It’s another massive week in Indie Basement with 10 new albums I’m writing about, including the latest from Porridge Radio, Kelly Lee Owens, former Girls frontman Christopher Owens, Montreal underground supergroup PYPY (Duchess Says / Red Mass), Irish band SIlverbacks, Cold Cave, Nap Eyes, Confidence Man, and more.

Over in Notable Releases, Andrew reviews new albums from High Vis (I like this one a lot), Japandroids, and more.

The new Confidence Man album features Jimmy Cauty of The KLF so I look back at their smash hit album The White Room for this week’s Indie Basement Classic.

More Basement-friendly news from this week’s posts: Panda Bear has a new album and the first single features Cindy Lee; Father John Misty and Destroyer are touring together next year; Drop Nineteens are releasing a “lost” album from 1991; London band Heartworms announced their debut album; and there’s a new 100-minute interview with The Cure’s Robert Smith to watch.

Head below for this week’s (many) reviews

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Silverbacks – Easy Being A Winner (Central Tones / Cargo)
Fans of ’90s indie rock will find lots to love on the latest from this very talented, underrated Irish band

Dublin band Silverbacks’ third album begins with a little riff created from high-pitched guitar harmonics before cracking open into the lightly twangy groove of “Selling Shovels.” It’s a perfect, memorable way to start off a record that swerves left and right, often within one song, but never loses control. Silverbacks are almost two bands in one: songs sung by guitarist Daniel O’Kelly are decidedly more diehard record nerd indie rock, recalling Yo La Tengo, Pavement, The Dream Syndicate, Sonic Youth, or current Dutch band Lewsberg; while songs sung by bassist Emma Hanlon are poppier and prettier. It’s all done via lots of guitars — this band has three guitarists — and their instrumental interplay is one of the most pleasurable aspects of Easy Being A Winner, be it drones, twin leads, or skronky noise. There are also lots of vintage organs, the occasional woodwind and electronic touches, and a couple diversions into dark post-punk and DFA-style dance-rock. If this sounds like an album or band that doesn’t know what it wants to be, Daniel and Emma’s differing styles not only compliment each other but hold it all together and keep things interesting.

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Porridge Radio – Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me (Secretly Canadian)
Another gripping record from this magnetic Brighton, UK band

“You always say I’m too intense,” Dana Margolin sings knowingly on “God of Everything Else” from Porridge Radio’s fourth album. It’s that intensity that has powered the Brighton, UK band since day one and made their songs and live shows so powerful. For this one, Margolin decided to switch up her process — all the songs were written as poems first, in hopes to avoid the kind of crutches and tricks songwriters often use. “In a poem,” says Dana, “you can’t hide.” The new process broke through some creative roadblocks for Margolin, but I’m not sure the listener can hear it. That’s not a criticism: Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me is another terrific record, and these are Porridge Radio songs through and through. Most of them feature the band’s signature earmarks, including the cyclical nature of the lyrics that play out like someone stuck on a single thought that gets obsessed over ad infinitum, all set to stirring melodies and performances. Intense? Very. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

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PYPY – Sacred Times (Goner)
After 10 years the Montreal underground supergroup featuring members of Duchess Says and Red Mass return with their second album. It’s a party.

Montreal underground supergroup PYPY (pronounced “pie pie” if you’re wondering) formed in the early 2010s by Annie-Claude Deschenes  (Duchess Says) and Roy Vucino (Red Mass, CPC Gangbangs), making art-damaged punk with a fondness for the Stooges and cheap synths. They released their debut album in early 2014 and then promptly ceased to exist. Since then, Duchess Says have gone into indefinite hiatus and Annie-Claude started a solo career, but it turns out PYPY were not dead, just hibernating. Ten years after their debut they are back with Sacred Times, a welcome and very fun return. This is a party record, a la early B-52’s but without a Fred Schneider (that’s a plus); new wave garage rock punctuated with sax and mutated keyboards, crammed with hooks and spirited performances. The music is a blast and Annie-Claude matches the energy with her distinct, full-throttle vocal delivery. (Roy hits the mic a few times, too, like on nervy highlight “I Am a Simulation,” but Annie-Claude is the star of the show.) They also make room for rock melodrama, doomy metal, Frenchy darkwave, and Morricone-style soundtrack music. I am very happy to have this record but I hope PYPY are back to stay. Sacred Times at least deserves a tour.

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Kelly Lee Owens – Dreamstate (dh2)
Kelly Lee Owens embraces pop, but not too much, with help from members of The Chemical Brothers and The 1975 on her fourth album

After three albums for Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound, shoegazer-turned-electronic-musician Kelly Lee Owens signed to dh2, the new electronic subsidiary of Dirty Hit, the label run by The 1975’s George Daniel. Dreamstate, her fourth album, feels like a bid to level up but one that is a natural progression and not a chart pop heel-turn. George Daniel is one of the collaborators on the album, as is The Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands, and they both bring their knowledge and skill of turning on an arena full of people to this record. There’s more of an emphasis on hooks while still appealing to serious techno-heads who like to drop reference to famed Berlin mecca Berghain (whether they’ve been there or not). It’s a best-of-both-worlds situation on singles “Sunshine,” “Higher,” and “Love You Got,” and the album, which has the best flow of any Owens record yet, still makes room for moments of head-down beats and gorgeous ambience, like the gossamer “Trust and Desire” that sends Dreamstate off to sleep with a perfect lullaby.

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Christopher Owens – I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair (True Panther Sounds)
The former Girls frontman’s first record in seven years has some of his old band’s spark

Girls were one of the most lauded and divisive indie bands of the late-’00s and early-’10s; as someone who lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn then (and still does) those early singles — “Lust for Life,” “Hellhole Ratrace” — were inescapable. It feels like nobody really talks about them much anymore, though, as if they’ve been lost to a cultural memory hole alongside The Soft Pack and Craft Spells. Part of that may be that singer-songwriter Christopher Owens solo career never had the same magic as Girls, and he hasn’t released much in the last decade. His previous solo record, Chrissybaby Forever, was 2015 and there’s been nothing since his 2017 EP with new group Curls. (His Girls bandmate Chet White died in 2020.) The good memories of those early-2010s days and records kinda came flooding back when listening to Owens’ first album in seven years, which is full of the warm melodies, impressive guitarwork and atmospheric production I associate with his old band. Owens was born and raised into a very devout Christian family and that has colored his songwriting from the beginning, but it’s front and center here, which may be a turnoff for some. However, the beauty and craft on display on “I Think About Heaven,” ragged ripper “No Good,” and gospel-inflected “Do You Need a Friend” are hard to deny.

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High Vis – Guided Tour (dais)
These UK baggy punks keep getting better, their third album is a real corker

High Vis titled their debut album Blending, mixing hardcare punk with ’90s Britpop and baggy into a winning combination. But they’ve gotten better with their Vitamix and album #3 is an even tastier cocktail that refines their unique combination of roaring guitars, soaring choruses, shouty bits, and delicate jangle. Guided Tour‘s title track might be the best thing they’ve ever done, and “Mind’s a Lie” takes them into new territory they should definitely explore further. Read Andrew’s full review in Notable Releases.

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Cold Cave – Passion Depression (Heartworm Press)
It’s goth party business as usual for Cold Cave’s first album in 13 years

Passion Depression is the first Cold Cave album since 2011’s Cherish the Light Years but it doesn’t feel that long as Wes Eisold has released lots of singles and EPs under the CC name over the last decade-plus. This album might also not feel like an album, because almost all of its eight songs had been released as singles throughout this year. It’s a good, cohesive album when taken as a whole, but release day is not as exciting when you’ve already heard the lion’s share of these tracks already. That aside, there’s lots to enjoy on Passion Depression. Wes has studied the ’80s goth playbook and he knows it inside and out: icy synths, moody basslines, vintage drum machine sounds, acoustic guitars, power chords, anthemic rock choruses, and melodramatic singing / female backing vocals, with nods to everything from Jesus and Mary Chain to Dead or Alive, Flesh for Lulu, and other more obvious influences. Cold Cave know how to make Depression a dance party.

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Nap Eyes – The Neon Gate (Paradise of Bachelors)
The new album may read like homework, but plays like recess

My advice for listening to long-running Nova Scotian band Nap Eyes’ fifth album: just hit play. Because if you read anything about it first, you might think The Neon Gate sounds like homework. There are musical adaptations of poems by W.B. Yeats (“I See Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart’s Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness”) and Alexander Pushkin (“Demons”), and the lengthy liner notes mention themes of “physics and philosophy, perambulatory meditations, self-interrogating soliloquies, and apertures of surreality,” before descending into dense dissertation territory complete with an abstract (!). Not to diminish the intents of Nigel Chapman and his bandmates, or their sense of humor, I see this and get flashbacks to trying to read Infinite Jest (and that there are songs that are also inspired by an online Dungeons & Dragons campaign and Nintendo video game Wave Race 64, make it seem even more David Foster Wallace-y). But listening to The Neon Gate is not a chore at all. The album opens with “Dark Mystery Enigma Bird,” which has an irresistibly bouncy bassline and borders synthpop. From there, Nap Eyes bring often jangly, sometimes jammy indie rock, with touches of folk and country. Chapman’s warm, understated vocal delivery welcomes you in and encourages you to stay for a while, and maybe pick a book off his library shelf or fire up his N64. He’s happy to go deep on any subject, but for others, you can just hit play.

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Emma Anderson – Spiral​é​e: Pearlies Rearranged (Sonic Cathedral)
Julia Holter, MEMORIALS, deary and more remix songs from the Lush co-founders debut album. It’s good.

Last year, Lush cofounder Emma Anderson released her long-overdue solo album, Pearlies. She has since given those tracks over to talented friends and fans to make new versions. Just as the letters in her album title have been rearranged, anagram style, so have the songs on Spiralé​e. “We selected an interesting array of artists and gave them the stems without any direction to see what they would come up with,” says Emma show stressing this is not just a remix album. “The result is absolutely brilliant and is a record that stands alone without even knowing what the originals are like.” I would agree and among the highlights: recent Indie Basement Album of the Week recipients MEMORIALS put their dynamism on “Inner Light”; deary’s extra ethereal dub mix of “For a Moment”; Julia Holter’s orchestral deconstruction of “Taste the Air”; Lorelle Meets the Obsolete’s Tangerine Dream-y “84-76” mix of “Tonight is Mine”; and Masal’s very groovy, harp-laden “Spectral Mix” of “I Was Miles Away.” I’m not sure Spiral​é​e is better than Pearlies, but it’s close, and I’m glad I don’t have to choose.

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Confidence Man – 3AM (La La La) (Casablanca Records)
Cheeky Aussie dance duo pay tribute to ’90s rave on their fun, hedonistic third album

“I wanna party like we used to,” Janet Planet sings on “Who Knows What You’ll Find,” the opening track to Confidence Man’s very fun third album. If you didn’t get enough ’90s dance nostalgia this year with Peggy Gou’s I Hear You, these saucy Aussies are here to hook you up. “It’s a fucked up sort of world,” says the duo’s other half, Sugar Bones. “It’s 3am, it’s never not 3am, and we party all the time.” If you’re wondering, yes, 3AM (La La La)’s title is also a reference to The KLF’s classic single “3AM Eternal” and they actually coaxed that group’s Jimmy Cauty out of retirement to work on the title track. The techno-house stuff is fun, but Confidence Man are better when they slow it down a little, like on the very baggy “Sicko” that feels like a lost track from Primal Scream’s Screamadelica. That may be because I’ve only listened to this in my kitchen while making dinner; it’s clearly designed for the dancefloor, much later in the evening, when other things are cooking.

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INDIE BASEMENT CLASSIC – The KLF – The White Room (KLF Communications, 1991)
With ’90s rave culture back in fashion, let’s revisit the worldwide smash record from Liverpool cultural pranksters The KLF

If nothing else, The KLF’s final album serves as a time capsule for what a totally bananas year 1991 was, one that also points towards where the culture was going. Songs play like ad jingles — they hype themselves by name on nearly every track — in an act of over-the-top self promotion. What else would you expect from Bill Drummond & Jimmy Kauty who treated The KLF as a subversive piece of high-concept art designed to mock the music industry. They also managed to create some of the biggest dance hits of the late-’80s and early-’90s. Weirdest too: “3 AM Eternal” (#5 in the US) features a chorus of “Ancients of MuMu!”, while “Justified and Ancient” has country icon Tammy Wynette singing about the KLF’s ice cream van. (The video for “Justified and Ancient” is 1991 in three minutes and 48 seconds.) The White Room was originally intended as the soundtrack to a KLF film of the same name, a project which ended up getting scrapped. The UK version is presented as a fake concert album, featuring crowd noise taken from U2’s Rattle & Hum and a Doors live album, but the US version eliminates that in favor of a more “normal” record. (No KLF record is normal, though.) Their singles are here, though often not the versions that were hits — “Justified and Ancient” appears as a chilled-out coda that is almost a lullaby. The White Room connects those chart smashes with ambient spoken word interludes (“Build a Fire”), dubby jams (“No More Tears”), and trance numbers like the title track. Drummond and Cauty would delete The White Room, and the rest of their catalogue, the next year, rendering everything out of print, followed by their most famous stunt — burning one million pounds sterling (which was most of profits) and closing the door on the group for good. Print the legend, they say, and The KLF are perhaps more interesting on paper than on record, but The White Room is a fascinating, fun listen.

The KLF did put their records on streaming services a few years ago, albeit in reworked form due to some sample clearance issues, including a new “Director’s Cut” edition of The White Room:

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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.