee, Gillespie seemed to live and breathe rock n' roll and he and his bandmates, including the invaluable Andrew Innes, at times managed to stay cool purely on attitude while releasing less-than-stellar early records. Things for them changed, though, when they gave their lackluster, Stonesy single "I'm Losing More Than I Ever Had" to DJ Andrew Weatherall to remix. He took out almost all the vocals, threw a beat under it and added a sample of Peter Fonda From The Wild Angels yelling "We wanna be free to do what we wanna do! We wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time!" Released in February 1990, "Loaded" was one of the cornerstones of the acid house/Madchester scene and forever changed Primal Scream's trajectory. They spent nearly two years on one continuous party, working with Weatherall, Jah Wobble, Stones producer Jimmy Miller -- whatever suited their fancy and vibe -- and releasing singles along the way which would eventually be collected as the era-defining Screamadelica. It shouldn't have worked, but that sense of freedom made it come together beautifully. "Instead of having two guitars, bass, drums, vocals... we destroyed that," Gillespie said in The Creation Records Story. "It was anything goes - synth, tabla, drum machine, no vocals, instrumentals, gospel singers, sitars. The whole range of anything goes noises and suddenly the band were freed. It was a much looser approach to making music. And then getting people like Andy and Hugo, and Alex Patterson and Thrash from The Orb, Jimmy Miller, Wobble, you know – these people, Messing with our music, taking it somewhere else, making it more interstellar, as far out as… It was incredible. The greatest time." You still feel that listening to Screamadelica, too.