Happy Labor Day Weekend! Holidays usually mean it’s a light release week but Indie Basement has a pretty full slate: Super Furry Animals give Rings Around the World the deluxe 20th anniversary treatment; SUUNS are back with their most chilled-out record to date; P.E. (Pills + Eaters) find their groove on their new EP; Ty Segall cohorts Meatbodies return with their first album in four years; Toronto’s Motorists channel ’90s Canadian indie rock on their jangly debut; Julian Cope dips into his archives of Cold War Psychedelia; and Slumberland Records continues to sign great new groups that fit into their long history with Chime School.

If you need more new album reviews, Andrew looks at Little Simz, Iron Maiden and more in Notable Releases. And here are a few more items from this week that are of interest to regular Basement readers: The Pop Group made us a playlist of Dub Essentials; Beak> are back with a new single; Elbow and Johnny Marr announced new albums; the trailer for Todd Haynes’ Velvet Underground documentary is out; Blunt Bangs are the promising new group from Reggie of Black Kids. Also: ABBA are back!

Special shout-out to Lee “Scratch” Perry, who died last weekend, and without whom many of the groups in Indie Basement would not exist or would sound very different. Rest in dub.

You can pick up the Rings Around the World 20th anniversary vinyl edition in the BrooklynVegan shop, and be sure to check out the Indie Basement section that has tons of hand-picked selections, from Destroyer to Devo, from Kraftwerk to King Gizzard and more. Our Ty Segall vinyl selection also just got bigger.

It’s also Bandcamp Friday where the site gives its share of the profits to the artists and labels, and most of the albums I write about today are available through it.

Have a great holiday weekend and head below for this week’s reviews.

ALBUM (REISSUE) OF THE WEEK: Super Furry Animals – Rings Around The World (20th Anniversary Edition) (BMG)
The Welsh greats’ magnum opus gets the presidential suite treatment for its 20th anniversary, with a remastered, overdue vinyl release and a 3-CD set featuring a whopping 33 unreleased tracks.

“We were trying to make a blockbuster album that was going to be like The Eagles,” Gruff Rhys told Uncut in 2008, talking about Super Furry Animals‘ fifth album. “We were trying to make utopian pop music that had pretensions of being progressive and exciting.” Released in July of 2001, Rings Around the World was definitely progressive and exciting — a magnum opus where they rose to their ambitions with some of their best ever songs, and any pretentions were buoyed with creative engines running at full power and their gleefully anarchic wit. It’s their best album in a discography full of great albums, and a contender for best album of 2001.

The album had a working title of Text Messaging is Destroying the Pub Quiz as We Know It, and while they ended up ditching that, prescient as it was, the themes of technology and its positive and negative effects on the earth and its inhabitants remained. Not unironically, Rings Around the World was the Furries’ most technologically advanced album to date. It was the first album to be released as a 5.1 surround sound DVD (their subsequent tour was also in surround sound), and the songs incorporated all manner of electronic styles (techno, jungle, drum-n-bass), along with surf, metal, punk, easy listening, disco, prog and more that were thrown into the SFA digital blender.

A song like “Sidewalk Serfer Girl” has almost all of those elements on display, all while being a wonderful pop song AND a Beach Boys homage whose chorus can lift you six inches off the ground. “Receptacle for the Respectable,” the best non-single track on the album, also tips its hat to the Beach Boys, getting Paul McCartney to crunch celery in time to the beat much like he did on BB track “Vegetables.” There’s not a bad song on the album, from the Love Boat theme-esque “Juxtapozed with U,” the glam-punky “Rings Around the World,” and doomsday ballad “It’s Not the End of the World?” — all singles — to sweeping, string-enveloped tracks like “Shoot Doris Day,” “Run Christian Run,” and “Presidential Suite” which features The Velvet Underground’s John Cale on piano. Despite using so many then-current electronic styles, Rings Around the World does not really sound that dated and holds up remarkably well. Many of its prophecies, from cellphones to the state of Planet Earth’s ecology, have come to pass but it still sounds like the future.

The 20th anniversary edition features the album remastered from the original analogue tapes, and marks the first time the album has been officially available on vinyl in the United States. You can order the vinyl edition in the BrooklynVegan shop.

The 3-disc CD edition, meanwhile, includes 50 tracks total, with 33 that were previously unreleased. Among them are four studio outtakes, including the groovy, Primal Scream-y “John Spex,” and the heavily electronic “Miami Vice” which would later be reworked as “Slow Life” for 2003’s Phantom Power. The other two are “unfinished” but still very cool — the jaunty “Sanitised,” that recalls The Kinks and Small Faces, and the electro-rock instrumental “Chihuahua.”

Then there are all the single b-sides, including the great, album-worthy “Tradewinds” and “Roman Road” (and more), plus 26 (!) remixes from everyone from fellow Welsh group Catatonia, Brave Captain (Martin Carr of The Boo Radleys) and The High Llamas (who did the string arrangements on the album) to Kid 606, Atmos and Bench. They’re all pretty good and you can tell the band just told people to go crazy with them. Some of them, like the Walt Liquor Mystic Remix of “Juxtaposed with U,” that adds a rapper, and the High Llamas’ remix of “Presidential Suite,” are great.

There are also new liner notes, including an oral history of the band, and more. It’s a terrific package befitting a truly great album. Revisit it if you haven’t in a while or dig in for the first time. The 3-CD version is also on streaming services.

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SUUNS – The Witness (Joyful Noise)
Montreal’s vets chill out considerably on their introspective fifth album

SUUNS have taken some sharp turns over the decade-and-change they’ve been together, but they’ve always been more about vibe and mood than cranking out the hits. That’s just fine — they are expert mood makers, usually keeping things dark and creepy whether it’s via claustrophobic, motorik rock or forays into EDM-inspired beats. Now with The Witness — their first for Joyful Noise after four albums on Secretly Canadian — they’ve mellowed out, stretched out and zoned out for their most considered, minimal album to date. “We wanted to calm down a bit, even during the mixing process,” says bassist Joe Yarmush. “Our notes were simply ‘you have to settle down’. I couldn’t technically explain what I meant by that, but the songs needed to settle down. We were basically trying to hold back all the bombastic tendencies and make things sound very subtle.”

Subtle is good descriptor for The Witness which holds your attention while it withholds big releases, quietly layering sounds, ratcheting the tension almost imperceptibly till you feel it about to break. But then it doesn’t break, at least not for a while. Ben Shemie’s vocals are heavily processed and vocodered/autotuned, floating through the ether and merging with the other sounds on the album. It’s an eerie effect that is used sometimes for beauty (“Third Stream,” “Clarity”) and sometimes for menace (“C-Thru,” “The Fix”). The Witness is the band’s prettiest album, at times its most hopeful-sounding. The band have cited Talk Talk and Robert Wyatt as influences this time and you can definitely feel that — even at its most quiet it sounds like it was recorded in an empty canyon, with rolling synthesizer lines on closer “The Trilogy” rolling through like a river. When the drums kick in half way through, it’s the release you’ve been anticipating for the whole album, gliding you out of the water, out of the canyon and into the stratosphere. The wait, in this case, made it worth it and after years exploring the dark, SUUNS may have found the sun.

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P.E. (PILL + Eaters) – The Reason For My Love (Wharf Cat)
Nothing to do with Chuck D or Flava Flav, this P.E. is a Brooklyn collision of Pill and Eaters who are back with a lockdown-created EP designed for dancing

Brooklyn’s P.E. began as a side project, combining the forces of electronic duo Eaters (Jonathan Schencke and Bob Moses) and Veronica Torres, Jonathan Campolo, and Benjamin Jaffe who were all in skronky band Pill. Their established friendship blossomed into creative alchemy; improvised jams in their rehearsal space were shaped into song-like structures for their 2019 debut which was cool and compelling but also kept the weird and experimental. When the coronavirus pandemic made P.E.’s usual method of operation impossible, the band figured out new ways to improvise and collaborate.

The band began trading song ideas and snippets remotely: Schenke offered up song sketches; Jones made beats in his new Zo City home studio; saxophonist Ben Jaffe biked to Central park and recorded live; Campolo made field recordings and recorded his baby grand piano; and Torres experimented with microphones in different rooms of her house. Files were traded, songs grew and and then trimmed down. Then with concrete musical ideas, they all convened together in early 2021 to record, resulting in this EP. Perhaps due to the slightly more structured nature of process, the three new songs here are the band’s most song-like creations yet. And best. While still experimental, there is a pop backbone to all three, not to mention an overt danceability. “The Reason for My Love” flirts with jungle breakbeats, “Shadow Side” gets dubby, and “Beauty Queen Boy” dabbles in sultry synths. “The Reason for My Love” also gets a great remix by Xiu Xiu (taking it into two-step territory) and a cool dub mix by the band. P.E. will probably fully go back to working in person when the pandemic allows, but this method certainly worked in their favor. While created far apart, The Reason for My Love demands play on packed, sweaty dancefloors.

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Meatbodies – 333 (In the Red)
Ty Segall cohort Chad Ubovich follows his own psych-rock path on Meatbodies’ first album in four years

333 is Meatbodies‘ first album in four years and it’s one that almost didn’t happen at all. Main man Chad Ubovich, who also plays in Ty Segall’s Fuzz and has collaborated with Mikal Cronin, hit 2019 feeling burnt out. “I’d been touring for eight years straight with all these bands, and just couldn’t do it anymore,” Chad says. “There was also a feeling in the air that everything was changing, politically. Things just didn’t feel right, and I went down a dark path.” Chad pulled himself out, though, got sober and felt the creative juices flowing again. He and Meatbodies drummer Dylan Fujioka recorded an album in 2019, but was drawn back to demos he’d made in 2018 (“It sounded gross, like a scary Magical Mystery Tour”) which ended up being the basis for 333. It’s easy to compare Chad and Ty, especially with a track like “Reach for the Sunn” which sports a mountain-sized, phased-out riff and opens the album, but he’s really forging his own path here. “Night Time Hidden Faces” is powered by a fuzz bassline perfect for go-go dancing, “Eye Eraser” is MBV-style shoegaze, and “The Hero” is sunny Haight-Ashbury pop. It’s good stuff — now let’s hear that other album.

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Motorists – Surrounded (We Are Time, Bobo Integral and Debt Offensive)
Toronto band channel the ’90s Hallifax pop explosion on their debut album that’s chock-full of catchy indie rock

Chiming guitar rock, the kind made by Big Star, Tom Petty and Cheap Trick in the ’70s and then mutated by new wave and college rock groups like The Plimsouls, R.E.M. and Hoodoo Gurus in the ’80s, is not exactly in fashion these days. But it’s never completely out of style, either. Groups like Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and Kiwi Jr are still flying the flag for jangly, muscular and melodic music, you can add to that list Toronto trio Motorists whose debut album pulls from the last 50 years of guitar pop, with a focus on the last 30 years or so. There’s a little early-’80s powerpop precision, mid-’80s paisley underground psychedelica and the post-REM janglepop explosion, as well as ’90s college rock, the Hallifax indie scene, Britpop and beyond. Halifax has an especially strong pull here, and songs like “Natural Targets,” “Vainglorious,” and “Walled Garden” seem like they could’ve come out on Sloan’s Murderrecords in 1993 alongside Jaill and The Super Friendz. Motorists can clearly play, and songs are loaded with big hooks, ripping leads and three-part harmonies, but the mid-fi keeps things just rough enough while letting the joy of guitars ring through.

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Julian Cope & The Teardrop Explodes – Cold War Psychedelia (Head Heritage)
Julian Cope digs into his Archdrude archives and mashes them up into something new

Julian Cope is the kind of psychedelic true believer and genuine weirdo that is worth following through thick and thin, wild mood swings, dalliances with chart pop and the strangest, most uncommercial records. Almost all of it is worth hearing, and you never know when he’s going to drop something brilliant. While Cold War Psychedelia doesn’t quite fall into the “brilliant” category, it is a cool artifact from the Archdrude’s archives — almost all of it unreleased — that Cope has mashed up into something new. The music comes from a 1982 recording session by his old band The Teardrop Explodes that was made near the end of their existence when they were infamously fried to a crisp on psychedelics. Side 1 is four tracks from that session, including “Ned Kelly Dawn” that uses a pre-programmed beat from the Casio VL-Tone, the same cheapo keyboard/calculator which was famously used on Trio’s “Da Da Da.” Side 2 is where it gets trippier, featuring music from the sessions that has been turned into a sound collage with tapes of Cope reading from early drafts of his highly recommended 1989 memoir, Head-On. Cope has a commanding speaking voice — someone should cast him as a wizard in something — and he just sounds so cool over these drony, weird compositions. It’s only available in physical formats (get it from Cope’s Head Heritage website) but you can get a taste with “You Think It’s Love ’82”:

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Chime School – “Taking Time to Tell You” (Slumberland)
First single from debut album by Seablite’s Andy Pastalaniec is more jangly goodness from Slumberland records

Andy Pastalaniec is a San Francisco indie scene vet, having played in Pink Films, Cruel Summer, and, currently, Seablite. He’s now also making music on his own as the perfectly named Chime School, whose eponymous debut album will be out November 5 via Slumberland Records. If you’re a fan of ringing, jangly indiepop made by stripey-shirt-wearing musicians wielding 12-string Rickenbackers — from The Smiths to The Stone Roses to just about every band on Slumberland (Pains of Being Pure at Heart, The Aislers Set, etc) — Chime School will scratch that winsome itch. First single “Taking Time to Tell You” reminds me a little of The Go-Betweens and Hidden Cameras. Can’t wait to hear the rest of the album.

Looking for more? Browse the Indie Basement archives.

And check out what’s new in our shop.

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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.