Happy first week of spring and greetings from Knoxville, TN where I am in town for Big Ears 2024 and will be seeing a lot of cool music, including a lot of flutes (André 3000, Shabaka, more). Meanwhile, it’s a busy week of new releases and I review seven of them: Elbow, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Halo Maud, Klaus Johann Grobe, Sam Evian, Outer World, and Marbled Eye.

It’s an even bigger week in Notable Releases, with Andrew giveing a spin to  some of the week’s most anticipated albums, including Adrianne Lenker, Waxahatchee, Julia Holter, and Rosali, all of which I also recommend, and a whole lot more.

If you need other Basement-related news, Pulp announced North American tour dates and nothing else is more important than that, and I’ve forgotten all the other stuff that got announced. Did you manage to score tickets?

Head below for this week’s reviews.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Elbow – AUDIO VERTIGO (Polydor/GEFFEN)
Horns and percussion add lift to these Manchester vets’ 10th album which finds them still at the top of their game 

After nine albums, you’d think you’d know exactly what to expect from Elbow on their 10th: big, open-armed, open-hearted anthems perfectly suited for festival crowds. But AUDIO VERTIGO doesn’t sound like any Elbow album before it while somehow retaining all the things that make the band’s music so rewarding. The soaring melodies and the warm, inviting voice of frontman Guy Garvey are distinctly Elbow, but the way they get there — the arrangements, the instrumentation — feels new and exciting. It’s not often you get a band three decades into their career making music this bold, creative and fun.

“We referenced The Meters, Beastie Boys, Sly and Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Arctics, Queens of the Stone Age, Bolan, Tom Waits, Public Enemy and Alison Moyet,” says Garvey. “That’s just the opening song.” That would be “Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years,” a swaggering litany of uncorrected personality traits where Garvey spouts off lines like “I’m the dashboard hula girl of nodding self-deception / Here’s to never accepting slight adjustment or correction” backed by a choir and booming percussion.

Next up is “Lover’s Leap” which introduces Elbow’s brightest new color: horns, which here are stacked up alongside a very funky rhythm section into a towering Jenga creation that sways but never topples. Brass and woodwinds are all over the album, adding notes of ’80s funk and afrobeat. Even better is “Balu,” which features a massive, spiraling bassline from Pete Turner as afterburner horn charts blast the song into orbit like in the chorus, mirroring the harmony vocals. There’s always been a little Peter Gabriel in what Elbow do; AUDIO VERTIGO at times plays big like So minus the ’80s production bombast.

Garvey and Turner, along with fellow founding members and brothers Craig and Mark Potter, plus drummer Alex Reeves who’s been with them since 2016, all sound like they’re having a blast making these songs, which are almost entirely upbeat, rousing and well traveled. “Knife Fight” lays out a wild night in Istanbul, while “Good Blood Mexico City” might be Elbow’s most rocking song ever and makes you wonder why there aren’t more like it in their discography. Ballads have long been the band’s forte but the closest they come here is the whisper quiet “Embers of the Day” which, at only 38 seconds, is more of an interlude between the moody “Very Heaven” and gorgeous closer “From the River” which is the kind of sweeping, melancholic-yet-uplifting track Elbow do better than almost anybody else. “If and when you cry, feed it to the flowers you’ll find along the way,” Garvey sings, “Funny, wise and kind, use those superpowers, every day.” It’s the most traditionally Elbow-eque song on an album of unexpected pleasures, and plays like a welcome victory lap for a band very much still in their prime.

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The Jesus and Mary Chain – Glasgow Eyes (Fuzz Club)
Love it or hate it, you can’t say the Mary Chain are sleepwalking on their eighth album in 40 years. It’s a wild ride.

As The Jesus & Mary Chain, Jim and William Reid have never been ones to stretch their wings much, creatively. Ever since crystalizing a drum-machine-driven, bluesy Phil Spector-esque noise-pop style on their second album, 1986’s Darklands, they more or less stuck to that formula. Sure, they’ve gone poppier (Automatic), noisier (Honey’s Dead) and acoustic (Stoned and Dethroned) but have basically remained basically the same. Glasgow Eyes is only their second album since reforming the band in 2007 — the first was 2017’s Damage and Joy which was a piecemeal record — and whether you like it or not, it’s hard to say this is Jim and William Reid doing JAMC by the numbers. This is a weird record! They made it at Mogwai’s Castle of Doom studio, though it could also pass for something recorded using a 2005 copy of GarageBand. Many of these songs are as DIY as the Mary Chain have ever sounded, with junkshop keyboards sharing equal spotlight with the guitars. Another difference is William Reid takes lead vocals on more than half the record — his biggest percentage ever — and his decidedly more unhinged style adds to the “what are we listening to?” vibe. It’s also an album that examines the brothers’ tumultuous relationship (awkwardly titled “JAMCOD” details their 1998 onstage breakup at L.A.’s House of Blues) and the mythology of the band (“Girl 71,” “Second of June”) in addition to their usual favorite subjects, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll (“Mediterranean X Film,” “Venal Joy,” most of the other songs). With sneery lines like “I was kicking the caine cause the cane wasn’t able / Now I’m addicted to love so we can fuck on the table,” this is all still clearly the Mary Chain but Glasgow Eyes is the furthest William and Jim have traveled from  their core sound since trading Bobby Gillespie for a beatbox. There are times on the album — like “The Eagles and The Beatles” which is part Joan Jett and part Primal Scream and has a chorus of “I’ve been rollin’ with the Stones” — where you may swing from “this is terrible!” to “this is brilliant!” and back over the course of a minute. Do we need a new JAMC album in 2024? Maybe not but at least it’s an interesting one.

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Halo Maud – Celebrate (Heavenly)
Second album from this very talented psych-pop Parisienne was produced by Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier and is a joyous delight

“My desire is pure!,” Maud Nadal sings on the single of the same name, off of Halo Maud second’s album, and you can feel the joy radiate from the speakers as her voice takes fanciful flight atop a lightly funky beat and a guitar riff that sounds born of a different world. Celebrate follows an amazing 2023 for the French artist who welcomed her first child into the world and was a bit of a muse for Chemical Brothers, providing the “beautiful” on four great songs on their album For That Beautiful Feeling. Last year’s good vibrations can be felt here, too. Originally known for her guitar skills in Melody’s Echo Chamber and Moodoïd, Maud is a musical polymath whose greatest instrument might be her vocal chords which emote in French and English and at times, it has to be said, are very reminiscent of Bjork. While Maud has no trouble creating magic on her own, for Celebrate she traveled from Paris to Los Angeles to work with Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier, and the two really hit it off creatively and brought out the best in each other. This one is not miles different from 2020’s Je Suis Une Île — melodic sunshine psych rock with a fondness for Can, yé-yé, Tony Allen’s drumming, and Lonerism-era Tame Impala — but everything’s just a little brighter and sharper. Also, nobody does it quite like Halo Maud, from great originals (“Catch the Wave,” “My Desire is Pure,” “Terres Infinies”), to an inspired, flute-filled cover of Fred Frith & René Lussier’s “Iceberg,” and the lythe, transportive Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares tribute “Pesnopoïka.” If you’re not smiling like Maud on the cover of Celebrate by the end, you’re listening to the wrong album.

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Klaus Johann Grobe – io tu il loro (Trouble in Mind)
This Swiss duo’s first album in six years trades German for English but remain a total groove machine

Klaus Johann Grobe’s debut album, Im Sinne der Zeit, is my favorite album of 2014 and without a doubt my most-listened-to album of the last 10 years. It was such a unique, perfect record — an amazingly groove machine rhythm section matched with vintage keyboards for what could be described as garage rock lounge music punk, sung in German to add to the mystery — that they never tried to replicate it again. They kept that groovy backbone and their killer basslines but applied them to different but simpatico styles, shifting the focus distinctly on 2016’s Spagat Der Liebe (tropicalia, krautrock) and again on 2018’s Du Bist So Symmetrisch (disco!). For their fourth album, and first in six years, KJG have in some ways made their most dramatic pivot yet, as io tu il loro is their first album where they sing in English almost exclusively. (Previously they sang in German but mostly they speak the international language of Groovy.) It’s also the first time they’ve appeared on an album cover and between those two things they seem just a little less mysterious now. (They and their label may see that as a plus.) Apart from that, Sevi Landolt and Daniel Bachmann are still making distinctly Klaus Johann Grobe music, though this is their smoothest album yet, with lightly funky acoustic guitar prominent in the mix alongside their usual palette of Jaki Liebezeit-style drumming, proggy synths and those truly great bass parts. The synths this time are on the waspy side — think Kool & the Gang’s “Summer Madness” or Quincy Jones’ theme to Ironside — and with lots of wild arpeggiations and “bah de dah bah de dah” choruses, things often approach nerdy library music territory and I’m totally here for that. Between the album title, new video and admitted affection for ’70s Italian pop, io tu il loro is like a soundtrack to a forgotten giallo flick set in the Dolomites, dubbed into English.

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Sam Evian – Plunge (Flying Cloud Recordings / Thirty Tigers)
Fourth album from producer/musician Sam Evian is his best yet, steeped in ’70s pop yet very now

His reputation as a producer is starting to overshadow his musical career, but Sam Evian is still making some of the most sublime guitar pop of our era. Plunge is his fourth album and my favorite yet, steeped in a variety of sunny mid-’70s sounds and featuring contributions from Big Thief‘s Adrianne Lenker, Palehound‘s El Kempner, Liam Kazar, and Sean Mullins. “No-one knew the songs or what the plan was,” Sam said of the record. “We kept it loose and fun. This was the spirit of the sessions. No headphones, no playback, minimal overdubs, or bleed. Fast and loose. I spend so much time trying to make perfect recordings for everyone else, so it was a slight act of resistance to make something wild and kind of fucked up for myself.” Songs like “Wild Days,” “Jacket,” “Why Does It Take So Long,” and “Wind Blows” go down smooth and sweet, and recall everything from Big Star to Wings, ELO and Pilot, without ever falling into pastiche. The hooks are big and memorable, the performances great, and with spring arriving, Plunge is perfect for the greener, sunnier days ahead.

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Outer World – Who Does the Music Love? (HHBTM)
Groovy, fuzzed-out psychedelic pop is at the heart of this new band from Dahlia Seed’s Tracy Wilson

Tracy Wilson has led Dahlia Seed and Ringfinger and more over the years with a wild wail that was a signature of her bands. Sadly, a bad case of early covid took away that powerful side of her voice, but it made her explore other styles of music she loved. Which brings us to Outer World, her duo with partner Kenneth Close that plays in a ’60s sandbox of driving, groovy psych and trippy soundtrack music. The hushed style she adopts on Who Does the Music Love? still sounds great and fits in perfect with the band’s retro-future universe. Fans of Broadcast, Stereolab and The Soundcarriers will feel right at home in this (outer) world.

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Marbled Eye – Read the Air (Summer Shade / Digital Regress)
Oakland band return after five years with their second album of scuzzy, post-punk garage rock 

Marbled Eye are from Oakland and feel like a band that should’ve been from the Bay Area scene of 15 years ago when Oh Sees, Sic Alps, and the Fresh & Onlys were all still neighbors. More specifically, though, the band recall Oh Sees’ former tourmates, Melbourne’s Total Control, with an acid-dipped, dystopian brand of gothy garage post-punk. Read the Air is Marbled Eye’s second album and first in five years, and you can her the sneery disdain on slashing rippers “In the Static,” “All the Pieces,” and “Wear Me Down.” Good to know a few weirdos are still living among the tech-bros.

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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.