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

How are there only three months left in 2023? Summer flew by and then things got busy after Labor Day as far as new music goes. I picked 10 songs from September to write about, including indie rock, prog disco, neo indie-sleaze/electroclash, and more.

I picked five albums, but September runner-ups include Wilco’s Cousin, Devendra Banhart’s Flying Wig — both those are produced by Cate Le Bon — Seablite’s Lemon Lights, Super Furry Animal offshoot Das Koolies’ DK.01, Woods’ Perennial, Lewsberg’s Out and About, and Madder Rose’s No One Gets Hurt Ever.

On the reissue front, we got an extremely rewarding new mix of The Replacements’ Tim, and great 30th anniversary editions of The Breeders’ Pod and The Boo Radleys’ Giant Steps.

There’s also a Indie Basement Best of 2023 mix on Spotify, featuring all everything covered here, plus lots more of my favorites September songs. It’s a little over three hours which should keep you busy for a while.

In other news, with Stop Making Sense back in theaters (go see it!), I ranked all 10 of Talking Heads albums.

Head below for Indie Basement’s Best Songs and Albums of 2023…

INDIE BASEMENT – BEST SONGS OF SEPTEMBER 2023

bar italia – “my little tony”

London trio bar italia already made one of 2023’s best albums but they might’ve made two, with The Twits out in November. The first single points to that being a possibility, with Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton’s signature style of trading lines / melodies still in effect, but there’s a little more structure, hooks and forward thrust here, set against a Pavement-y noise-punk backing. If the songs on Tracey Denim felt almost accidental, “my little tony” (jokey title aside) feels purposeful, and the effort pays off.

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Chelsea Wolfe – “Dusk”

On a new label (Loma Vista) and working with TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek, Chelsea Wolfe is in “rock” mode more than usual on “Dusk,” a smoldering torchy ballad that ignites into a full blaze by song’s end. There’s a bit of Portishead’s “Roads” fragility and deliberate pace here as well, as Chelsea sings, “And I will go through the fire” over the incendiary finale.

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DEBBY FRIDAY – “let u in”

Montreal’s DEBBY FRIDAY had just won the 2023 Polaris Music Prize for her debut album GOOD LUCK when, not resting on her laurels, she almost immediately released this new single. Made with Australian producer and Wicca Phase Springs Eternal collaborator Darcy Baylis, “let u in” is more chilled out than anything on her debut, with jazzy chords and a skipping drum-and-bass breakbeat backing. Unlike the all-caps stylization of GOOD LUCK‘s songs, this is decidedly lower-case, but the softer side of DEBBY FRIDAY still has bite.

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Lynks – “New Boyfriend”

Born out of a saucy drag stage show that played the prestigious Edinburgh Fringe festival, Lynks is now making its tongue-in-cheek dance pop for Heavenly Records. Owing more than a little to early-’00s electroclash, “New Boyfriend” is the kind of saucy, minimal banger that turns heads in bars and burrows deep into your brain immediately. Making it all the more fun are the lyrics about “lovely, kind, thoughtful, intelligent, well-adjusted couples turning into chaotic horny monsters the second they break up” thats put the “sleaze” in “indie sleaze.” Songs like this tend to have a short shelf life, so dance to it while you can.

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Marika Hackman – “No Caffeine”

Marika Hackman is finally back with new music, her first in four years. Playful and melodic, “No Caffeine” splits the difference, sonically, between her elegant debut album and her more pop-oriented 2019 album Any Human Friend. Subject matter may be heavy on “No Caffeine” (crippling anxiety), but this song soars.

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Mildlife – “Return to Centaurus”

Australian band Mildlife are well named, pulling from all corners of the mellow ’70s, including “too slow to disco” grooves, proggy synths and, in the case of “Return to Centaurus,” vocoder. Some people may find this on the cheesy side, but we’re talking high quality fromage and they really nail the vibe. If you like Air and All Parsons Project’s “I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You,” you’ll want to board Mildlife’s spacecraft now.

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Office Dog – “Big Air”

New Zealand singer-songwriter Kane Strang, who put out albums on Dead Oceans, Flying Nun, and Ba Da Bing in the 2010s, is now leading Auckland trio Office Dog, who’ll release their debut album in the US in January. (It’s already out in NZ.) “Big Air” is as immediate as it gets, ultra-hooky indie rock with a chorus you seem to already know before it starts. This kind of guitar pop may not be exactly de rigueur these days, but good songwriting is never out of style.

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Paycheque – “Next in Line”

I was a big fan of Jackson MacIntosh’s Montreal band Sheer Agony, who made nervy power-pop a la Chris Stamey-era dB’s. Now living in L.A. — he plays in Drugdealer and TOPS — he just released the first single with Paycheque, his new duo with Allison Goldfarb. With Jackson handling the verses and Allison the chorus, “Next in Line” is slinky, neon-lit Italo-inspired synthpop that is a million miles from Sheer Agony except that pop smarts remain front-and-center.

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Three Quarter Skies – “On Fire”

Simon Scott makes motorik psych as Three Quarter Skies when not playing drums in Slowdive, a project he describes as “a nebulous project that I intend to not restrict or enforce any creative boundaries on.” Three Quarter Skies’ debut EP is due out at the end of October and this first single draws equal inspiration from the zone-n-drone of Spacemen 3 and Suicide.

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Wimps – “Mom”

A punk song can be about anything, you just have to apply the right attitude. See Seattle’s Wimps, who deliver this ripper about being a mom. “I haven’t washed my hair in a week,” Rachel Ratner snarls, “Everytime I try to run I start to pee / gonna win the prize for least sleep.” She hasn’t totally given up her rebellious side though: “But when you’re asleep in your bed / I’m in the garage instead / tryin to clear the mom outta my head.”

The “Mom” video is a fun Back to the Future homage that also wins the award for Funniest Closed Captions:

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INDIE BASEMENT – BEST ALBUMS OF SEPTEMBER 2023

Blonde Redhead – Sit Down to Dinner (section1)

The title to Blonde Redhead’s 10th album has a double meaning. It’s a reference to the band’s ritual of sharing meals together when recording or on tour, at the insistence of Italian-born brothers Amedeo and Simone Pace, but it also came from singer Kazu Makino reading Joan Didion’s acclaimed grief tome The Year of Magical Thinking where the author witnessed her husband drop dead at the dinner table: “You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” The two-part title track to Sit Down to Dinner is both of those things at once: mournful, with death and that Didion quote at its core, but also inviting thanks to the trio’s distinctive melodies, atmosphere and dashes of Brazilian rhythms. Blonde Redhead have long had that sweeping wistful vibe down cold and it blows throughout Sit Down to Dinner. And while this is a particularly gentle-sounding album, it also somehow makes the shivers down your spine all the more pronounced. Thirty years into their history, Blonde Redhead have delivered one of their best ever records, certainly their strongest since 23. It’s also a strong argument for sharing meals. [Full review here]

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Slowdive – everything is alive (Dead Oceans)

Unexpected returns are becoming less surprising these days, but in 2014 when Slowdive announced they were reforming to play Primavera and were working on new songs, it was a shock and a thrill. Then three years later they released their first album in 22 years and, perhaps an even bigger surprise, it was not just good for a comeback, it was one of the best albums of the year. Expectations may be higher than ever for the band’s fifth album which Slowdive meet in their own sideways manner, delivering a quiet stunner and perhaps the best record of their career. [Full review here]

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Sparklehorse – Bird Machine (Anti-)

Mark Linkous had been working on the fifth Sparklehorse album when he died by suicide in 2010. His brother Matt and sister-in-law Melissa were not sure what to do with the recordings, maybe not ready to listen, and definitely not share. They weren’t even sure where to pick up where Mark had left off as, after recording basic tracks with Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, he had continued working on them at his own Static King studio in North Carolina. Eventually though, Matt and Melissa began digging. It turned out Linkous had nearly completed the album down to naming it, Bird Machine, though it was spread across reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes, CDs and other formats, not to mention various arrangements and states of doneness. With help from friends and past collaborators — including kindred spirit Jason Lytle of Grandaddy — and a notebook of Mark’s as a guide, they excavated Bird Machine from the rubble, adding a few parts but mostly using what was already there. Bird Machine is an instant classic we had to wait 13 years to hear. [Full review here]

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The Chemical Brothers – For That Beautiful Feeling (Republic)

Pop music is a young person’s game, dance music is even moreso, but Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons are master survivalists. Having released their debut single, “Song to the Siren,” in 1992, The Chemical Brothers have managed to stay creatively relevant ever since, not to mention reliably great live performers and festival draws. Not many of their ’90s peers can say the same, certainly not from within the Big Beat scene that birthed them. For That Beautiful Feeling is the duo’s 10th album and is a fine example of what they do, what you expect them to do, how they continue to expand their sound, and how they do it better than almost anyone else. Adding to the magic, nearly every song here rolls seamlessly into the next, making for a great “album” experience — and DJ set feel — while still providing the highs of a singles comp. Thirty years on, The Chemical Brothers are still bliss. [Full review here]

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Melenas – Ahora (Trouble in Mind)

Pamplona, Spain is mainly known as the city where the Running of the Bulls happens but four-piece Melenas are doing their best to give their hometown a kinder, gentler, and motorik makeover. With looping grooves, droning keyboards, angelic harmonies and loads of killer basslines, it’s easy to draw comparisons to Stereolab, but Melenas have their own unique pop instincts that make them singular. Just when you’re getting lost in their hypnotic spell, they hit you with a big hook, turning what was a speeding locomotive across a desert into a rollercoaster. And they keep getting better. Ahora is Melenas’ third album, refining what they do in clever, surprising and satisfying ways, finding a sweet spot between Neu! and Kraftwerk. Is there a Spanish word for “komishe”? It might be “Melenas.” [Full review here]

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Medicine – Silences (Laner Archival Service)

Most of the leading noisemakers of the original early-’90s shoegaze era were British, but there were a few Yanks who got it right and one of those were Medicine, led by onetime Savage Republic drummer Brad Laner who mixed buzzsaw guitars, Brian Wilson melodies, crashing drums and occasional dance beats into a crushing, hypnotic mass. The group called it quits in 1995, but Laner reformed Medicine in 2013 with drummer Jim Goodall and have been going ever since. After two albums on Captured Tracks, Medicine have flown a little under the radar, dropping Scarred for Life in 2019, and self releasing Drugs in 2022. They’re now back with Silences that is just as full melody, dissonance, and psychedelic invention as when they had Elizabeth Fraser guesting on their contribution to The Crow soundtrack. [Full review here]

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Here’s the Indie Basement: Best of August playlist 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.