It’s the second day of fall and it’s already hitting like a brick, as I review 11 releases this week, including reissues from The Replacements and The Breeders, and new albums from Teenage Fanclub, Devendra Banhart, Cupid & Psyche (ex Abe Vigoda), Super Furry Animals offshoot Das Koolies, CHAI, Föllakzoid, and more.

It’s a slightly smaller week in Notable Releases with Andrew reviewing the second National album of 2023, The Alchemist, Wiki & MIKE, Lydia Loveless, and more.

In other news, Talking Heads landmark concert film Stop Making Sense is back on the big screen with a new restored 4K print and remixed / remastered sound. Currently it’s showing exclusively in IMAX and then goes wide on 9/29. Go see it before Taylor Swift pushes it out of theaters!

Head below for this week’s many reviews…

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Cupid & Psyche – Romantic Music (felte)
Former members of Abe Vigoda reteam to make shoegaze sophistipop that works like gangbusters

Michael Vidal and Juan Velasquez spent the late-’00s and early-’10s in California band Abe Vigoda and now, a decade later, they’ve re-teamed for new project Cupid & Psyche which has through-lines to what they did before but is also very different. “Michael makes these very long chord progressions that are so strange to me,” Velasquez says of their collaboration. “Then I have to cut my way through it and weave in my own thing…it’s almost like I don’t know what parts are his or mine.” Taking their name from Scritti Politti’s hit 1985 album, Cupid & Psyche are a decidedly friendlier group, with echoes of ’80s sophistipop and ’90s shoegaze. Their debut album is terrific, with influences worn boldly on their sleeves but with great original songs, and clever, spot-on production. Romantic Music grabs you right from the start with the dreamy title track, then pulls you closer with the soaring “Angels on the Phone,” and never lets go. Vidal and Velasquez are savvy at mixing synths and drum machines with organic instruments — this thing sounds sublime — and the whole album plays in high style, with lots of heart, hooks, and just the right amount of melodrama for an album titled Romantic Music.

Romantic Music is out October 13 via felte.

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The Replacements – Tim (Let It Bleed Edition) (Rhino)
An ’80s classic finally gets the mix it deserves

In the pantheon of albums that achieve greatness in the face of bad sound, The Replacements’ 1985 major label debut, Tim, is up there. After a failed attempt recording with their hero Alex Chilton, the band and label settled on Tommy “Ramone” Erdelyi who produced and mixed. While he got great performances out of the band, the finished product left a lot to be desired — unsatisfied if you will — with a mix that was thin, echoey (it was the ’80s) and generally lacked punch. The songs, including “Bastards of Young,” “Left of the Dial,” “Kiss Me On the Bus,” “LIttle Mascara,” etc etc, were too great to be stopped though, and the album is a five-star classic in spite of it all. The album has now been given a brand new mix by veteran rock engineer Ed Stasium, who worked with Erdelyi a few times back in the day, for a new reissue and box set. This is no mere spit shine with EQs tweaked: the difference is night and day, in a great way. Tim: Let it Bleed is almost like hearing the album for the first time. The biggest difference is the rhythm section which now has real oomph (finally Chris Mars’ drums hit hard, Tommy Stinson’s bass drives things), but in going back to the original tapes, they’ve discovered unheard parts as well — some great stuff from the late Bob Stinson — and generally brought things out of the murk. You may have never thought Tim sounded bad, but listen to this and you’ll reconsider.

The box set edition comes with the original mix, b-sides, demos, and a live album, but the Stasium mix is really all you need. Now, can someone hire Ed to do this to all of the Husker Du and Dinosaur Jr albums on SST? Thanks in advance.

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The Breeders – Last Splash (The 30th Anniversary Original Analog Edition) (4AD)
There aren’t much in the way of extras, but this remastered edition of The Breeders’ best album sounds better than ever

Some special editions come with tons of bonus material, while others just let the original shine. The Breeders’ Last Splash is one of the alt/indie totems of the ’90s, typifying a sound that was endlessly copied but rarely bettered. Even if the only good song had been “Cannonball,” the album would have earned its classic status in the first 30 seconds. What started as a side project for Pixies’ Kim Deal and Throwing Muses’ Tanya Donelly, turned into a full time gig for Deal. By 1992, with the Pixies toast and Donnelly off to start Belly, Kim refashioned the band with sister Kelley and new drummer Jim McPherson joining original bassist Josephine Wiggs (of The Perfect Disaster) for the classic lineup of the band first heard on the Safari EP but perfected on Last Splash. There are the singles — “Cannonball,” “Divine Hammer,” “Saints” — but “Do You Love Me Now?,” “I JUst Wanna Get Along,” “The Invisible Man,” “No Aloha,” and their cover of Ed’s Redeeming Qualities’ “Drivin’ on Nine” are just as good. Kim also produced, alongside engineer Mark Freegard, and learned a lot working with Steve Albini and Gil Norton. The sound of the album is perfect: warm and fuzzy, loud and quiet, and while very much of its era. Last Splash has aged very well. Wrap it in one of 4AD designer Vaughan Oliver’s best-ever sleeves and you’ve got a classic.

This 30th anniversary edition’s biggest selling point is that it’s been given an all-analog remaster from the original tapes with nothing digital touching it on its way to vinyl. The iconic cover art has been slightly tweaked by Chris Bigg (who worked with Vaughan Oliver who died in 2019), and there is a bonus 12″ featuring two previously unreleased songs: “Divine Mascis” (one of a few Last Splash reworks by J Mascis) and terrific outtake “Go Man Go,” but otherwise The Breeders have wisely not messed with perfection.

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Devendra Banhart – Flying Wig (Domino)
The freak-folk vet enlists Cate Le Bon for a sultry, synthy total makeover

I can’t say I’ve ever been all that interested in Devendra Banhart — freak folk has never been my thing — but when I heard Cate Le Bon was producing his new album, he had my attention. “She’s the only person I wanted to make this record with,” Banhart said. “We set out to make a record sonically unlike anything I have made before.” Mission accomplished but it is a lot like something Cate Le Bon has made before, almost as if he heard her 2019 album Reward, decided that’s what he wanted to sound like now and went straight to the source for help. Synthesizers are the dominant instrument here, dark yet warm and atmospheric, with gentle drums / drum machines, liquid bass and soft-but-skronky saxophone making for a nice bed for Banhart’s voice. “We wanted to draw out and emphasize the emotional aspect of a synthesizer,” he said. Made with Le Bon’s usual stable of musicians, the result sounds a bit like Roxy Music’s Avalon by way of Bowie or Bill Nelson and on songs like “Sight Seer” and “Sirens,” its particularly effective, wrapping Banhart’s expressive voice in glowing melancholia. “If I’m going to cry,” Banhart said, “I wanna do it in my best dress.”

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CHAI – CHAI (Sub Pop)
Fun fourth album from this Japanese band further refines their “neo-Kawai” style

After dabbling in hip hop and other Western pop sounds on 2021’s WINK, Japanese band CHAI return to their roots on their self-titled fourth album, delving further into their country’s heritage and reistablishing their signature neo-kawaii (“new cute”) aesthetic. “With our self-titled album CHAI, CHAI declare that we live proudly as Japanese women♡ We hope this album gives everyone a little more confidence in living how they want to live,” the band’s Mana declares. “That is our ideal. If this album becomes that existence for anyone, that is the right answer in our eyes⭐ Listen, feel. We give you our evolution, inside and out! Now come onnn, NEO-KAWAII BABIES. If you can’t catch up with us, you’ll never feel the NEO KAWAII♡” This is CHAI concentrate, with the band’s indefatigable, infectious spirit — and songs about matcha, karaoke, dance crazes, friendship, and being the best you can be — dropped into danceable earworms informed by city pop, J-pop, house, ’70s disco, ’80s new wave, ’90s R&B, and Nintendo game music, all filtered through their unique style. Their best yet and a great place to start for the uninitiated.

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Das Koolies – DK.01 (Strangetown)
Super Furry Animals offshoot, featuring the whole band minus Gruff Rhys, deliver their their fun if overlong debut album

Super Furry Animals have been in hibernation since 2016 but most of the band — Huw ‘Bunf’ Bunford, Cian Ciarán, Dafydd Ieuan and Guto Pryce, aka everyone except frontman Gruff Rhys — are currently back together, playing music together as Das Koolies. This “parallel band” have been around conceptually since the late ’90s but they only got serious about it right before the pandemic. “Serious” is a relative term, mind you, as Das Koolies are fun first and foremost with SFA’s anarchic glee and love of electronic music front and center. (If you dug the Furries’ early-’00s dabblings in techno, you will like Das Koolies.) The band already put out a terrific EP earlier this year and now here’s their debut album with no redundant songs. Firstly, DK.01 is pretty awesome; a mix of spacerock, techno/acid house, and memorable tunes, shot through with the band’s inherent oddball Welshness. Secondly, at 15 songs and 75 minutes, this album is too damn long. That said, I’m not sure what I’d cut, certainly not “Best Mindfuck Yet” that reunites them with original SFA vocalist Rhys Ifans (who played Hugh Grant’s roommate in Notting Hill), or the soaring “Out of This World,” or the stomping “Pain Down The Drain.” Or anything else. The sequencing is surprising, as some of the best songs — “Alligator” (a real banger) and “Sorry” — come near or after the hour mark and this probably would’ve been better split in two with a few months in between to give us time to ingest it all. But as the title suggests, another album may already be in the can. The moral: one really shouldn’t complain about an embarrassment of riches like this.

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Föllakzoid – V (Sacred Bones)
The South American’s bands transition from komish-pysch to serious techno is complete

Over the last 15 years, Chilean band Föllakzoid have transformed from krautrock/psych into full-on techno project. The metamorphosis has been gradual and natural, though, almost like it was destined to happen. These days Föllakzoid is primarily the project of bandleader Domingæ, who is now based in Mexico City, and their fifth album marks a significant change to their previous MO. Before, records were recorded in single takes with a full band but V was created from some 70 loopable stems created by Domingæ which were then assembled by producer Atom™. The result: four dark, lengthy and sleek tracks that are anonymous yet alluring, rocketing like a bullet train through the night, destination unknown.

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Teenage Fanclub – Nothing Lasts Forever (Merge)
The Glasgow indie rock greats’ second album since the departure of Gerard Love; you still feel his absence

With their 35th anniversary coming up and five years since bassist-cofounder Gerard Love bowed out of the group, Teenage Fanclub bring a lot of weight with the title of their 12th album. Nothing Lasts Forever is quintessentially autumnal, with guitarists/songwriters/singers Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley taking stock of their lives on these mostly gentle, melancholic batch of songs. Mellow doubt, indeed. “These songs are definitely personal. You’re getting older, you’re going into the cupboard getting the black suit out more often. Thoughts of mortality and the idea of the light must have been playing on our minds a lot,” says co-leader Blake. “There’s an acceptance of a situation and all of the experience that comes with that acceptance. When we write, it’s a reflection of our lives, which are pretty ordinary. We’re not extraordinary people, and normal people get older. There’s a lot to write about in the mundane.” Blake and McGinley remain great songwriters and they are aging gracefully, but even though this is the second album made without Gerard Love, he’s like a phantom limb; every three songs or so you expect him to pop in with one of his. He’s not there, though, and the band’s signature harmonies just don’t ring quite the same.

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Patio – Collection (Fire Talk)
Four years after their debut, with members scattered around the globe, this trio returns with LP #2 produced by Water From Your Eyes’ Nate Amos

Patio’s 2019 debut, Essentials, was a nice surprise, a record that mixed solid songwriting with unusual, spiky arrangements that made it immediately stand out from the Brooklyn indie rock milieu. Then the pandemic happened and Patio disappeared and I assumed they were another covid casualty. Partially that was true. The members all live in different cities now — Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Berlin — but they are still making music, albeit at great distance. It doesn’t seem to have hampered their creativity, though: their second album is pretty terrific. Produced by Water From Your Eyes’ Nate Amos, Collection is even more spare than the first, with guitar, bass, and drums each occupying their own sonic space, allowing their rhythms to get even more herky and jerky. Songs like “Sixpence,” “Gold,” “Relics,” and “En Plein Air” are decidedly off-kilter but then a surprising pop hook comes in to keep things from tipping over. Glad to be back on the Patio.

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Le Couleur – Comme Dans Un Penthouse (Lisbon Lux)
It’s Deathstyles of the Rich and Famous on this Montreal band’s latest luxuriously danceable concept album

Montreal synthpop trio Le Couleur work well with high concept albums. Emphasis on “high”: 2020’s Concorde imagined the final flight of the supersonic jetliner that once made the trip from Paris to New York in three-and-a-half hours; and now they’re back with another luxurious look at the lifestyles of the rich and famous, Penthouse. This one is actually a sequel, or a spinoff, revisiting the character of Barbara from their 2016 album P.O.P. who was an assistant to a star that skipped town with all his money. Things go awry for Barbara almost immediately on “Autobahn,” the album’s opening track. “Barbara is the symbol of this relentless quest for intensity and thrill,” say the band with mild spoilers. “Always on the hunt for renewed sensations, all that’s left for her is to break down taboos in order to feel a tiny bit of excitement. Her tragic fate is inevitable. Death will steal her away as the ultimate pursuit.” This Penthouse has a little in common with JG Ballard’s High Rise (and Crash), but for all the breaking glass in the underpass, Le Couleur’s music remains cool and in control — sleek sophistipop disco that juxtaposes perfectly with the album’s subject matter. It’s a nice view from the top, but what a drop.

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The Loving Paupers – Ladders (Easy Star)
DC reggae band get all the sounds right and comes with a co-sign from Don Letts

I probably would’ve never noticed Washington, DC band The Loving Paupers if it weren’t for Indie Basement Hall of Famer Don Letts who provided a pull quote for their new album, Ladders. “I don’t know how this Washington, DC-based dub reggae outfit was brought up,” Letts writes, “but for the most part, like me, they seem to have been raised with sixties pop hitting them in one ear and seventies reggae hitting them in the other.” That immediately piqued my interest and I’m happy to report Ladders lives up to those expectations. These are well constructed pop songs with big memorable choruses, recorded like they were made at Studio One in 1972. The band, which includes several former members of The Pietasters, keep things very mellow — we’re in rocksteady / lovers rock territory — and singer Kelly Di Filippo has one of those honeyed voices (not unlike Hollie Cook) that can melt away your tensions. The production is spot on and everything goes down extra smooth, making for a very enjoyable listen.

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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.