After a slow start, 2025 is picking up steam and this week I review seven new albums including Mogwai, Tunng, Matt Berry, Anna B Savage, Wire’s Edvard Graham Lewis, Rose City Band and Young Knives. I also look back at the second album from San Francisco’s Oranger for this week’s Indie Basement Classic.

Over in Notable Releases, Andrew spins new ones from FKA twigs, Ghais Guevara, Benjamin Booker, and more.

In other Indie Basement-related news: there were lots of new album announcements this week, including Jeffrey Lewis, Viagra Boys, The Moonlandingz, Snapped Ankles, and Das Koolies (4/5th of Super Furry Animals).

Head below for this week’s reviews.

Mogwai – The Bad Fire (Rock Action)
Post-rock greats deliver more epic grandeur, and a few new moves, on their 11th album

2025 marks Mogwai’s 30th anniversary and at this point you pretty much know what to expect from a new album: sweeping post-rock epics full of spacious layers of guitar, synth, crashing drums and, occasionally, a little singing. It’s a lane they paved and they’ve earned the right to ride it forever as few do it better than them. These Glaswegians do have a few new moves on their 11th album, however. The Bad Fire opens with “God Gets You Back,” which begins with gently arpeggiating keyboard lines — familiar territory — but then they shift gears and turn into melodic territory with harmonies that wouldn’t be out of place on a Ride album. (The song’s lyrics were written by Barry Burns’s seven-year-old daughter, btw.) It soars like Mogwai while occupying a new orbit. The Bad Fire was made with producer John Congleton, who is a perfect match for Mogwai. He also pushed them gently outside their comfort zone, like on “Fanzine Made of Flesh” which is another vocal song, with vocoder and synths that almost give it an ABBA feel, or at least as close as they’ll ever get. The band still has a way with song titles, including “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others,” “Pale Vegan Hip Pain,” and “18 Volcanoes.” The latter also doubles as a good descriptor of Mogwai’s sound which remains majestic and viscerally satisfying three decades into their career.

—

Tunng – Love You All Over Again (Full Time Hobby)
The folktronica pioneers go full circle on their terrific eighth album

Tunng didn’t invent “folktronica” — that would maybe be Momus who coined the term on his rather annoying 2001 album Folktronic, though some cite Ultramarine’s 1991 album Every Man and Woman is a Star as the ur text — but they were among the first to make music like that that you actually enjoy listening to. The UK band, led by Mike Lindsay and Sam Genders, just celebrated the 20th anniversary of their debut album and its organic blend of the acoustic and the glitchy has proven to be a resilient sound. Love You All Over Again is Tunng’s eighth album and, not that they’ve ever strayed too far from their origins, this is a purposeful return to their roots. “Over the years, Tunng’s sound has varied and twisted, but at the root there is always a flavour of what Sam and I made on that first album,” Lindsay says. “Rather than searching for a new avenue we went back to what we used to do, which, after all this time, felt like it was a new avenue.” Even down to the title, Love You All Over Again is a re-embrace of their beginnings. What makes this work so well, like those early records, is the “tronica” part of the equation is used with a very subtle touch; songs like “Everything Else,” “Sixes,” “Deep Underneath,” and “Didn’t Know Why” glow in the warmth of nylon string guitars, lush harmonies, and the occasional woodwind, and would sound great even without all the gentle bleeps and bloops and patchwork production. But it’s those electronic touches that make Tunng unique even as dozens of other artists have co-opted the style. Great songwriting and arrangements, plus a little gentle humor, will always win out.

—

Matt Berry – Heard Noises (Acid Jazz)
You came for the laughs but stayed for the music; Matt Berry delivers another groovy psych-pop gem

If you love Matt Berry, the comic actor from such beloved shows as What We Do In the Shadows, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, and Toast of London to name three, and don’t know that he’s an equally gifted musician, it’s time to listen up. A multi-instrumentalist polymath who plays nearly everything on his records, Berry creates music that owes so much to the ’60s and ’70s that it often sounds like a lost artifact from the era. (It should also be said that while he’s a very funny guy, Berry doesn’t make “funny” music, at least on record.) He’s also fond of a high concept, be it Swinging London (The Blue Elephant), pedal steel-drenched Nashville-era Dylan (Phantom Birds) or ’60s/’70s “library music” (Simplicity), but Heard Noises plays more like A Matt Berry Primer. There’s groovy psych (“Wedding Photo” and “I Gotta Limit,” a duet with Kitty Liv), Serge Gainsbourg/Scott Walker lush grooves (“Why on Fire”), sunshine pop (“Stay on the Ground”), and windswept folk-rock (“To Live for What Once Was”). He’s also got a few notable guests this time: Fruit Bats’ Eric D Johnson contributes guitar and vocals on three songs, and actress Natasha Lyonne provides spoken word vocals on the very trippy, Tubular Bells-ish “I Entered As I Came.” With What We Do in Shadows done and no next big project announced yet, fill that hole in your heart with this album and work back from there through his amazing discography.

—

Rose City Band – Sol Y Sombra (Thrill Jockey)
Let Ripley Johnson’s rippling leads on Rose City Band’s choogling new album warm your winter

Releasing this album in the dead of winter (NYC is 14° Fahrenheit as I write this) was a very smart move, as the rays of sunshine that emanate from these songs can warm even the coldest room. Of all of Ripley Johnson’s excellent groups, which include Moon Duo and Wooden Shjips, it’s Rose City Band whose style is the most natural fit for his fluid, rippling guitar leads. This is also his most chooglin’ project and Sol Y Sombra is their most Dead-y record yet and not just because the chorus of opening track “Light’s on the Way” sounds a lot like “A Touch of Grey.” The magic on this album, and Rose City Band, lies with the interplay between Johnson and pedal steel player Barry Walker who, coupled with the album’s sweet melodies, create their own radiant light. Of course as any artist or cinematographer will tell you, there is no light without dark and that’s the theme of this record whose title translates to “Sun and Shadow.” “With Rose City Band, I’m generally trying to make uplifting music, good time music,” says Johnson. “This time I couldn’t avoid the shadow being more of a presence. There’s no getting away from it. The shadow is always there. So, I left it in.” No one would call Sol Y Sobra bleak or even a bummer, and what shadows there are only accentuate the many lovely bright moments.

—

Young Knives – Landfill (Gadzook)
2000s indie survivors examine their post-punk revival legacy while charting their own path on their first album in five years

UK band Young Knives, lead by brothers Henry and Thomas Dartnall, came up through the blog-fueled indie/post-punk revival of the mid-’00s, bringing a distinct English countryside flavor to their brand of angsty, angular guitar music. Their debut album, Voices of Animals and Men, was nominated for the 2007 Mercury Prize alongside Arctic Monkeys, Amy Winehouse, Dizzee Rascal, Bat for Lashes, New Young Pony Club and more who all lost to Klaxons’ Myths of the Near Future. (Truly a snapshot of a time.) As the zeitgeist moved elsewhere, the Dartnalls kept making weird, cool records, though they took most of the 2010s off. In August 2020, Vice published a list titled The 50 Greatest Indie Landfill Songs of All Time, featuring tons of late-’00s mostly British groups who probably featured on the cover of NME (and many hyped by this writer) at the time, including Pete & The Pirates, Maximo Park, Futureheads, The Rakes, The View (another 2007 Mercury Prize nominee), Razorlight, The Kooks, and yes The Young Knives whose song “She’s Attracted To” came in at #35. Two weeks after this Vice list published, Young Knives released Barbarians, their first album in seven years, the weirdest record they’d ever made and a definite nominee for weirdest record anyone made that year. But the “Indie Landfill” thing clearly stuck in the Dartnalls’ craw, as five years later they’re back with Landfill, an album Henry says is about “letting things go before they are taken from you, including the carefully curated images of ourselves. Embracing everything the world throws at you and not taking it to heart.” These 10 songs are a little closer to the sound that most associate with the band, but they are clearly doing it for themselves and that shows through in the songwriting, performances and production. Landfill is terrific, mixing their love of ’70s English folk, the Wicker Man soundtrack, spiky post-punk, and prog into an album that, while still very left of center, is full of catchy, oddball indie songs. There’s even a little rap, “Cause and Effect,” which somehow totally works. Young Knives remain defiantly indie, in their own charming and peculiar way, and this one’s a keeper.

—

Edvard Graham Lewis – Alreet? (UPP)
Wire’s bassist lets his baritone soar on this entertaining solo album

Wire bassist Graham Lewis has a distinctive baritone that he tends to let go just a little melodramatic. Wire are not goth, but the songs he’s sung in the band, like “I Should’ve Known Better,” “Feed Me” and “Ambitious,” took them into dark waters. This was even more felt with his offshoot projects like He Said, Dome and Duet Emmo. Those pipes, and his skills as a musician and songwriter, are in fine form on Alreet?, Lewis’ new solo album that drops pins at various points in his career. “Last Scene of All” and “I Still Remember” could’ve been on Wire’s 154, while the more electronic “Kinds of Whether” and “Switch” are closer to He Said territory. Then there’s the cinematic, eight-minute closer “What the Hell” that isn’t’ quite like anything Lewis has ever done before and sounds very modern. Throughout is that voice, now 71 one years old, sounding as powerful and unsettling as ever.

—

Anna B Savage – You & i are Earth (City Slang)
The idiosyncratic singer-songwriter worked with Lankum’s producer for her most grounded record yet

The first thing you notice with art-pop singer Anna B Savage is her wonderfully expressive voice which can go from being right in your ear, ASMR style, to flying a mile above you. She’s more concerned with terra firma than the stratosphere, though, on her lovely third album, You & i are Earth. Made after leaving London for Donegal, Ireland, the album was produced by John “Spud” Murphy (Lankum, black midi) and features members of Lankum and Crash Ensemble who all give things a darker, mossier feel than 2023’s in|FLUX (which was produced by Tunng’s Mike Lindsay). This is Savage’s most richly produced record yet, and songs like “Donegal,” “Mo Cheol Thú,” and the fluttering, skipping title track play like the sonic equivalent of a stunningly shot fantasy set against Ireland’s gorgeous topography, zooming just under the topsoil before zooming out to join a flock of birds along the coastline. It’s most spectacular natural wonder still being Savage’s voice.

—

INDIE BASEMENT CLASSIC: Oranger – The Quiet Vibrationland (Amazing Grease / Poptones, 2000)
A lost classic from this underrated ’00s-era San Francisco psych-pop group

San Francisco’s Oranger were popsmiths of the highest order, borrowing the best bits of ’60s and ’70s psychedelia to create their own brand of sunshine pop. Nicking the title from The Who’s Tommy (and drummer Jim Lindsay swiping wild fills from Keith Moon), The Quiet Vibrationland also borrows from The Byrds, Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Turtles and the Kinks, but they do it with panache, punny pop-culture-laced humor and their own fantastic melodic sense. Oranger never really got their due — they’re not too far in sound or style from Fountains of Wayne — but “Suddenly Upsidedown,” “A View of the City from an Airplane,” “Texas Snow” and “Stoney Curtis in Reverse” all sound like lost classics.

Looking for more? Browse the Indie Basement archives.

And check out what’s new in our shop.

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.