Indie Basement is a weekly column on BrooklynVegan focusing on classic indie and alternative artists, “college rock,” and new and current acts who follow a similar path. There are reviews of new albums, reissues, box sets, books and sometimes movies and television shows. I’ve rounded up June’s best music, highlighting my favorite songs and albums, plus links to relevant features and news, a monthly playlist, and more.

There were so many good albums this month it was genuinely hard to narrow it down to five, so I picked six. A few that almost made it included Guided by Voices’ Strut of Kings (their 40th album!), Goat Girl’s Below the Waste, Redd Kross’ self-titled double album, Been Stellar’s Scream From New York, NY, Swiftumz’s Simply the Best, John Grant’s The Art of the Lie, Moon Diagrams’ Cemetery Classics, and Rui Gabriel’s Compassion.

As always there was an abundance of great songs, and for June I picked a dozen to write about, from dance bangers to shoegaze, tropicalia and good old fashioned indie rock. For the overflow, I made a Best of June playlist featuring 57 songs, including all of the songs I reviewed, a song each from my five albums of the month and lots more. It’s available in both Spotify and TIDAL form below.

With half the year over, I’ll also be putting up the Indie Basement Best Album of 2024 So Far list, so stay tuned for that. Until then, head below for all of June’s best stuff.

INDIE BASEMENT – BEST SONGS OF JUNE 2024

Caribou – “Broke My Heart”

Dan Snaith has been on a roll this year, first with “Honey” in April, and now the even better “Broke My Heart,” which just skips across the horizon with joy despite the dark lyrics about a breakup. There’s also a “dah dah dah de dah dha” vocal hook that is begging for someone to mash it up into Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner.” Four Tet’s Keiran Hebden helped out on this one (“Honey,” too) and if you’re wondering like I was, that is Dan singing, he’s just used *technology* to turn himself into a breathy, alluring chanteuse. Keep it up Dan, let’s have a single every other month, please.

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Clothing – “Still Point” ft L’Rain

Clothing, the duo project of Aakaash Israni of Dawn of Midi and Ben Sterling of Mobius Band/Cookies, are a little outside of what I normally cover in Indie Basement, but their production, arrangements and collaborations make for my kind of modern R&B. Their debut single, “Kingdom” (ft. Amber Coffman), made my Best Songs of March list, and here they are back with this wonderful, ethereal, transportive collab with L’Rain. Israni and Sterling say once she delivered her vocals they were so knocked out that they went back and rearranged the song to give them more space in the mix. The wordless vocal outro could’ve gone on for another 10 minutes as far as I’m concerned. Sublime.

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deary – “The Moth”

UK group deary transport me back to 1990 when the British indie scene, at least if you read NME and Melody Maker, seemed to be made up entirely of shoegazers and Madchester-style ravers. A few acts back then — My Bloody Valentine, Chapterhouse, Primal Scream — dabbled in both. With its loping shuffle-beat and many layers of shimmering guitar atmosphere, you could imagine “The Moth” getting played at New Order’s legendary Manchester club The Hacienda, or getting remixed by the late great Andrew Weatherall. Bonus bonafides: this was recorded at 4AD Studios in London and (former Cocteau Twins bassist) Simon Raymonde’s Bella Union Studios in Brighton, and was mastered by Slowdive’s Simon Scott.

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Ela Minus – “COMBAT”

For a song with an aggressive, all-caps title, “COMBAT” is about as chill as it gets. Backed by her usual waves of celestial synths along with a quartet of woodwinds (her first time using acoustic instruments) this is unlike anything Ela Minus has ever released. (It does sound a little like Enya, though.) Gorgeous stuff, but just underneath the ether lies a simmering anger that could boil over at any second: “We are the birds that only know life inside a cage, and nothing scares us / They thought we would forget how to fly… They thought we wouldn’t dare to take a leap…The desire to knock them down gets stronger / The desire to keep going until it’s all burned down.”

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MEMORIALS – “Acceptable Experience”

There was talk of new Electrelane music, started during the pandemic, and while I hope we still get to hear that I’m pretty excited by the music that the band’s Verity Susman is making with Wire/It Hugs Back’s Matthew Simms as MEMORIALS. It definitely scratches a similar itch. After releasing two soundtracks last year, the duo have signed to Fire records and are gearing up for their proper debut album. “Acceptable Experience” is a groovy, psychedelic blast with propulsive rhythm section, droney/Doors-y organ and amazing harmony vocals from Susman. I want more and soon.

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Geneva Jacuzzi – “Art is Dangerous”

LA multidiciplinarian Geneva Jacuzzi’s first single for Dais is an all-caps agitprop statement of intent, delivered ice cold with one eyebrow raised. It’s the kind of synthy banger you could imagine coming out of NYC or LA in 1983, defining art in broad terms (“Dangerous,” “Scandalous”) before delivering the cutting “hang it on a wall” in the refrain. It’s the kind of song where the video is inseparable from the music, and that features cameos from Weyes Blood, Drab Majesty, King Woman, Boy Harsher and more.

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Joe Goddard – “Follow You”

Even though he co-founded Hot Chip, Joe Goddard doesn’t get enough props, or moments on the mic, if you ask me. Fans of HC songs like “No Fit State” will surely dig the low-key grooves, warm melody and Goddard’s low, empathetic vocal style on this excellent early taste of his upcoming third solo album, Harmonics. The album is brimming with guests, but “Follow You” shows he does more than fine on his own.

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Kate Bollinger – “To Your Own Devices”

What a wonderful, dreamy world Kate Bollinger has created on her upcoming debut album Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind. It’s like a trip back to 1966, jetting from the Velvet Underground’s New York to Los Angeles for a visit to Burt Bacharach’s studio. “To Your Own Devices” is sunny and warm but with an aching melancholy as Kate observes “Now you’re in a pinch / The mirror makes you flinch / And all this time, were you not making sense?” The video, meanwhile, is like a surreal trip back to the 1920s with a little stop-motion animation aiding in the journey.

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Naima Bock – “Kaley”

Former Goat Girl bassist Naima Bock’s solo debut was my favorite album of 2022, so I have high hopes for its follow-up, and “Kaley” does not disappoint. It also surprises. Unlike the delicate, spare folk of her debut, “Kaley” is lush and soulful, like a trip to Muscle Shoals, while counterbalanced with Bock’s unique melodic style and sad-to-the-bone voice.

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Party Dozen – “The Big Man Upstairs”

Indie Basement’s Best of June features not one but two sax-and-drums duos. Look for London’s O. further down the page, but here’s Melbourne’s Party Dozen with the first single from their upcoming album Crime in Australia. Kirsty Tickle and Jonathan Boulet are masters at warping their instruments, and listening to “The Big Man Upstairs” you’d swear there were guitars and other instruments involved — you could almost call this shoegaze — but credits only list their main instruments. The songs is entrancing and expansive on its own but I wanna know how they did it.

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Peel Dream Magazine – “Lie in the Gutter”

Joe Stevens has dabbled in a number of ’90s genres and styles through his Peel Dream Magazine project, first mixing Stereolab’s clinical bachelor pad music and hypnotic shoegaze, then trying a hand at breezy analog electronic tropicalia by way of The High Llamas. With new album Rose Main Reading Room he seems to be finally synthesizing his own sound out of these and other elements. “Lie in the Gutter” skitters across the surface on brushed drums, droning organ, chiming xylophones and marimbas and inviting vocals as the sun rises over the bay.

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The Softies – “I Said What I Said”

Nineties indiepop royalty The Softies (Rose Melberg and Jen Sbragia) are back after 24 years and sounding just as wonderfully winsome and wistful as ever. Guitars jangle lightly as Melberg looks back on a former love. “How could I know how to fall out of love,” Melberg sings, in sweetest, purest, voice. “I tried to hold on / I did what I could / When nothing made sense and nothing felt good.” When they get to the chorus and Melberg and Sbragia’s voices intertwine on “I always knew There was probably someone better for you,” there’s not a dry eye in the house.

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INDIE BASEMENT – BEST ALBUMS OF JUNE 2024

Loma – How Will I Live Without a Body? (Sub Pop)

As Loma, Emily Cross, Dan Duszynski, and Jonathan Meiburg have always worked in watercolor, but How Will I Live Without a Body? Is their most subtle, sublime album yet. “Somehow, out of the chaos, we made something that sounds very relaxed,” Cross says. Relaxed, for sure, and at times bordering on ambient but also frequently thrilling, thanks to wonderful songs, expert performances, and arrangements / production that envelop you like a planetarium. Is that a guitar solo? No that’s a clarinet (via Cross, who also plays viola on the album) and is typical of their sideways but perfectly realized sonic approach that favors atmosphere over flash. Tinkling piano, fluttering brass and woodwinds, brushed drums, simmering feedback and synths that lie just below the surface, those are Loma’s weapons of choice, all of which are used to lift Cross’ crystal clear voice that, even if the music had you drifting off, could jolt you awake with its beauty. Even her background vocals, like on “This is How it Starts,” send shivers. There are a number of standouts here — “Pink Sky,” “Affinity,” “Broken Doorbell,” “How it Starts” — but How Will I Live Without a Body? is a record you really need to devote some time to sit down with. “The quiet’s what he needs,” Cross sings on another of the album’s highlights, “A Steady Mind.” You might need the quiet too, even if you don’t know it yet. But Loma do.

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Good Looks – Lived Here for a While (Keeled Scales)

“I’m not totally sure what heartland rock is,” Tyler Jordan, who is singer, songwriter and guitarist for Austin’s Good Looks, told us, “and I’m not totally sure we’re a heartland rock band.” I’m not sure Good Looks are a heartland rock band either but there are definitely elements of that genre in what they do, including warm melodies, anthemic choruses, and down-to-earth, relatable, ripped-from-his-life lyrics. But give their terrific second album more than a cursory listen and the differences become apparent. For one thing, lead guitarist Jake Ames clearly has a fondness for atmospheric early-’80s post-punk that puts a unique sparkle on songs like “Broken Body” and “Day of Judgement,” taking them somewhere between Manchester, England and Manchester, TN. (I realize that drops a pin somewhere in Atlantic Ocean, but I’m talking the metaphorical sonic mid-point.) Along with Jordan’s uniformly great songs, those unexpected arrangement touches lift Lived Here for a While out of “truck/beer commercial music” territory and make the album more rewarding and replayable. (Also Jordan is an unabashed leftie with lyrics that would not work for selling Chevys.) That said, Good Looks have crafted an album full of sun-baked earworms (“If It’s Gone,” “Self-Destructor” especially) that are custom built for blasting out of car stereos while blazing down the highway with the windows open, or watching the sun set with a frosty cold one in hand.

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O. – WeirdOs (Speedy Wunderground)

Remember when there were lots of guitar/drums duos in the late-’90s and early-’00s? Well now it’s all about sax and drums duos. Australia’s Party Dozen got a head start but here come London’s much less googleable O. (that’s their period, not mine) who also are defying what you might expect from a combo like this. Working with in-demand producer Dan Carey (whose label, Speedy Wunderground, they’re signed to), their debut album WeirdOs sounds more like it was made by a full band and not just baritone saxophonist Joe Henwood and drummer Tash Keary. Amazingly, this record, which incorporates everything from doom metal and blast beats to jungle breakbeats and free jazz freakouts, was recorded primarily by Joe and Tash live to tape. (I imagine that must’ve involved a ton of effects pedals and on-the-fly loops, but still.) “We’re just two people making a big sound, unafraid to give it our all when we play,” Joe says. “We’re interested in taking it to the limit – it’s something that comes naturally to us.” That’s an understatement and even if this was made by a King Crimson-sized band, WeirdOs would still be impressive, jaw dropping at times, with its precision, oomph, and joie de vivre. You gotta love the album art too, riffing on sugary kids cereal and suggesting it’s “the weird way to start your day.” Sugar free, WeirdOs are a blast without the sugar crash and definitely stay crispy in milk.

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Sam Morton – Daffodils & Dirt (XL)

The list of actors who have dipped a toe into the pool of pop and rock is long and weird, and includes multiple cast members of the original ’60s Star Trek, Scarlett Johansson, David Duchovny, Ryan Gosling (long before “I’m Ken”), Joe Pesci, Juliette Lewis, Keanu Reeves, Jackie Chan, Kevin Bacon…it goes on. Most of these records are forgettable, vanity project curios but occasionally there is a gem amongst the stones. One of those is Daffodils & Dirt by Sam Morton, aka the duo of Oscar-nominated actress Samantha Morton and XL Records founder Richard Russell. The collaboration came about after Russell heard Morton on an episode of BBC Radio 4’s “Desert Island Discs” and discovered they shared a lot of the same musical tastes. They traded a few emails which led to them making music. Part of the album’s success is due to Morton who has been in some big films, like Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, but she’s more drawn to artier works, like Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar or Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. She’s also appeared in a few music videos over the years, like The Horror’s “Sheena is a Parasite.” Mostly though it’s the chemistry between Morton and Russell who clearly spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of music they wanted to make. Daffodils & Dirt is not a stab at the Top 40 or an album of standards, but a forward-thinking, idiosyncratic work that has many layers to sink your teeth into. They’ve also brought in disparate cast of collaborators including Alabaster DePlume and UB40’s Ali Campbell (his band’s early, stridently political song “Burden Shame” was on Morton’s Desert Island Discs list). There is dub, jazz, glitchy beats, spoken word, crate-digger samples, and Morton’s wonderful, ethereal voice woven throughout. If this makes you think of a particular ’90s genre, well, there may be a reason Sam Morton is playing Massive Attack’s climate change benefit in Bristol in August. Maybe I shouldn’t even have mentioned who these two are. The perfect cover art, featuring a photograph by Nick Waplington of Nottingham’s Broxtowe Estate in the ’80s which was when Morton grew up there, says more about the album than her IMDB page. There is very little vanity here.

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Kelley Stoltz – La Fleur (Dandy Boy / Agitated)

Regular readers of Indie Basement know I’m a huge fan of San Francisco legend Kelley Stoltz who is one of the most consistently terrific and underrated songwriters and performers of the last 25 years. La Fleur is his 18th album and shows no signs of him slowing down, running out of songs, or losing his touch. Like on 2022’s The Stylist, Kelley’s pulling from all sectors of his sphere of influences, including ’60s psych-pop, ’80s post-punk and new wave, British Invasion and Britpop, spiritual jazz and more. As usual, he also plays nearly every instrument himself, though Jason Faulkner (Jellyfish, Beck) contributes guitar to “Make Believer” and the supremely jangly highlight, “Awake in a Dream.” Kelley’s never lacked in the tunes department but on La Fleur his lyrical acumen feels especially sharp, if occasionally tinged with dread. “If every present tense were were as tense as this,” he sings on album opener “Human Events,” surveying the state of things, “You gotta see yourself out.” Other highlights: “Reni’s Car” has Kelley driving around Manchester in the drummer from The Stone Roses’ car (true story, apparently); spacey, arm-waving anthem “About Time”; and “Awake in a Dream” which is a clear homage to his favorite band, Echo & The Bunnymen (who he actually played in for a few years). No matter what sonic alley he’s taking a side trip down, Kelley always sounds like he’s enjoying himself, which in turn makes it a blast for us.

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Mike Lindsay – supershapes vol 1 (Moshi Moshi)

You may know Mike Lindsay from Tunng or LUMP (his duo with Laura Marling), but he’s now making music under his own name. As the “vol 1” in the title hints at, this is the first in his planned “supershapes” series that shines a light on “the miraculous in the mundane.” Specifically on this album, “everyday domestic objects, especially tables, coffee table books, and the daily rituals that shape us, heavily focusing on the majestic in the domestic.” Those things also include, as heard on album opener “lie down,” “putting on the kettle, taking out the rubbish, eating all the biscuits…feel a little sluggish,” at which point the title comes into play as an exclamation. Lindsay does a good job of making the mundane musically appealing, thanks to another quirky artist, Anna B Savage, who sings throughout, and to the really wonderful, warm woodwind arrangements by Ross Blake. The album also features contributions from The Smile collaborator Robert Stillman, and drummer Adam Betts (JARV IS). There’s plenty of Lindsay’s signature bleeps and bloops, too. supershapes vol 1 may at first seem like a novelty but it will soon grow on you. And I can say with firsthand knowledge it makes a great soundtrack to doing the dishes or making dinner. “It’s hard to be excited about the benefits of a cucumber,” a voice says at one point on the album, but supershapes vol 1 is doing its best to change that opinion.

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Here’s the Indie Basement Best of June 2024 playlist, available in (popular) Spotify and (sonically superior) TIDAL forms.

Looking for more? Browse the Indie Basement archives.

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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.