BRITPOP - Best of the Rest

[pedalhead]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkAngel /img/forum/go_quote.gif OMG I hope Bong did not hear you say Suede was a one hit wonder.....he will pop his top

lol yep maybe I need to retract that one. I just checked allmusic & Suede are still going. Amazing. I had their self-titled debut album (which was great), and I thought they dropped off the radar since then, but evidently not!

 

[bong]

Suede... a one hit wonder!? NO NO NO!!!

at least not in the UK, they've had five studio albums (three of them hitting #1), an excellent B-Sides compilation (Sci-Fi Lullabies), and a greatest hits compilation (Singles)... as well as an amazing string of hit singles, with the majority of them hitting the UK Top 20. i have to admit they're pretty much a cult band in the US and are virtually unknown (blame that female folk singer who forced them to change their name). The London Suede... pfft.

If the s/t is all you have, i'll recommend the next two consecutive albums, Dog Man Star (dark, dramatic, and brooding), and Coming Up (upbeat, classic Brit-pop, with 5 UK Top 10 singles).

oh, and for Suede fans, check out The Tears, with the album Here Come The Tears. it's Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler reunited, and the album is a bit like... "what would Coming Up sound like if the two songwriting partners never split." right now Brett Anderson is working on his first solo album, and sadly Suede is on permanent hiatus but i don't they they ever announced a complete split yet.

Shed Seven, wow i remember them... their first album Change Giver was pretty rockin'. however they never did capture my imagination like other Brit-Pop bands, and i lost interest after that album.

Menswe@r... wow, i haven't touched my copy of Nuisance for years. it's quite good actually, if taken at face value and nothing more, just a good slice of fun.

Placebo... they released an excellent album last year, Meds. best since Without You I'm Nothing.

how about Embrace? their debut The Good Will Out was very good... very Urban Hymns era Verve-like. i'm not a big fan of them, but they've got some great staying power.

to be fair, The Boo Radleys only did release one Brit-Pop album, in Wake Up! everything else they did seemed so esoteric. same with Lush with Lovelife (check out the duet between Miki Berenyi and no other than Jarvis ****er of Pulp on "Ciao!").

they're not British, but Manic Street Preachers (Welsh) are good too, if heavy on politics and controversial subject matter.

Ash (Northern Irish) is a bunch of punkish Britpop fun, and are due for a new album this year. they have a pattern of ggod-bad-good-bad albums, and since the last one (Meltdown) was so-so, i'm hoping the new one will be good; difficult to top Free All Angels though.

 

[AC1]

How about The Delgados, while their origin is not British, but very UK related. I like their Peleton, Hate albums.

 

[pedalhead]

Yeah fair play Bong, I bow down to your superior Suede knowledge

. I may even check out some of their other albums.

 

[huwg]

Hi everybody

Pulp, Blur and Oasis are generally considered to be the kings, with Paul Weller being the Godfather of britpop.

The Trainspotting soundtrack captured the era rather nicely.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bong /img/forum/go_quote.gif they're not British, but Manic Street Preachers (Welsh) are good too, if heavy on politics and controversial subject matter.

Wales is in Britain, so the manics are British, but I don't know if I'd call them Britpop.

 

[eyeresist]

I'm just here to nitpick

- 1993 is really the cut-off for "Britpop", not just in terms of the identifiable Britpop bands but in musical terms too. There was a kind of golden age in Britain from 1985 (the first Jesus & Mary Chain album) to 1992-3, when grunge rearranged the playing field. In this period the best music was experimental to some degree, notably the combination of noise/FX and poppy structures in dream pop/shoegazer, and the use of dance rhythms and 1960s vibe in 'baggy'. The music of Britpop was actually a break from all that, becoming much more straight-ahead guitar rock, albeit with a quirky indie twist.

So a whole lot of bands listed in this thread don't technically qualify - Manic Street Preachers, Suede (alright, maybe they're proto-Britpop), Boo Radleys, Teenage Fanclub, Pram, House of Love, Charlatans, Stone Roses, Radiohead, Stereo MCs, The La's, The Verve, St Etienne...




There was a typo in the above paragraph but I corrected it; I thought "Hose of Love" might distract from the point of my thesis.

 

[bong]

hmm... interesting post eyeresist, you are absolutely right about Britpop being a direct response to American Grunge and (misunderstood) boring Shoegaze, also to the implosion of Madchester/Baggy.

i'll have to disagree about some of the bands listed as not being Britpop. the history is debatable, but in many circles it is believed that Suede spearheaded the early 90's Britpop movement; they were decidedly British with classic influences from Bowie, The Smiths, Pet Shop Boys, etc. they were named NME's Best Band in Britain before a single note of music was publicly released. Brett Anderson appeared on the cover of Select with the Union Jack wrapped around his shoulders with the words "Yanks Go Home!" printed on the cover... Suede couldn't be more Britpop, and their quick rise to the top opened the floodgates of other major Britpop bands to come.

Manic Street Preachers came even earlier than Suede, and shared the same passion of bringing ROCK back to the charts, meanwhile waging war with many Shoegaze bands (they said Slowdive was more evil than Hitler!)... as well as bringing something decidedly British with their social observations a la The Clash, as well as a slight American influence via Guns n' Roses.

Blur can also be seen as one of the inventors of 90's Britpop, ditching the baggy/shoegaze-esque Leisure with social observations on Modern Life Is Rubbish. however, that album was a bust as Suede overshadowed them until their Britpop classic Parklife came a year later.

it is true Boo Radleys can be catergorized as Shoegaze and Dreampop, but Wake Up! is decidedly Britpop, as was consciously recorded as such. same thing with The Verve's Urban Hymns.

Charlatans evolved from Madchester/Baggy into Britpop with Tellin' Stories, but truth be told they always had classic British influences, via Rob Collins' Hammond Organ stylings that harked back to those influences.

The La's were Britpop even before the term was coined in the early 90's. their one and only record directly influenced many classic Britpop bands, from Oasis through Cast (of course, John Powers was in both bands) and many other Trad-Rock bands that followed.

it was all exciting stuff, i'll say!

Quote:

Originally Posted by pedalhead /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yeah fair play Bong, I bow down to your superior Suede knowledge . I may even check out some of their other albums.

haha... please do!

Dog Man Star and Coming Up are every bit as good as the s/t debut, but all for different reasons. these three albums couldn't be more different, but are classic in every bit of the word.

 

[Dimitris]

I would second all the above. I would also suggest Deus. They arent brits rather Dutch but their sound is very similar and very beautiful.

 

[eyeresist]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bong /img/forum/go_quote.gif [size=xx-small] i'll have to disagree about some of the bands listed as not being Britpop. the history is debatable, but in many circles it is believed that Suede spearheaded the early 90's Britpop movement; they were decidedly British with classic influences from Bowie, The Smiths, Pet Shop Boys, etc. they were named NME's Best Band in Britain before a single note of music was publicly released. Brett Anderson appeared on the cover of Select with the Union Jack wrapped around his shoulders with the words "Yanks Go Home!" printed on the cover... Suede couldn't be more Britpop, and their quick rise to the top opened the floodgates of other major Britpop bands to come. Manic Street Preachers came even earlier than Suede, and shared the same passion of bringing ROCK back to the charts, meanwhile waging war with many Shoegaze bands (they said Slowdive was more evil than Hitler!)... as well as bringing something decidedly British with their social observations a la The Clash, as well as a slight American influence via Guns n' Roses. ... The La's were Britpop even before the term was coined in the early 90's. their one and only record directly influenced many classic Britpop bands, from Oasis through Cast (of course, John Powers was in both bands) and many other Trad-Rock bands that followed. [/size]

I'd be interested to know how you would define Britpop in musical terms, as you seem to include groups formed long before the Britpop era on the grounds that they "sound" Britpop.

As I said Suede could be called proto-Britpop. They were a sort-of dry run before the real thing, but a bit too arty/faggy for real crossover action.
Manics were similar, except too political/intellectual/faggy. (Sorry if that word offends - I'm using it descriptively rather than pejoratively!)
For me, the La's classic 60s-style jangly pop is basically part of the Madchester thing.

Maybe I'm not in a position to adjudicate on Britpop - for me, the Britpop era was when I stopped listening to British music, because it seemed to me that musical exploration was being replaced by commercial concerns. Gah! I've given myself away now!

 

[pedalhead]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dimitris /img/forum/go_quote.gif I would second all the above. I would also suggest Deus. They arent brits rather Dutch but their sound is very similar and very beautiful.

Just to keep the nitpicking theme going...I'm pretty sure dEUS are Belgian.

. They continue to make great music even today though, I have a load of their stuff.

 

[bong]

from All Music Guide:

Quote:

The Stone Roses' effortless pop hooks and rock-star attitude were the most important part of the foundation, but the true founding fathers of Britpop were Suede. Released in 1993, their self-titled debut became an unexpected smash with its fusion of glam-rock majesty and Smiths introspection. Suede opened the doors for even bigger breakthroughs in 1994 by Blur (Parklife) and Oasis (Definitely Maybe), who quickly became Britpop's two most popular superstars. With their success came a giddy explosion of similarly inspired bands; Elastica, Pulp, Supergrass, and the Boo Radleys were among the biggest. In 1996, Oasis became the only Britpop band to become genuine mainstream stars in the U.S. 1997 brought the first signals that the Britpop boom was beginning to run out of steam, namely Oasis' poorly reviewed third album and Blur's move toward American indie rock. Yet even after the movement's star began to fade, several individual bands kept going strong, and the less youth-oriented British trad rock movement kept its classicism alive.

Suede really was the beginnings of 90's Britpop. without them they would still be listening to American Indie. without Suede, all the other Britpop bands like Oasis, Blur, Pulp, etc. wouldn't have the huge success they enjoyed throughout the 90's into the new millenium.

The La's are a bit more tricky, as their one and only album came out between the late 80's Indie Jangle-pop (The Smiths, Housemartins, early James, also all those C86 bands) and , and Madchester/Baggy, but The La's style is more in touch with the former. i would hesitate to call The La's Madchester, which focused on shuffling dance beats, swirling psychedelia, and drug references.

i still listen to alot of British music today, to me it's still more exciting than American Indie, although i've explored alot of that too lately.

 

[Dimitris]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pedalhead /img/forum/go_quote.gif Just to keep the nitpicking theme going...I'm pretty sure dEUS are Belgian. . They continue to make great music even today though, I have a load of their stuff.

I stand corrected!They make beautiful music. I have watched them live in Athens and they were really great!

 

[TheAnomaly]

paul weller needs to be mentioned again. his second solo album, wild wood, needs to be on every british rock fan's playlist. aside from that, all the bases seem to be covered pretty well here.

i would encourage anyone interested in the 90s british sound to look into the more neo-psychedelic/space rock/madchester stuff of the 80s, as it really compliments the more mainstream-ish sound of the 90s quite nicely. if anybody has recommendations for those things i'm very interested in those genres so i'd be much obliged...or maybe there should be a separate thread.

 

[Stephen_Ri]

They're soon going to release a compilation which includes many of the bands mentioned in this thread. http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/articl...mc-in-brit-box I won't be buying it, since I either have or plan to pick up most of these albums. There are some notable omissions--for instance, we get RIALTO but not Stone Roses, Black Grape, Slowdive....anyway, great stuff on there. Discs 2 and 3 are pith.

 

[Daryn Alexander]

Two albums I've discovered again recently...

My Life Story - Joined Up Talking (although their whole catalogue is good)
Strangelove - Love And Other Demons (theirs isn't)