STACK#127 May 2016

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COOL BRITANNIA REVISITED

Here are 10 albums (that aren’t by Blur or Oasis) to check out...

Black Grape It’s GreatWhenYou’re Straight... Yeah (1995)

Ash Intergalactic Sonic 7’s (2002) Let’s sidestep their fine 1977 debut and go for this

A band here for a good time, not a long time. Post-Happy Mondays, singer Shaun Ryder pulled in hip-hop and created a loose collective ready to party. Pure ecstasy.

compilation because Ash, out of Northern Ireland, were a superb singles band and this grab-bagged them all. There’s an expanded edition with B-side which proves their breadth. Go for that.

Suede Dog Man Star (1994) Their self-titled debut was all camp Bowie, poppy, and pretty good, but this follow-up pushed

Elastica Elastica (1995)

The Auteurs NewWave (1993) They only did four albums and each was very

into weird corners because writer/singer Brett Anderson was taking all the right (if damaging) drugs. Guitarist Bernard Butler quit too, so there was tension in the songs.

Stepping out of early Suede, singer Justine Frischmann and drummer Justin Welch formed this

different, but this debut should set you up for a voyage of discovery, even if you think the band name a tad pretentious.

often troubled band which topped the UK charts with this exciting self-titled debut . . . it was mostly downhill after that.

Ocean Colour Scene

Moseley Shoals (1996) Try to find the expanded edition of this terrific

Supergrass Road to Rouen (2005)

Ride Going Blank Again (1992) Their debut Nowhere two years previous is classic Britpop-meets-

second album by a band favoured by Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher. They had soul in their rock’n’roll.

Yes, their debut I Should Coco is essential Britpop but this later album which went overlooked in the colonies (top 10 in the UK) is a real sleeper-keeper. James Gold Mother (1990) Later they would work with producers Youth and Brian Eno, but this, their third album, caught them at an early peak.

Stateside shoegaze, but for this one they amped up the pop end of the spectrum. Hardcore shoegazers rightly prefer My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, but Ride were Brit-gaze pop.

Pulp Different Class (1995)

Purists will direct you to their early albums but this one – with their

classic Common People , Disco 2000 and Sort For E’s and Wizz – really is the one.

Graham Coxon: Beyond the Blur

While most attention alights on Damon Albarn’s career outside of Blur (Gorillaz; The Good, The Bad and The Queen; Mali Music and so on) Blur guitarist Graham Coxon – who quit the band in 2003 but is now back – has had an interesting solo career, which runs from melancholy acoustic songs to blitzkrieg guitar noise. Selected highlights then?

Crow Sit on Blood Tree (2001) His first two (diverse) solo albums set him up for this excellent, frequently gripping collection of bleak-folk and furious rock.

Happiness in Magazines (2004) With this fifth solo outing (produced by Blur knob-twiddler Stephen Street) Coxon came perilously close to being commercial in an alt-rock way. It went top 20 in the UK and is worth seeking out.

The Spinning Top (2009) This mostly acoustic, thoughtful and diverse album (Indian sounds on In the Morning ) showed his love of Anglofolk tradition (Bert Jansch, Davy Graham etc) and Ray Davies’ storytelling . . . and has a loose conceptual thread of the journey from life to death. A quiet pleasure.

A+E (2012) Brittle post-punk psych-rock which comes with mannered British vocals and raw noise. One for mid-period Blur fans. Interesting.

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