Greetings from the sepia-toned smoky haze that is New York City! One thing is clear: there’s a lot of great music this week, including new albums from King Krule, This is the Kit, Love and Rockets, The Boo Radleys, TEKE:TEKE, and Decisive Pink (aka Deradoorian and Kate NV), plus reissues from Air Miami, Sloan and Primal Scream.

It’s a big week for albums and in Notable Releases, Andrew reviews new ones from Janelle Monae, Amaarae, Jason Isbell, Jess Williamson, Youth Lagoon, Godflesh, and more.

Need more music in your life, like physically? The Indie Basement corner of the BV Shop that is full of great records, hand selected by yours truly, including our exclusive, limited edition color vinyl variant of Alvvays’ debut album, our exclusive, limited edition swirled vinyl edition of Thee Oh Sees’ Live at Levitation, an autographed Don Letts single, and lots more.

Head below for this week’s many reviews…

ALBUM OF THE WEEK #1: King Krule – Space Heavy (Matador)
King Krule’s fourth album is perfectly titled, with the kind of dense atmosphere only he can create

Archy Marshall is an indie veteran at this point — 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, his terrific debut album as King Krule, came out 10 years ago — but he’s still young, just 28. His mother is no longer his manager, he can headline festivals like Primavera Sound, but he’s still doing things his way. He has an allergy to publicity, interviews are scarce, and he has kept his circle close, working with producer Dilip Harris and bandmates Jamie Isaac, George Bass and Ignacio Salvadores who seem as much mates as collaborators. Archy has also turned his marble-mouthed, heavily accented baritone, which was once a shock coming out of an 18-year-old, into one of his chief assets, and while there’s always at least one banger on every record, Archy gets a lot of mileage on his unique vibe alone.

Space Heavy is King Krule’s fourth album and first in three years, his first since the pandemic, and first since becoming a dad. Most of the lyrics were written on train trips from London to the Northwest of England where he now lives to visit his kid. “Train to the coast, four hours once a week,” he sings on closer “Wednesday Overcast” against claustrophobic backing. “In the pub corner, surrounded by creeps…This place was forgotten from history.” (He knows how to set a scene.) Recording, meanwhile, was partially done in his studio, formerly known as his mom’s bathroom which he converted into his own workspace. Sing where you sound best.

Marshall has a great eye for detail and ear for dialogue, and always manages to give his albums perfect titles. Space Heavy is a great description for King Krule’s music that echoes from ample headroom, thick with atmosphere and grey English weather. Bossa nova and samba have always been in the King Krule mix, but those styles feel more present here, with flutes and horns floating through the ether on tracks like “Flimsy,” “When Vanishing” and “Wednesday Overcast” which all feature arrangements by Sean O’Hagan of High Llamas. These elements are never in your face, fitting in perfectly to Archy’s universe where even poppier numbers, like single “Seaforth,” feel like daydreams on a rainy afternoon.

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ALBUM OF THE WEEK #2: This is the Kit – Careful Of Your Keepers (Rough Trade)
Sixth album by talented and highly empathetic songwriter Kate Stables was produced by Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys

Not many songwriters can boldly quote The Simpsons with a straight face, but Kate Stables is one of them. It’s right there in the chorus of “Inside Outside,” a song about longing, change and choice: “bite off as much as you can chew,” she sings before opening up Ralph Wiggum’s Valentine’s Day card. “I chew chew choose you.” Mastication is a key metaphor on Careful of Your Keepers, Stables’ sixth album as This is the Kit that examines relationships, who we choose to be with, how that all changes over time, and how big of a bite we allow ourselves to take. Stables’ always empathetic lyricism is at the center of This is The Kit which she surrounds with sinewy, proggy folk. Her bandmates, including bassist Rozi Plain, guitarist Neil Smith and drummer Jamie Whitby-Coles, are all highly skilled musicians capable of pulling off off these parts that, like Stables’ words, are complex but easily digestible. Careful feels just a bit bigger that previous albums, perhaps due to Gruff Rhys who was tapped as producer and helps them add horns (flugelhorn, bassoon) and other elements to the mix. Arrangements on the gorgeous title track, “Scabby Head and Legs” (which references another cartoon, Bluey), and “Doomed Or More Doomed” are windswept and subtly spectacular, but lines like “this is your ‘how shit is it’ measuring stick” will stay with you long after the music fades.

Kate was nice enough talk to us about every song on Careful Of Your Keepers which is a great read.

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TEKE::TEKE – Hagata (Kill Rock Stars)
The Montreal pysch band’s second album plays like the soundtrack to the craziest cult film never made

Listening to Montreal-based Japanese psych-rock band TEKE::TEKE is a bit like watching some crazy cult-classic foreign film. Blindfolded. Their very cinematic music is enough to conjure vivid imagery alone, and second album Hagata is a cinemascope epic. “‘Hagata’ is a very deep word, something present but also something leftover from someone or something no longer there,” singer/guitarist Maya Kuroki says of the title, if you were wondering about its meaning. “It’s like waking up from a dream, or being connected to the other side of something.” Understanding Japanese probably helps, but Hagata is plenty entertaining despite the language barrier, offering bonkers action sequences, spy movie setpieces, exotic locales, danger, romance, evil twins, and lots of flutes and the occasional theremin. When will they score an actual film — or star in one?

For additional insight into Hagata, bandleader Sei Nakauchi Pelletier takes us through the whole album, track by track. Read that here.

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The Boo Radleys – Eight (Boostr)
Second album since reforming without original guitarist/songwriter Martin Carr finds these shoegaze/Britpop vets in fine form and good spirits

It was a bit of a surprise when Britpop/shoegaze vets The Boo Radleys announced in 2021 they were reforming and making a new album without guitarist Martin Carr who had written all of the band’s songs during their original ’90s run. But not having a perfectionist, and occasional pop genius, at the helm actually allowed the other three members of the band — singer/guitarist Sice, drummer Rob Cieka, and bassist Tim Brown — to flourish. That album, 2022’s Keep on Falling, will not bump Giant Steps or Wake Up! off anyone’s shelf but they clearly had fun making it, not something they might say about any of their albums with Carr. Same goes for this, its follow-up, coming just a year later. It’s an improvement all-around and finds them back in the groove and gelling. All three members contribute songs but all the songs on Eight (yes, their eighth album) feel like they came from the same band. Wake Up!‘s bright and cheery demeanor is the jumping point here as they confidently explore new musical territory, be it ska (“The Unconscious”), jazz excursions a la The Style Council (“Hollow”) or synthpop (“Skeleton Woman”), and it all fits in with the Boos’ world. There’s plenty of Britpop here, too: see “Seeker,” “Now Thats What I Call Obscene” and “A Shadow Darker Than The Rest.” There’s not much in the way of shoegaze, but for that you can listen to Giant Steps which is getting a 30th anniversary reissue in September.

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Love and Rockets – My Dark Twin (Beggars Banquet)
A companion piece to Love and Rockets’ just-reissued ‘Sweet F.A.’ features previously unreleased songs, a Genesis P. Orridge collab and more

The ’90s were rough for Love and Rockets. Having formed out of the ashes of Bauhaus, the band’s first four albums were all alt-rock/college radio hits, and the last of those — their 1989 self-titled — gave them an unexpected Top 5 US hit single with “So Alive.” They wouldn’t make another till 1994’s Hot Trip To Heaven which was largely electronic / trip-hop influenced and got them dropped by Beggars Banquet, their home since the Bauhaus days. They were almost immediately snapped up by Rick Rubin who signed them to his label American Recordings and convinced them to bring back guitars. It was a fraught production, though, going through multiple producers and studios, eventually settling in at Rubin’s L.A. manion and studio. Things went well there till a fire broke out and Love and Rockets lost most of their recordings, all of their instruments and nearly their lives. That’s one of Ash’s burnt guitars on the cover of the album, Sweet F.A., that came out in 1996 and didn’t do much better that Hot Trip. Both those albums are good and worth revisiting — Beggars just reissued both of them on vinyl and you can grab them in our store.

There were a lot of songs that didn’t make the album, many of which only existed in rough mixes on a DAT tape Kevin Haskins took home with him the night of the fire. Those songs make up My Dark Twin, a new double-CD companion to Sweet F.A.  It includes eight previously unreleased alternate versions of Sweet F.A. songs, and six unreleased songs. While the record is very much of its era — the mix of electronica, funky beats and fuzzy guitars couldn’t be more mid-’90s — but there’s also a lot of spark still there. Some highlights: “U. O. ME” that features Genesis P. Orridge, who also nearly died in the fire, “California (Have A Nice Apocalypse!)” that features Green on Red’s Chuck Prophet and American Music Club’s Bruce Kaphan on pedal steel, and a cool cover of Mink DeVille’s “Spanish Stroll.” The album, like Love and Rockets themselves, is best when Daniel Ash and David J sing together, like on groovy opening number “The Fever” which mines a similar path The Beta Band would explore a couple years later. There’s too much here for anyone except L&R devotees, but really that’s exactly who My Dark Twin is for. Fan service at its best.

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Decisive Pink – Ticket to Fame (Fire)
Angel Deradoorian and Kate NV team up for an album of arty synthpop

Named after a painting by great abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky, Decisive Pink is the abstract synth duo of Angel Deradoorian and Kate NV. A surprising pairing, perhaps, but these two come from similarly skewed if wildly different backgrounds. Most of the album was made in Köln, at a friend of NV’s studio that is outfitted with an arsenal of cool, obscure modular synthesizers. “It was very exciting to step into the ‘synth-dome’ as I think of it,” says Deradoorian. “I can’t remember all the synths we used, but definitely one of the Prophets, a modular, a Juno, a Jupiter, a Rodeo, a synth with a bee on it and some synth from the 1980s that Kate knew about.” After work in the synth-dome, the album was finished at Angel’s L.A. rehearsal space, with vocals recorded in a closet. Deradoorian’s guitars ping off Kate’s electronics, while their voices swirl around each other. Any record steeped in these kind of synths and drum machines is going to recall the 1980s, and Laurie Anderson and, yes, Kate Bush, may come to mind while listening to tracks like “Haffmilch Holiday” (named for an oatmilk latte that powered sessions) or “Cosmic Dancer” which is not a T-Rex cover. Ticket to Fame is a weird party, but a party nonetheless, and dancing in the synth-dome is a good time.

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Primal Scream – Reverberations (Travelling In Time) (Young Tiki)

Before they made Screamadelica, before they were Stones-wannabes, and around the same time frontman Bobby Gillespie was playing drums in The Jesus & Mary Chain, Primal Scream were a scrappy, jangly indiepop band who released a series of charming if shambolic singles on Creation Records long before they signed Oasis, Ride, Super Furry Animals, My Bloody Valentine or even House of Love. The band’s signature song from this early period, “Velocity Girl,” is 90-seconds of overdriven “la la” pop that sounds both sparkling and loud as hell. It was also a b-side, but its inclusion on NME’s storied C-86 cassette lifted it into cult status and John Peel Show regular rotation.

That era of the band, when they were basically Gillespie and Jim Beattie, has been collected on Reverberations (Travelling In Time), which they call “the debut album that never was.” It certainly makes a better record than their actual debut, 1987’s underwhelming Sonic Flower Groove. In addition to “Velocity GIrl,” it’s got everything from their two early Creation singles: their very jangly debut “All Fall Down” and “sha-la-la-la” b-side “It Happens,” the horn inflected “Crystal Crescent” (“Velocity Girl” was the b-side) and Jim Beattie’s harder-edged “Spirea X” (which Jim would use as a band name after he left the Scream). There’s also 11 BBC recordings that include songs from those singles plus a few more.

The album also comes with new liner notes by Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley, Jim Beattie and Bobby Gillespie, and the packaging’s lovely too. Primal Scream would go onto bigger better — and worse — things, but they were never more youthfully charming than they were here. “This music proves we really had something special going on back then,” says Gillespie. “I’m very proud of this album, I’m glad these sessions are finally being released.”

Reverberations (Travelling Through Time) is available in limited edition white and black vinyl, and on CD, with preorders available starting June 14.

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Air Miami – me. me. me. deluxe reissue (4AD / Teenbeat)
The sole album from Mark Robinson & Bridget Cross’ post-Unrest group gets an expanded reissue

Inspired by labels like 4AD, Rough Trade and Dischord, Mark Robinson started Teenbeat in 1984 when he was a teenager in the DC area, releasing records and tapes by his own band Unrest and other local groups (and later ones from all over the world). Originally a duo of Robinson and drummer Phil Krauth, Unrest became more of an actual band with the addition of bassist Bridget Cross, and their arty mix of post-punk styles really crystalized on 1992’s wonderful Imperial F.F.R.R. That got them signed to 4AD, where they released another very good album, 1993’s Perfect Teeth, and then they broke up. Krauth went solo, while Robinson and Cross picked up where Unrest left off as Air Miami.

Air Miami only released two singles and one album, 1994’s me. me. me., but all of it was pretty great. Recorded at Miami’s famed Criteria Studios (the Bee Bees home base in the late-’70s), the album swings from hyperactive C-86-style jangle to dreamy trips into the ether a la Galaxie 500. There are also unique Robinson creations like indie-punk burner “I Hate Milk” (chorus: “Please, please someone kill me soon!”) and the great, silly “World Cup Fever” that is maybe the best World Cup song ever. The album artwork, designed by Robinson and Cross and featuring a photo-real illustration by Hideaki Kodama, is one of the best 4AD covers that was not created by the late great Vaughan Oliver.

Reasonably priced OG vinyl copies are not that hard to come by, but me. me. me. is getting a deluxe reissue by 4AD/TeenBeat on July 28. The album has been remastered from the original analogue tapes and pressed to double 45-RPM vinyl, and it features all 16 songs recorded during the sessions, including three previously unreleased songs. The artwork has been slightly reimagined for this new edition, too. Preorders are available.

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Sloan – Never Hear the End of It / Never Heard the Demo of It (Murderecords)
Canadian alt-rock greats regained their footing on this 2006 30-song double LP that is getting a much-needed vinyl repress

Halifax/Toronto band Sloan were hugely popular in their native Canada in the latter half of the ’90s, with One Chord to Another, Navy Blues and Between the Bridges all big hits with hit singles, some of which are still played in hockey arenas today. Things got a little weird, though, in the early-’00s as they tried to figure out how to grow. 2001’s Pretty Together was pretty good, but 2003’s Action Pact was a misguided attempt to court America, made with bigshot producer Tom Rothrock, and it’s the only album not to feature any songs from drummer Andrew Scott. Sloan took three years to regroup and returned with one of their best-ever albums, a 30-song double-LP cheekily titled Never Hear the End of It that let all four members’ best sides shine. It’s got glam, Beatlesque pop, punk, power-pop, riff rock, indie rock, you name it — and on Chris Murphy’s “Fading Into Obscurity,” they condensed all that into one song about learning to accept where they were.

The album came out on vinyl back then but just ahead of the turntable renaissance, and original copies currently fetch over $200 on the secondary market, so it’s great they’ve repressed it. To go along with it, they’ve released a double 7″ titled Never Heard the Demo of It that features demos of two songs, an alternate version of “It’s Not the End of the World” and outtake “Four Seasons.”

To go with it, Sloan have made a new video for first single “Who Taught You To Live Like That,” and have released a video for Andrew Scott’s “I Can’t Sleep” that was made at the time but never released.

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And check out what’s new in our shop.

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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.