The Railway Children - Reunion Wilderness (1987/2001) / Recurrence (1988) / Native Place (1990)

It is hard to over-estimate the influence of The Smiths on the revival of guitar-pop in England during the mid-to-late 1980s. Rather than being a London-based phenomenon, this revival emanated from the north, and just as it had during the rise of post-punk, Thatcher-era Manchester proved a particularly fertile ground for this unique integration of sixties-era guitar-pop and post-punk moodiness. Hailing from Manchester, The Smiths largely created the blueprint for much of what was to follow for the remainder of the decade; however, the influence of Scottish bands such as Orange Juice and The Scars, as well as Liverpool bands such as Echo & The Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes also informed this guitar-pop resurgence. In the summer of 1983, a group of Wigan teenagers from the outskirts of Manchester led by Gary Newby (songwriter/vocalist/guitarist) formed a band that, while featuring the jangly guitar-oriented sound that was quickly coming into vogue at the time, pursued a gentler approach to better feature Newby's subtly expressive vocals. Newby: "I was friends at school with Stephen Hull our bass player. We were in a couple of different bands together that never actually played any gigs. Then we met our drummer Guy Keegan, probably around '83, and started rehearsing as a three piece and playing bars and clubs around Wigan. We did mainly stuff I'd written plus a few covers, things like 'Crocodiles' by Echo & The Bunnymen or 'Figurehead' by The Cure. Brian Bateman joined on rhythm guitar, and the next big step came when we started playing clubs in Manchester, around '84. We eventually hooked up with our manager, Colin Sinclair, after various encounters, gigs, and demo tapes, including an aborted session with Martin Hannett. Colin owned a live venue and rehearsal studio just around the corner from the Hacienda, called The Boardwalk." After naming the band after a children's book by Edith Nesbit published in 1905, Newby, Hull & co. began gigging in and around Manchester and quickly built a devoted following due to their unique "gentle" sound, which culminated in a recording contract with the legendary Manchester independent, Factory Records.

Newby: "Being on Factory was an amazing experience. There was a real buzz around rehearsing and putting the material together for what would be our first releases. We had a room at the top of the Boardwalk building next door to where James rehearsed. The Happy Mondays also rehearsed there along with some other Factory bands like ACR [A Certain Ratio] and Kalima. There was always bands coming and going. We'd grown up listening to Joy Division and New Order, and Tony Wilson was an inspirational character. I think we thrived in that atmosphere because it was completely unstructured and unpressured." Factory's penchant for allowing their artists to develop and explore their sound in an environment free of corporate interference payed dividends for The Railway Children. They released their first single, "A Gentle Sound," in 1986, and the following year, their debut LP, Reunion Wilderness, reached #1 on the UK indie charts. Reunion Wilderness features one of the band's best songs, "Brighter," a fine piece of avowedly romantic jangle-pop that certainly put them in line with much of the C86 crowd; however, the band's immediate success and Gary Newby's polished vocals suggested the band was far more marketable than many of their peers. And the majors did come knocking. It was Richard Branson of Virgin America who convinced the band to leave the nurturing confines of Factory, and though the short-term results were a bigger recording budget and a significant expansion of their fan base, jumping to a major label did have its drawbacks, as Virgin began to push them in an increasingly commercial direction. Newby: "After the release of Reunion Wilderness, we had a lot of interest from other companies, and I suppose we got seduced by the bright Lights. Looking back, we probably should have stayed with Factory for at least another album, and grown a little."

Staying on a little longer at Factory would have indeed been a good decision because the band's stint at Virgin was fated to be not only stormy, but ultimately fatal. Nevertheless, things did seem promising at the start. The Railway Children's second LP, Recurrence, was released in 1988, and they soon found themselves touring Europe and America with the likes of R.E.M. and The Sugarcubes. The album itself finds the band hitting their stride in terms of songwriting; "In the Meantime" is a particularly fine example of this. However, Recurrence bears the imprint of Virgin's influence on the band's sound, as it pushes them slightly away from the pure guitar-pop of their earlier work and into a more produced, at times even mainstream, direction- but the songs are good enough to consistently overcome this. And in light of the creative struggles that lay ahead for the band, Recurrence sits as The Railway Children's most fully-realized work. Despite its obvious quality, the album failed to meet Virgin's commercial expectations, and by the time The Railway Children's third album, Native Place, was released in 1990, the band, at the behest of their label, was out to score a chart hit, which they achieved with "Every Beat of the Heart," a song with a noticeably dancier, chart-friendly sound. Perhaps ironically, this would spell the end of The Railway Children's flirtation with mainstream success. Within two years, Virgin would be swallowed up by EMI, and the band found itself without a label. Completely fractured by their loss of direction, The Railway Children decided to split in 1992- a band whose early work suggested something unique and full of promise but whose creative flame was decimated by a major label's insistence on compromising artistic integrity for mainstream appeal: another cautionary tale to be sure.

The Servants - Reserved (2006) / Disinterest (1990) / Small Time & Hey Hey We're the Manqués (2012)

Led by the vastly under-appreciated singer and songwriter David Westlake, who has more than once been described as a post-punk version of Ray Davies, The Servants, formed by Westlake in 1985, were a natural yet reluctant fit among the figureheads of the guitar-pop resurgence that took hold in England during the mid-late 1980s, a movement that retroactively came to be known as "C86." Westlake, who hailed from Hayes, Middlesex, had already connected with guitarist John Mohan when he placed classified ads in a number of London music publications in the hope of putting together a proper band. Among the respondents was future bassist Phil King (who would go on to play in bands such as Felt, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Biff Bang Pow! and Lush). Phil King: "As for joining the Servants, I seem to remember seeing an ad looking for a guitarist in the back of the ‘NME ‘around 1984. I am trying to remember the groups it mentioned in the ad. The Smiths, the Go-Betweens, Orange Juice' maybe? I remember there being a phone number and David's address in Hayes, Middlesex [....] David had sent me a demo tape of some songs that included a rather primitive version of 'She's Always Hiding' with no bass on it. I was of course knocked out by it, and both the songwriting and John Mohan's guitar playing. I was so excited by the tape I took it upon myself to drive over to his place one Friday evening in my 1964 two tone blue Humber Sceptre [....] David was of course rather surprised at my unannounced arrival but we got on very well, and arranged to meet up for a rehearsal in his bedroom with John Mohan the next week. We soon realised that we had one six string guitar too many, so I ended playing a black short scale Fender Musicmaster bass (there was also a Peavey combo bass amp there too) that had been left by their friend Ed who had tried - and failed - to master it. And that's how I started, and still play, bass." The new partnership of Westlake, Mohan and King paid off in a batch of promising songs, and after having named the band after the 1963 Harold Pinter-written film The Servant, they booked their first gig in King's Cross, London.

Cover of "The Sun, a Small Star" Single

King: "I remember years later David telling me that I gave him an ultimatum after we'd spent about a year rehearsing in his bedroom - with a drum machine - and recording demos on a 4 track Portastudio, that either we started playing some gigs or I'd leave. I have no memory of this but I guess the reason I said that, if I indeed did, was because I was so proud of the songs I just wanted everyone to hear them. Once we got a drummer (one of the earlier ones, Eamon Lynam, was nicknamed 'Neasden Riots', in the same way that the Clash's drummer Terry Chimes was called 'Tory Crimes' on the back of their first album, because he'd got into a bit of 'trouble' in the neighbourhood and was put under a strict curfew by the police), it all snowballed pretty quickly from our first show supporting the Television Personalities at the Pindar of Wakefield in Kings Cross in July 1985 to our last performance supporting Felt (the 'Lawrence Takes Acid' show) at Bay 63 around a year later." After only a few gigs, the band was signed to Head, an off-shoot of Creation Records, and in early-1986 released their first single, "She's Always Hiding," which garnered them much critical praise lauding their unique sound. For example, NME wrote, "Stop me if you've heard this one before, but there's currently a group of earnest young men doing the rounds of London's beery backrooms who play the sweetest, smartest evocations of The Velvet Underground's sepulchral third LP these increasingly '60s-sated, guitar-jaded ears have possibly ever heard. Still awake? Good, because The Servants (for it is they) are - wait for it - different. Not for them the simplistic allure of dark shades and darker strides, nor the convenient kudos of easy chords. No, what brings The Servants close to Lou's crew's gossamer grace-cum-disembodied depth is that self-same timbre; the giddying suggestion of melodies conjured from the ether; a recognition of enduring classicism; a similar striving for a sound as perfect, as profound as (eek!) silence. Heck, their "She's Always Hiding" is the greatest dark-eyed, love/hate song Reed never wrote..." On the heels of the first single, and only eight months after their first gig, The Servants were invited to record a John Peel session in March, 1986 and were also chosen to appear on NME's C86 compilation cassette. However, Westlake, whose ambitions always leaned heavily in the direction of "art for the sake of art," was quite discomfited by the band's meteoric rise; as a result, he only reluctantly agreed to contribute a song to the NME compilation, and the song itself, "Transparent," was a B-side. Despite such early success, this first version of The Servants was destined to fall apart by the end of 1986.

King: "We put out two singles (the second 'The Sun, A Small Star' sadly posthumously, as we'd split up by then), recorded a John Peel session, got a full page feature in the New Year's edition of the 1986 ‘NME’ hailing us as the next big thing, appeared on their C86 cassette and played shows with amongst others the Jesus And Mary Chain, Felt, Primal Scream, the Go Betweens, the Pale Fountains and the Wedding Present. By the time we split up we'd only done twenty four gigs. To use the snowball analogy, I guess it all gathered momentum a little too quickly for David, got out of control, crashed into a tree, and um, broke up. It was just a shame really as we had so many songs to record. Enough for a few albums." Ironically, this is where the story of The Servants would have likely ended if not for the song Westlake had begrudgingly contributed to NME's C86 compilation; the mail-order-only cassette had become a huge success (eventually released as an LP), providing a catalyst for the rise of an all-too-brief D.I.Y. guitar-pop resurgence in the UK. Inspired by the enthusiastic support of John Peel, Westlake decided to reform the band, which now included guitarist Luke Haines (who would later find fame leading The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder). Haines recalling his move to London where he was to shortly cross paths with The Servants: "Brixton was kind of heavy at that time, not like it is now full of middle class people. It was good and full of rastas and good fun.  I was sort of a nice middle class boy who had gone to music college and what not, not much, just a couple of days a week. It didn't require much of my presence [....] I had a few attempts at bands and what not in the mid-80s. Then I answered an advert in Sounds Magazine [...] for a band called The Servants who needed a guitar player, so I answered that advert and I kind of got the gig. I was then in The Servants for about five years or something. Unfortunately, The Servants had already had their, I suppose, day in the sun prior to me joining them. So I essentially joined a band that was struggling quite a lot. I mean even in the mid-to-late eighties guitar bands didn't expect to sell any records. You did it purely for artistic reasons. You know, there wasn't really this idea that you could be a big pop star- that all came later on in, I suppose, the nineties." Soon thereafter, The Servants were signed to Creation Records, who immediately began pressuring them for an album. After filling out the new version of the band, Westlake, Haines & co. entered the studio to record a batch of new songs; however, Creation mysteriously chose to only release a mini-album, and did so as a David Westlake solo album, titled Westlake, which was barely heard.  By the end of the 1987, Creation had unceremoniously dumped the band.

The Servants - "Look Like a Girl" (1990)

Quite possibly the best band you've never heard. More Servants coming soon.....

Notes from the Paisley Underground: Rain Parade - Crashing Dream (1985/2009) / Beyond the Sunset (1985/2010) / Demolition (1991)

The aptly named Crashing Dream was fated to be Rain Parade's one and only full-length studio album after guitarist David Roback's departure from the band in early 1984, ostensibly to work on the Rainy Day project with his then-new flame, former Dream Syndicate bassist Kendra Smith. According to many accounts, Roback's departure was an acrimonious one; as fellow Paisley scene icon Steve Wynn recalls, "It would be like me being thrown out of Dream Syndicate [....] I never knew why it happened."  Roback's version: "It became a drag. I just had to get away and do something else [....] Musically it wasn't working out." Whatever the reason, Roback's exit left his former band-mates, including his brother Steven, at a crossroads in terms of what direction the band's sound would take without its lead guitarist. In addition, the band faced towering expectations from fans and record execs alike to replicate the brilliance of their classic debut, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip. For the time being, Rain Parade decided to proceed as a four-piece and recorded the Explosions in the Glass Palace EP, which, while missing David Roback's deftly subtle touch in places and showing an occasional proclivity for adopting a more traditional approach to song structure than before, suggested that Rain Parade was not eager to relinquish its place as one of the leading bands of the Paisley scene. Fatefully, it was during this time that the band made its jump to the majors by signing with Island Records, a move that would lead to the band's demise only two years later. Rain Parade released two albums during it's tenure at Island: a live LP recorded in Japan, Beyond the Sunset, and their final studio album, the aforementioned Crashing Dream, which functions as a strange epitaph for this seminal Paisley band, as some see it as Rain Parade's escape from the commercial ghetto of psych-revivalism, while others view it as another example of a great band sent down the road to creative ruin by a major label taking control of the creative process.

 Taken on its own terms, Crashing Dream is a consistently good, and occasionally brilliant, slice of late-eighties psych-pop that from the opening track, "Depending on You," suggests the band is looking to cut ties with the hazy psychedelia of its debut. The song's slick production and reliance on studio synthetics is a bit shocking initially given Rain Parade's psych-rock pedigree, but as soon as the vocals and lead guitar appear in the mix, the song begins to take form as a nice piece of shiny Power-Pop. The next track, "My Secret Country," moves in more of a country-rock direction, sounding not unlike a slower number by The Long Ryders, and by all rights, it should have become one of the most memorable anthems of the Paisley scene, but its emotional impact is marred by a meandering bridge and the production, which robs the song of much of its grit. Crashing Dream was unjustly ignored upon its release, and Rain Parade decided to call it quits soon thereafter. Steven Roback: "Our hearts weren't really into it, and we didn't want to abuse the identity of the Rain Parade, so we let it go." However, they did briefly reform in 1988 to record a double album, which never materialized until the release of Demolition in 1991. The first half of Demolition is comprised of an alternate ("as originally intended") version of Crashing Dream, which, if nothing else, suggests that Rain Parade were not as eager to leave their psych-rock roots behind as the over-produced Island version seemed to indicate. As the true epitaph to this legendary L.A. band, Demolition is both a revelation and a further reason to grieve over the untimely demise of a band that deserved a much better fate.

The House of Love - "In a Room" (1990)

"There are lessons for the lonely,

When I'm drunk in a room,

that's when I think of you."

The Jesus & Mary Chain (with Hope Sandoval) - "Sometimes Always" (1994)

William & Hope doing the Nancy & Lee thing, and doing it well. I'm really feeling this song right now, except for that last line- he's a bit of a presumptuous twat if you ask me....

The Velvets- Fragments of a History, Chapter 1: Andy and the Factory

John Cale: "When we went up to the Factory it was a real eye-opener for me. It wasn't called the Factory for nothing. It was where the assembly-line for the silkscreens happened. While one person was making a silkscreen, somebody else would be filming a screen test. Every day something new. I think he was dipping into anything he fancied."  Andy Warhol had immigrated to New York City from Pittsburgh in 1949 and spent much of the fifties slowly gaining fame as a commercial artist for his innovative shoe drawings. By the early sixties, Warhol had begun opening eyes in the fine arts community with his silkscreened paintings featuring the repetition of images adopted from popular culture such as 100 Soup Cans  and the Marilyn Diptych, but in truth, Warhol's use of such images was anathema to the conservative critical watchdogs of the art establishment. For example, at a symposium on pop art held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1962, Stanley Kunitz argued dismissively, "If the pop artist is concerned with creating anything, it is with the creation of an effect. Consider, for example, the celebrated rows of Campbell's Soup labels. We can scarcely be expected to have any interest in the painting itself. Indeed, it is difficult to think of it as a painting at all."  Despite the critical resistance, by 1963 pop art had come into vogue, and Warhol, now using a gang of assistants (including Gerard Malanga) in the silkscreening process to expedite the production of prints, moved to the midtown Manhattan studio that would come to be known as the Factory. This is where, over the next several years, Warhol would begin collecting his so-called "superstars": Billy Name, Rotten Rita, the Duchess, Ondine, Paul Morrissey, Ultra Violet to name but a few and socialites such as Edie Sedgwick and Susan Bottomly. Added to these was a revolving cast of prospective artists, musicians, exhibitionists, hustlers, transvestites, and anyone else able to contribute to the Factory's air of cultivated decadence, all of which was ultimately fodder for Warhol's voyeuristic predilections. It was in the middle of this strange mélange that The Velvet Underground would opportunistically find themselves in late 1965.

Warhol at Work in the Factory, 1964

By the time the Velvets had come under the aegis of Warhol, their now-iconic lineup of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker had only been together for a short time, but it was clear from the beginning that this band was a different breed altogether. As their first manager, Alan Aronowitz once recalled, "They were just junkies, crooks, hustlers. Most of the musicians at that time came with all these high-minded ideals, but the Velvets were all full of shit. They were just hustlers." Depending on whom you ask, it was either Gerard Malanga or Paul Morrissey who happened to catch one of the first gigs Aronowitz had secured for his presumptive band of hustlers at a Greenwich Village dive called Cafe Bizarre, and knew right away that Warhol and the Velvets would be a good fit. Morrissey: "Andy didn't want to get into rock and roll [....] he never would have thought of it. Even after I thought of it, I had to bludgeon him into doing it. My idea was that there could be a lot of money managing a rock and roll group that got its name in the papers, and that was one thing Andy was good for- getting his name in the papers." It also didn't hurt that this was no ordinary rock band. John Cale, a classically-trained Welshman who wielded an electric viola, had been playing in minimalist composer La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, an experimental collective also known as Dream Syndicate, which focused on drone music. Lou Reed, after graduating from Syracuse University, had worked as a tin-pan alley songwriter at Pickwick International, but his aesthetic tastes pulled in far less mainstream musical directions. First introduced by Pickwick employee Terry Phillips, as he was looking for a backing band for a potential hit Reed had penned called "The Ostrich," these musical and cultural polar opposites were initially resistant to working with each other, but they shared a fascination for the use of a drone effect in music composition. This eventually brought them together, along with Reed's former Syracuse classmate Sterling Morrison, in a short-lived band called The Primitives, which, after adding drummer Angus MacLise, who had played with Cale in the La Mont Young collective, quickly metamorphosed into The Velvet Underground.

Andy with His Band of Velvets

When Paul Morrissey returned to Cafe Bizarre a few nights later with Warhol in tow, the latter was treated to a surreal scene comprised of the Velvets (now with Maureen Tucker on drums, as MacLise had quit on the grounds that they weren't avant garde enough), playing their tales of S&M and heroin highs to a crowd made up of tourists nervously sipping exotic drinks. Ironically, the band was fired that night, but Warhol had been sufficiently impressed with what he had seen and heard and invited the Velvets to join his Factory and work under his tutelage. Lou Reed: "To my mind, nobody in music was doing anything that even approximated the real thing, with the exception of us. We were doing a specific thing that was very, very real. It wasn't slick or a lie in any conceivable way, which was the only way we could work with him. Because the very first thing I liked about Andy was that he was very real." While the Velvets benefited immediately from Warhol's patronage in the form of new instruments, rehearsal space, and the rigorous Factory regime, the relationship soon grew strained as a result of Morrissey's insistence that the band needed to be fronted by a singer more visually appealing than the often recalcitrant Lou Reed. A German model and fledgling singer, Nico, who had visited the Factory the week before, was Morrissey's choice and Warhol agreed.

Andy Ascending to the Factory

Predictably, Lou Reed and John Cale hated the idea of Nico fronting the band, but given the significant career perks that came with being aligned with a figure such as Warhol, they eventually acceded, and Reed was even persuaded by his benefactor to write songs specifically for Nico. Several of these would appear on the Velvets' debut album, funded and ostensibly produced by Warhol himself (more on this in Chapter 2). During their stay at the Factory, The Velvet Underground was used in a number of ways by Warhol, including providing largely improvisational soundtracks for some of his films and multi-media presentations, the most famous of which was the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, featuring the band accompanying a silent film directed by Warhol, titled The Velvet Underground and Nico: A Symphony of Sound, along with dancers, strobe lights, slide projections, etc. Nevertheless, the Velvets never fit comfortably into Warhol's "superstar" coterie, as they were more akin to restless students of his rigorous methodology. Lou Reed: "His work ethic, what he was about, the way he turned things around, anti-slick. Genius. An enormous, insane talent, brilliant with colors and composition. Ideas. He'd look at something that you'd be looking at, and then you'd hear what Andy sees. He was so receptive to your ideas; he made you feel like he really believed in you, and he did. He believed in us, and that's why he made us part of it all. He got it. He really got it. Then you look at what he did and you say 'Wow! If he says it's okay, then it must be okay. Because as far as other people were concerned (at that point), we were less than a Campbell's Soup can. We weren't even the paper bag it comes in. 'Some Warhol toy.' They didn't think that for long after we came in and really hauled off and batted them."

Cindytalk - Wappinschaw (1994)

On Camouflage Heart, Cindytalk's 1984 debut, Gordon Sharp created a hopelessly dark, yet starkly beautiful, proto-industrial descent into psychic despair that made many of the goth albums of the time sound like little more than cartoonish attempts to paint facile forms of despair in shades of cheap black paint. Central to the effect of this truly singular album is Sharp's harrowing vocal performance, ranging from the despondent to the cathartic, sometimes within the same song. A decade later, Cindytalk released its second masterpiece, Wappinschaw, which seems, on the surface, to emanate from emotional regions far calmer than that of its heady predecessor, but on repeated listens reveals itself as being constructed from the same emotionally wrenching cloth. Wappinschaw was to be the last album Cindytalk would release for 15 years, and as such, it can be seen as both a culmination and integration of the various elements comprising Sharp's first three albums. Wappinschaw starts with a song as surprising as it is stunning: Sharp's beautifully sung a capella cover of Ewan MacColl's "The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face." Elegant, raw, austere, and sounding like a sodden angel, Sharp masterfully sets the tone for the album's dynamic exploration of the extremities of emotion, a tone which moves into more familiar Cindytalk territory on the second track, "A Song of Changes." Mournfully melodic while eschewing anything resembling traditional song structure, Sharp creates a strange dirge-like atmosphere for another of his beautifully-wrecked vocal performances. Perhaps the biggest highlight is "Return to Pain," which features Sharp's heavily reverbed voice backed by some wonderfully moody experimental guitar noodling. Wappinschaw is easily one of the most under-appreciated albums of the 1990s, and though it is not a comforting listening experience, it is an exquisitely dark corner offering its own kind of recompense.

Suede - "Wild Ones" (1994)

This is for you beautiful woman. It really says it all....