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 October’s best music, highlighting my favorite songs and albums, plus links to relevant features and news, a monthly playlist, and more.

Once again we’re down to two months left and I wonder how it all happened so fast? October was a whirlwind and I think I set an Indie Basement record for most albums reviewed in a month. I narrowed those down to six, but obviously there were a lot of runner ups, including King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s all-electronic The Silver Cord, the second album from Lost Girls (Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden), Maria BC’s Spike Field, Parquet Courts frontman A. Savage’s Several Songs About Fire, and Vanishing Twin’s Afternoon X.

On the song front, I wrote about 10 songs, including Kurt Vile, Yard Act, Gruff Rhys, Ducks Ltd, and more, and I also made a playlist featuring songs from my albums of the month along with other favorites from October.

Head below for Indie Basement’s Best of October roundup…

INDIE BASEMENT – BEST SONGS OF OCTOBER 2023

SINGLE/VIDEO OF THE MONTH: Kirin J Callinan – “Eternally Hateful”

“Eternally Hateful” only uses three chords — A, E and B — in an unchanging progression, but Kirin J Callinan makes the most of them, giving the song punchy verses and a widescreen chorus that flies high in an ’80s rock sort of way. The devilishly entertaining and playfully gory video, where someone has literally gotten medieval on his ass (and the rest of his body), stretches things into Monty Python / Braveheart territory as only Kirin would dare.

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Ducks Ltd – “The Main Thing”

This duo are from Toronto but this sounds like it could’ve come out of Dunedin, NZ in 1985, as here they’re chanel classic Flying Nun Records janglepop (The Clean, The Verlaines). “The Main Thing” features a killer riff and soaring chorus working in tandem, making each part all the better. Making things all the better: unlike previous records, this one uses an actual drummer instead of (or in addition to) a rhythm box. Nice bonus: backing vocals from Ratboys’ Julia Steiner, Dehd’s Jason Balla, and Moontype’s Margaret McCarthy. Announce your second album, soon, please!

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The Embassy – “Amnesia”

Some artists sample other people’s songs, and some sample the barnyard. Sheep are the first thing you hear on “Amnesia,” and their baaaaa-ing is a perfect compliment to the balearic piano, shuffling beat and crystalline piano on this effervescent house track. The Embassy are not the first band to do this — New Order have used sheep at least twice — but they make it like you’ve never herd it done before.

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Grandaddy – “Watercooler”

“Wave to me on your way to the watercooler / Just don’t wait for me cuz we won’t work.” Few filter heartbreak through the melancholic mundanity of everyday life — and set it all to soaring spacerock — like Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle. An office romance that has fizzled serves as the inspiration for beautifully downbeat first taste of Grandaddy’s first album in seven years.

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Gruff Rhys – “Celestial Candyfloss”

Due out in January, Sadness Sets Me Free is the 25th album Gruff Rhys has been a key songwriter on (!), a discography that includes records by Super Furry Animals, Neon Neon and solo work. That he has maintained such a high level of quality across his 30-year career is rather astounding, and I’m happy to say that his batting average is unlikely to dip with this one, if the wonderful, string-laden first single is any indication.

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Guided by Voices – “For the Home”

Guided by Voices’ hot streak not only continues but it feels like these indie rock icons, who just celebrated their 40th anniversary, might be raising the bar. “For the Home” is an instant GBV classic, with some of the best production they’ve ever had, making them sound stadium huge but not slick, and propelling a signature Robert Pollard melody even higher. I have very high hopes for their third album of 2023.

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Kurt Vile – “Another good year for the roses”

Co-produced by Cate “Magic Touch” LeBon, “Another good year for the roses” is the best single Kurt Vile has put out in ages, a song that rides parallel to hip hop and country, is lyrically inspired while still maintaining the laconic KV style, and is both fun and a little sad. (“Bummed out on a beautiful day” is his special sauce.) The video, which features two of the great character actors of the last 30 years (Michael Shannon and Kevin Corrigan), makes for a perfect accompaniment.

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The Libertines – “Run Run Run”

What is more surprising? That the classic lineup of The Libertines are still with us, or that they are still making classics like this? “Run Run Run,” written and sung by Carl Barât, could’ve been on their 2002 debut, Up the Bracket, and has that shambolic, four-mates-against-the-world charm and an easy way with an earworm chorus that is distinctly them. Could the upcoming All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade, their first album in nearly a decade, be their best since their first? Don’t bet against them.

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Lol Tolhurst x Budgie x Jacknife Lee – “We Got to Move” ft Isaac Brock

This three-way collaboration between former Cure drummer Lol Tolhurst, former Siouxsie & The Banshees drummer Budgie and megaproducer Jacknife Lee, continues to surprise me. What had me cautiously curious on paper has had me genuinely excited in the execution. The guestlist is impressive on the album (James Murphy, Bobby Gillespie, Mary Lattimore, more) and the songs haven’t disappointed so far. “We Got to Move,” featuring Isaac Brock, is the best we’ve heard yet, a serious banger — perhaps no surprise given Lol and Budgie’s percussion CVs — that doesn’t skimp on the melody department either. As usual, Brock gives an impassioned vocal performance that takes everything up a couple levels.

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Yard Act – “Dream Job”

The speed at which Yard Act are evolving is something to behold, and I don’t mean just musically. While the band are embracing more overtly dancy sounds, a natural progression from the angular post-punk of their debut, they are getting more clever, too, from the arrangements to the way frontman James Smith uses language. Set against fizzy backing not a million miles from early Wham, “Dream Job” has Smith trying to talk himself into being in a mid-level band is right where he wants to be, with a litany of exclamatory adjectives including “Ace!,” “Boss!,” and “Mint!” before admitting it’s “just alright.” “Welcome to the future,” he adds over joyous, horn filled backing, “The paranoia suits ya.”

The video, a continuation of “The Trench Coat Museum,” is ace, boss, and mint.

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INDIE BASEMENT – BEST ALBUMS OF OCTOBER 2023

Katie Von Schleicher – A Little Touch of Schleicher in the Night (Sipsman)

As opening lines go, Katie Von Schleicher has a doozy for her third album, sung in airy harmonies with giddy strings: “When you’re mourning the past, you’ll try to remember your ass / When I was 25, Amy said do your naked portraits now.” Maybe not as succinct as “Call me Ishmael,” but just as punchy. Funnier, too. The song, “Montagnard People,” is gorgeous stuff, a portrait of lockdown watching Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson movies in the middle of the night while doubting your own worth that has been lushly orchestrated with horns, conga-embellished percussions, fluid bass and those aforementioned strings. “Honestly my tight five needs work,” she sings later in the song, but A Little Touch of Schleicher in the Night (a title that nods to Nilsson) shows Katie has a full set loaded with zingers that will make you laugh and touch your heart. I am not a “lyrics person,” except when I am (Pulp, Pavement, The Smiths, David Berman, for example) and Katie is in that class for me. That her melodies are just as surprising and enticing — the key changes in “Elixir,” everything about the soaring rock of “Overjoyed” — makes A Little Touch of Schleicher in the Night a delight that gets better with every listen. [Read the full review]

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Helena Deland – Goodnight Summerland (Chivi Chivi)

Up until now Montreal singer-songwriter Helena Deland has carved out a unique style, part organic and part electronic, with elements of folk, trip hop and classical commingling in harmony. For her second album, though, she mostly keeps her laptop and synthesizers stored away. Made with Sam “Evian” Owens at his Upstate NY studio, Goodnight Summerland is a lush, gorgeous and fully realized work that is a step up and over from her great 2020 debut. [Read the full review]

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OMD – Bauhaus Staircase (White Noise)

Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark formed in 1978, inspired by Kraftwerk with a dream of changing the world with synthesizers. Forty-five years later, the world has changed a lot but OMD still sound pretty much the same. And that’s ok. In 2023 you neither expect or really want Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys to be pushing the envelope on a new LP. That said, Bauhaus Staircase is a “wildest dreams” situation, an album full of catchy electropop in the band’s signature style that still sounds modern, engaged and not treading water or simply tweaking their greatest hits. This is OMD’s 14th album, and fourth since reforming in 2010, and remarkably one of their best, certainly their most engaging, dialed-in record since 1984’s Junk Culture. [Read the full review]

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American Analog Set – For Forever (Hometown Fantasy

It’s a great time to be a fan of Austin indie rock greats American Analog Set. A rumored Numero Group box set was recently confirmed and will be out next year; at the same time the band, who broke up in 2005, announced that they’d made a new double album and it’d be out in just a few weeks. “We started playing together again in 2013 and began work on For Forever in 2015,” they wrote. “We finished it in 2019 and left it under the couch for a few years while the world was on fire.” I’m not sure things have cooled off much since 2019, if at all, but the crisp sounds of AmAnSet are a welcome soothing balm. The band get the slowcore tag a lot but I’m not sure it ever really fit and definitely doesn’t on For Forever. Many of the band’s earmarks — vibraphone, prominent melodic basslines, jazzy drumming — are here but this is arguably the loudest AmAnSet album, and angriest too. [Full review here]

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Wimps – City Lights (Youth Riot)

Like in country music, punk rock songs can be about anything as long as you approach it with the right attitude. Take Seattle trio Wimps who have been tearing it up, and singing about everyday life for a decade now. City Lights is their sixth album and the only thing young and snotty here are singer-guitarist Rachel Ratner’s kids who pop up on “Mom” which details the ups, downs and humiliations of motherhood. “I haven’t washed my hair in a week,” Rachel snarls, “Everytime I run I start to pee / gonna win the prize for least sleep.” On, “Doin’ It,” a song about making it through the day, she wonders “How am I a parent when I’m really just a kid? / When did I forget to do everything I did?” before admitting, “Don’t know what I’m doin’, but I’m doing it.” Despite lyrical subjects about barely being able to get out of bed, City Lights is ripper after ripper in a ’90s indie rock / garage punk style, with melodic twists to rival Ratner’s turns of phrase, resulting in a very good time that’s all about being bummed out. That’s pretty punk rock. [Read the full review]

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Emma Anderson – Pearlies (Sonic Cathedral)

There was always a little bit of baroque folk lurking in Emma Anderson’s songs with Lush, and producer James Chapman of Maps helps bring all that to the fore. Chapman adds synthesizers, but never makes these songs sound anything like his own music; they add background shading and atmosphere, an ethereal cloud of autumn foliage swirling around Anderson and her guitar. Opener “I Was Miles Away” sets the tone for the album. It’s clearly from the same artist who gave us “Thoughtforms” and “Nothing Natural,” but with an arrangement that includes oboe, we’re in very different territory. “Willow and Mallow,” meanwhile, echoes The Wicker Man soundtrack and is one of a few songs on the album to feature Suede guitarist Richard Oakes. Standout cut “The Presence” drops in a nod to Budgie from Siouxsie & The Banshees in an otherwise not-at-all gothy song. In an era where artists are trying to repeat their past, Anderson is moving forward while never letting you forget where she’s from. [Full review here]

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And here’s a Best of October playlist featuring 50 songs of autumnal goodness in both Spotify and Tidal form:

Looking for more? Browse the Indie Basement archives.

And check out what’s new in our shop.

Creation Records’ 21 Best Records

21. Biff Bang Pow! – Oblivion (1987)

Alan McGee wasn't just the head of Creation Records, he was also one its musical artists, involved in a few projects over the years, including Laughing Apple, Revolving Paint Dream and his longest-running group, Biff Bang Pow! that also featured, at various points, label co-founders Dick Green and Joe Foster, as well as Primal Scream's Andrew Innes. Oblivion, the second of two albums Biff Bang Pow! released in 1987, is the group's best record, full of the sort of jangly pastiche psychedelia you'd expect from a band that, like his label, were named after '60s beat group The Creation. McGee's a better songwriter than he is a singer but his fey vocal style works just fine on terrifically titled tracks like "A Girl Called Destruction," "The Only Colour in the World is Love" and "She's Got Diamonds in Her Hair." The band's other 1987 album, The Girl Who Runs the Beat Hotel, is worth checking out too and contains the band's best-ever single, the Andrew Innes-sung "Someone Stole My Wheels."

20. Various Artists – Creation Soup Vol 1-5 (1990)

Most people associate Creation Records with their '90s heyday of Oasis, Primal Scream, Ride, Super Furry Animals and My Bloody Valentine, but the label's first five years were full of singles from jangly, '60s-inspired bands who most people have probably never heard of, most of which were only released on 7". In 1990 Creation gathered them all up for a five volume CD set. McGee notes that "The first twenty came in hand folded sleeves which Joe Foster and I used to stay up and fold all night four or five times a week." They include great early singles by Primal Scream, Felt, The Loft, The Weather Prophets, The Jasmine Minks, The Pastels, House of Love, Biff Bang Pow!, The Bodines, and more. Noticeably absent from these, though, is the label's breakthrough -- The Jesus & Mary Chain's 1984 debut single "Upside Down" (due to rights issues). Creation Soup is still a fascinating look at the formative years of a label that would become an indie powerhouse.

19. The Jesus & Mary Chain – Munki (1998)

The Jesus and Mary Chain's 1984 debut single, "Upside Down," turned the UK indie scene upside down with its then-novel approach of taking a Phil Spector-eque pop song and wrapping it in pummeling noise and feedback. It also put Creation Records on the map, paving the way for House of Love, My Bloody Valentine, Ride and many more of the label's most famous groups. JAMC made the leap to Warner Bros immediately after this single but Creation founder Alan McGee stayed the band's manager, and JAMC quickly became alt-rock stars. By the late-'90s, though, Jim and William Reid felt chewed up and spit out by the music industry and weren't getting along with each other so well, either. If Warner had lost interest in the band after five albums, McGee had not, and welcomed the Reids back to Creation with open arms. Bookended by the supercatchy "I Love Rock N' Roll" and tinnitus-inducing "I Hate Rock N' Roll," the sprawling, 17-track Munki plays like a career retrospective, including buzzsaw pop, semi-acoustic numbers, duets with Hope Sandoval, and dissonant noise jams. Munki served as a great final word on the JAMC...till they reformed and made a new album 19 years later.

18. The Loft – One Round the Fair (1989) / The Weather Prophets – Diesel River (1988)

You can't really tell the story of Creation Records without including Peter Astor, the label's first shining star, who wrote charming, literate songs with his Television/VU-esque bands The Loft and The Weather Prophets. (The Loft's original name was The Living Room, which was also the name of Alan McGee's pre-Creation London club night; Astor changed it to avoid confusion.) Astor also had a face meant for magazine covers, as well as a fine if not exceptional Tom Verlaine-esque voice that probably kept his groups from crossing over into more mainstream success. Not that Creation Records' Alan McGee didn't try. The Loft broke up before making a full length record but their excellent singles "Why Does the Rain" (which Astor recorded with The Weather Prophets, too) and "Up the Hill and Down the Slope" are among Creation's best early singles and, along with the b-sides, make up compilation Once Round The Fair. Astor and Loft bandmate Dave Morgan formed The Weather Prophets who continued in much the same direction, releasing three albums that never quite captured the magic of the band's Creation singles, most of which are collected on Diesel River (though your best bet is 2004 best-of comp Blue Skies & Free-Rides).

17. Adorable – Against Perfection (1993)

Making their debut with the undeniable "Sunshine Smile," Adorable were initially lumped in with the shoegaze scene, because almost everything on Creation in 1992 was kinda shoegaze, but the band were closer in spirit to House of Love's textured, romantic pop than My Bloody Valentine or Swervedriver. They owed a lot to the Pixies and The Wedding Present, too, held Echo & The Bunnymen in the highest regard, and Fijalkowski had no shortage of big hooks and mile-wide choruses in his arsenal. Their debut album, Against Perfection, is one of the great, underrated UK indie records of the early '90s, jam-packed with memorable melodies, roaring/chiming guitars, clever/heartfelt lyrics and lots of swagger. The American release, via SBK records, betters the UK version by adding "Sunshine Smile" and another early single, "I'll Be Your Saint," alongside killer album cuts like "A to Fade In," "Homeboy," "Favorite Fallen Idol" and "Still Life."

16. The Jazz Butcher – Fishcotheque (1988)

With the Jazz Butcher's mid-'80s albums for Glass Records, which featured a band that included bassist (and ex Bauhaus member) David J, The Jazz Butcher (Pat Fish) had gained the reputation for whimsical indie a la Robyn Hitchcock. Signing to Creation, Pat started a new version of the group with collaborator Kizzy O'Callahan, intent on changing his image. That makeover began with 1988's Fishcotheque, one of his best albums that showed a new, more serious side to The Jazz Butcher. "I was keen to get as far away from all those 'w, words that had followed my group around," Fish wrote later of the album, "to make it as clear as I could that this was a rock & roll thing, not some 'eccentricity.' I had my shades and I had my fringed suede jacket and I had the Weather Prophets rhythm section." Witty without being wacky, Fishcotheque is loaded with great songs, including the punky "Looking for Lot 49," the wistful "Swell" and "The Next Move Sideways," terrific pop number "Let's Get it Wrong," and one of his best-ever songs, "Susie," which features Sonic Boom on feedback. Pat didn't entirely abandon his "w" side, though, which rears its head on "Living in a Village" and vegan rap song "The Best Way" (which isn't as kooky as it may seem).

15. Momus – The Tender Pervert (1988)

Named after the Greek god of satire and mockery, Momus (aka Scottish artist Nic Currie) was Creation's most idiosyncratic artist on record*, writing almost exclusively about sex and death but in a high-minded style that was likely to quote the bible or ancient literature, and playing in a style somewhere between Donovan and Jacques Brel. (Most eccentric in real life: Felt's Lawrence.) As the '80s went on, Currie would incorporate Pet Shop Boys-style synthpop into the Momus sound. The Tender Pervert was his first real flirtation with drum machines, and was a deeply twisted, angry record fueled by disgust with Margaret Thatcher's response to the AIDS crisis. "I'm so furious about this that I decide that, if gay people are not only dying but being gagged by the government while dying, it's up to straight people to promote homosexuality in their place," Currie wrote reflecting on the record. Momus is at the height of his witty, erudite powers here on tracks like "The Angels Are Voyeurs," "The Homosexual," "A Complete History of Sexual Jealousy (Parts 17-24)" and the elegant, complex "Bishonen." Currie is not wrong when he writes that The Tender Pervert is "my best and most definitive album" -- it's also the best place to start for this artist who is definitely an acquired taste.

14. Swervedriver – Ejector Seat Reservation (1995)

Swervedriver were one of the best groups of the original shoegaze era, but by 1995 interest in the genre in their home country (and label, Creation) had fully moved on to Britpop. Unlike some bands (Ride, Lush), Swervedriver stuck to their guitar pedals while trying to expand upon their sound with their third album, Ejector Seat Reservation. It was still heavy, but there was an equal emphasis on melody and maelstrom, adding elements of Bowie and Bolan to the mix, not to mention a string and horn section. It's Swervedriver's best album and loaded with memorable songs, including pile-driver "Bring Me the Head of the Fortune Teller," the poppy/heavy "The Other Jesus," elegant first single "Last Day on Earth," and soaring closing cut "To the Birds." Unfortunately there was no time to celebrate: Creation Records dropped Swervedriver the week after Ejector Seat Reservation was released and deleted the album from their catalog, making it for years the band's hardest-to-find album.

13. Saint Etienne – Good Humor (1997)

Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs formed Saint Etienne in 1990 as a way to mix their obsession with '60s and '70s pop, R&B, soul and reggae with the indie dance and rave culture that had taken over the UK at the time. They originally envisioned the group as having a different vocalist for every single, but that changed when they met Sarah Cracknell, and Saint Etienne became a trio. After three albums of sample-based dance pop, Saint Etienne changed course, and decamped to Malmo, Sweden to make a full-band album with Cardigans producer Tore Johannsen at his famed Tambourine Studios. Armed with a group of crack session musicians, Good Humor is unlike any other record in Saint Etienne's catalog before or since, working in elements of exotica, acid jazz and Beach Boys/Phil Spector wall of sound pop. While Saint Etienne's previous albums had been released by Heavenly Recordings through Creation, Good Humor was the first -- and last -- to be released by Creation proper. Singles "Sylvie" and "The Bad Photographer" were both Top 30 UK hits and Good Humor remains Saint Etienne's biggest seller in the US (where it was released by Sub Pop).

12. The Boo Radleys – Giant Steps (1993)

Liverpool band The Boo Radleys began as one of the noisiest of the '90s shoegazers, with some songs on their 1991 Creation debut, Everything's Alright Forever, sounding like a garbage truck in a rockslide. But deep down, guitarist Martin Carr was a lover of the classics -- The Beatles, Kinks and other late-'60s psychedelic pop -- and that side of him was ready to emerge. The watershed moment was the title track of 1992's Lazarus EP which took a roaring, anthemic melody and built it up slowly with an extended, dubbed-out intro. It's one of their best-ever tracks. "Lazarus" turned out to be the first taste of what would be their magnum opus -- the boundary pushing, Coltrane-referencing, appropriately named third album, Giant Steps. Noise and hazy effects still rang through songs like "I Hang Suspended," "Butterfly McQueen," "Rodney King - Song for Lenny Bruce" and "Take the Time Around," but nothing was obscuring the massive hooks Carr loaded the songs with. There were also just straight-up pop songs like "Wishin' I Was Skinny," "Barney and Me," and "If You Want it, Take It." It's a record that, in its own way, is every bit as ambitious as Screamadelica or Loveless, and one that opened Creation's door for Britpop's coming surge. "I felt that everything was moving towards this big pop thing," Carr says in David Cavanagh's The Creation Records Story. "Loads of bands -- young bands with guitars -- were getting into the charts. Blur were getting there. Suede were having hits. We didn’t sell that many records with Giant Steps but everyone was dying to see what we were going to do next." Next would net them a massive UK hit single -- 1995's "Wake Up Boo!" -- but Giant Steps is still their finest hour.

11. Super Furry Animals – Radiator (1997)

Oasis may have been Creation's biggest selling act of the '90s (by a mile) but, pound for pound, Super Furry Animals were probably the best. The band were proudly Welsh, not afraid to sing in their native tongue, and wildly creative, with a wide anarchic streak. Their terrific 1996 debut album, Fuzzy Logic, paid tribute to Welsh drug smuggler (and national hero) Howard Marks both on the cover art and on song "Hanging With Howard Marks," and the same year they released single "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" which sampled Steely Dan and held the record, at 50 utterances, for most "fucks" given in a song (till Insane Clown Posse's "Fuck the World" beat it in 1999). Just a year later, SFA were back with Radiator, a record that was leaps and bounds better than their debut, and where they went from being a lot of fun to one of the more consistently great, wildly creative bands of the era. (They still are.) Radiator incorporates Madchester-y shuffle ("Play it Cool," "The Placid Casual"), Bowie-style spacerock ("Demons," "Bass tuned to DEAD"), punk, and mutant pop ("Herman Loves Pauline") into a style that became distinctly their own.

10. Slowdive – Souvlaki (1993)

Influenced by the Cocteau Twins' ethereal style, not to mention The Jesus and Mary Chain and probably a fair amount of goth, Pink Floyd and prog, Slowdive didn’t really sound like any other group from the original shoegaze era, riding a massive wave of shimmering guitars that were at times so transformed by effects pedals, they resembled synthesizers. Like their early EPs, the band's debut album, Just for a Day, was hypnotic and sensuous, wrapping listeners in layer upon layer of gorgeous haze, but it was maybe a little lacking in focus and A-level material. Not a problem with their sophomore album that nestles memorable songs and a stronger rhythmic backbone into their signature aural cloudwork. Their best album to date, Souvlaki features some of their catchiest songs ("Alison," "When the Sun Hits," "40 Days") with muscular material like "Machine Gun," vivid trip-out "Yellow Melon" and two songs ( "Sing," "Here She Comes") featuring keyboards and treatments by Brian Eno. Best of all, though, is "Souvlaki Space Station" which takes their spiraling sound deep into dub territory. Never as popular at the time as their shoegaze contemporaries Ride or Lush, Slowdive's records have aged better than most things from the '90s, and the group have led one of the most satisfying second acts in recent memory.

9. Teenage Fanclub – Grand Prix (1995)

Teenage Fanclub's third album, Bandwagonesque, is one of the three pillars in Creation's 1991 crown (the other two are slightly higher up on this list), and an album that, along with Ride's Nowhere, helped the label realize its place as a home for classic guitar pop done in new and exciting ways, or at least by new and exciting groups. What Teenage Fanclub did wasn't exactly new -- they drank deep from the well of Big Star and Dinosaur Jr. -- but they did it very well and had three three talented singer-songwriters who had yet to reach their creative potential. That hit with 1995's Grand Prix that, to carry on the Formula One racing theme, had Norman Blake, Gerrard Love and Raymond McGinley firing on all cylinders, with such instant earworms as "Sparky's Dream," "Neil Jung," "Mellow Doubt," "Verisimilitude," and "Don't Look Back." The album was also released at the height of Britpop and pulled the Fannies into that orbit, even though they were never really part of that scene. While they may not equal Oasis in the ambition and swagger department, Grand Prix delivers just as many classics as (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, just in a more humble way.

8. Sugar – Copper Blue (1992)

Spoiler alert: this is the only American-made album on this list. Creation did release a few records by U.S. acts (Medicine, Guided by Voices, The Cramps) but not many, and most were more licensing deals than actual signings. But Bob Mould put together separate deals with Creation in the UK and Rykodisc in North America for his new band Sugar who rivaled MBV for being loudest-ever group on the label. With their roaring, punk-injected guitar pop sound, the trio (Mould, bassist David Barbe and drummer Malcolm Travis) were definitely a more natural fit with a label of noisemakers like Creation than Rykodisc (who were mainly known for being the first CD-only label). In any case, Sugar's classic debut album is one of 1992's best, and one of the greatest albums Creation Records released, with Mould's signature mix of rippers ("Changes," "A Good Idea") and pop songs ("Helpless," "If I Can't Change Your Mind") and even a little prog ("Hoover Dam"). Copper Blue was actually more of a hit across the pond first, reaching #10 in the UK album charts and with NME naming it the Best Album of 1992; the record really caught on with American alt-rock radio and MTV in 1993. Sugar burned bright and hot, releasing Beaster a mere six months later, yet flamed out during sessions for their second album. Still, Copper Blue remains one of Mould's best collection of songs.

7. Felt – Forever Breathes the Lonely Word (1986)

Led by the decidedly eccentric but frequently brilliant Lawrence Hayward who was prone to 2 AM vacuuming and still only goes by his first name, Felt set out to release 10 albums and 10 singles in 10 years -- "In and out in a decade," he put it. He accomplished his goal, making crystalline guitar pop that owed much to Tom Verlaine (and just a little to Bob Dylan) with two sharply defined eras of the band. Felt's first four albums were on Cherry Red and featured guitarist Maurice Deebank's distinctive arpeggiated guitar style; the second began with the group's move to Creation, with Deebank out and keyboardist Martin Duffy in, adding wonderful, rich organ to the band's sound. Forever Breathes the Lonely Word was Felt's first album for Creation and is Felt's masterwork, with shimmering production, Lawrence at his most lyrically romantic, and Duffy's brilliant playing all over it. It's just great song after great song, including "Rain of Crystal Spires," "Down But Not Out," "All The People I Like And Those That Are Dead," and "A Wave Crashed on the Rocks," being particular highlights. Creation's first great album.

6. Ride – Nowhere (1990)

Oxford's Ride released their debut album in 1990 and perfectly split Creation Records' two decades in existence down the middle. The band were clearly a product of the student indie scene that Creation was at the center of, owing much to House of Love, My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus & Mary Chain and early Primal Scream, but they were a half step generation younger, savvy, and ambitious. You could easily imagine songs like "Seagull" and "Kaleidoscope" being released with thinner production by the label just a couple years earlier, but Ride were not a group who just wanted to play to 150 people the rest of their lives. While undeniably part of the psychedelic shoegaze scene -- they remain of the genre's most iconic bands -- Andy Bell and Mark Gardner were great songwriters, too, and underneath Nowhere's beautiful murk, haze and feedback is some serious musicianship and craft. Nowhere owes as much to The Byrds as it does MBV and is loaded with great tunes, as can be heard on the undeniable classic "Vapour Trail" -- perhaps the greatest song to come out on Creation Records and not get released as a single. Ride would get more ambitious (and pop-savvy) on 1992's excellent Going Blank Again, and would make a grab for the Britpop ring on 1994's Carnival of Light, but Nowhere is the sound of a scene and a label at the dawn of the '90s.

5. House of Love – House of Love (1988)

While The Jesus & Mary Chain's "Upside Down" put Creation Records on the map, The House of Love's debut album was the first album released by the label that really registered shockwaves beyond the indie charts. Led by Guy Chadwick, whose deep voice matched his high cheekbones, House of Love had some of JAMC's squall but fed it through Chadwick's graceful songwriting and guitarist Terry Bickers' inventive playing. Opening salvo "Christine" is such a stunner, from the roaring guitars to the "Bah bah be dah dah" hook, if the rest of the album had been a dud it still might've made this list. But House of Love is all hits, from the dark, sexy cool of "Road" and "Hope" to the riff-heavy "Sulfur" and "Salome" to the ethereal grandeur of "Man to Child," and the album's second best song, "Love in a Car." The album was also as big an influence on the burgeoning shoegaze scene as My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything, and it's hard to imagine groups like Ride and Catherine Wheel existing without House of Love.

4. Oasis – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? (1995)

As Andy Bell of Ride, who would end up joining Oasis by the end of the '90s, told us, Oasis "were the band Creation had been waiting for, and I think the label was also exactly what the band needed." Oasis fit Creation head Alan McGee's rock n' roll ethos, ticking every box possible with a cup-runneth-over mix of attitude, razor-sharp wit, hedonistic joie-de-vivre and arrogance. It might've all been too much if Noel Gallagher wasn't a one-man hit factory, losing songs in the couch that were better than many bands wrote in their whole career. They were definitely the guitar band McGee had always wanted, turning out singles like his '60s and '70s heroes, but putting a fresh face on them just in time to lead in the new Britpop movement that pushed grunge out of the country much like the USA had done to the King's army some 200+ years before. While 1994's Definitely Maybe was a fantastic debut, Oasis managed to follow it up just a year later with an even better album, one of the best of 1995 and without a doubt the peak of Gallaghers' powers. (What's the Story) Morning Glory? even managed to be a hit in America, something a British rock band hadn't done in years. The album is filthy with classics, from singles like "Wonderwall," "Don't Look Back in Anger," "Champagne Supernova," and "Roll With It" to deep cuts like "Cast No Shadow," and "She's Electric." While Oasis stayed popular throughout their existence, creatively, it was diminishing returns after this -- but in 1995 the band could do no wrong.

3. My Bloody Valentine – Isn’t Anything (1988)

If Loveless was the sound of "how'd they do that?," Isn't Anything was the sound of "I wanna do that!" It's hard to imagine Ride, Swervedriver, The Boo Radleys or any of the rest of the soon-to-erupt shoegaze scene -- or half the indie rock of the '90s -- happening the way it did without the visceral impact of My Bloody Valentine's first album for Creation. Songs like "(When You Wake (You're Still in a Dream," "Feed Me With Your Kiss" and "Sueisfine" hit like a brick and sound like you've already been knocked senseless. Kevin Shield's glide guitar sound -- a unique mix of tuning and playing style -- was mysterious, instantly distinctive and deceptively attainable. The band used less effects pedals than most people thought. "The sound is purely physical," MBV Svengali Kevin Shields said at the time. "It's movement, a manual moving of the string: the short travel of he Jazzmaster and Jaguar tremolo that gives it that characteristic sort of upwards drone to the chord." My Bloody Valentine even managed to make acoustic guitars seem heavy ("Come Cupid") and the band's more ethereal tracks like "Lose My Breath" were aptly named. The album has a reputation for thin, tinny sonics, but Kevin Shields' all-analog 2018 remastered edition really shows what a gorgeous monster it is.

2. My Bloody Valentine – Loveless (1991)

A record so monumentally important to popular music it's all but impossible to overstate its importance, Loveless is a bonafide classic. It's also a record that took forever and somewhere around £250,000 to complete, that nearly bankrupted Creation, forcing the label to drop the band shortly after Loveless' release, and sell 49% of its stake to Sony Music. ("Overdue" and "over budget," meanwhile, are words associated with the band to this day.) Even though countless artists have stolen from Kevin Shields' signature "glide guitar" style, what the band get from their instruments on Loveless still sounds like nothing else. The four dry snare hits that open the album do not prepare you for the sludgy, white-dwarf heavy riff of opener "Only Shallow," or when the song shifts into pure beauty and back again. Moments like that happen throughout Loveless, from the ethereal slipstream of "To Here Knows When" to the poppy indie rock of "When You Sleep," to the dreamy, danceable perfection of "Soon." So many rock critic cliches and adjectives were created -- and wore out their welcome -- with folks trying to describe Loveless, yet you can't not be in awe 30 years on. It nearly destroyed the label but has always stood as one of its finest moments.

1. Primal Scream – Screamadelica (1991)

Led by gangly, cocksure Bobby Gillespie (who was The Jesus & Mary Chain's original drummer and grew up with Creation boss Alan McGee), Primal Scream were Creation Records' longest-running band, having released their debut single, "All Fall Down" on the label in 1985, and XTRMNTR in 2000, the last album released by the label before it dissolved. Like McGee, Gillespie seemed to live and breathe rock n' roll and he and his bandmates, including the invaluable Andrew Innes, at times managed to stay cool purely on attitude while releasing less-than-stellar early records. Things for them changed, though, when they gave their lackluster, Stonesy single "I'm Losing More Than I Ever Had" to DJ Andrew Weatherall to remix. He took out almost all the vocals, threw a beat under it and added a sample of Peter Fonda From The Wild Angels yelling "We wanna be free to do what we wanna do! We wanna get loaded and we wanna have a good time!" Released in February 1990, "Loaded" was one of the cornerstones of the acid house/Madchester scene and forever changed Primal Scream's trajectory. They spent nearly two years on one continuous party, working with Weatherall, Jah Wobble, Stones producer Jimmy Miller -- whatever suited their fancy and vibe -- and releasing singles along the way which would eventually be collected as the era-defining Screamadelica. It shouldn't have worked, but that sense of freedom made it come together beautifully. "Instead of having two guitars, bass, drums, vocals... we destroyed that," Gillespie said in The Creation Records Story. "It was anything goes - synth, tabla, drum machine, no vocals, instrumentals, gospel singers, sitars. The whole range of anything goes noises and suddenly the band were freed. It was a much looser approach to making music. And then getting people like Andy and Hugo, and Alex Patterson and Thrash from The Orb, Jimmy Miller, Wobble, you know – these people, Messing with our music, taking it somewhere else, making it more interstellar, as far out as… It was incredible. The greatest time." You still feel that listening to Screamadelica, too.