It's weird to hear your own
contemporararies...15 years later. In the songs on Leamington Spa
you can hear the echoes of all the NME bands of that time - The
Smiths, Mary Chain, Aztec Camera, del Amitri - a lot of the
records we listened to. It's weird to hear your own
contemporararies...15 years later. In the songs on Leamington Spa
you can hear the echoes of all the NME bands of that time - The
Smiths, Mary Chain, Aztec Camera, del Amitri - a lot of the
records we listened to.
Some are terrible, but most are good and a few are outstanding. I like The Clouds, Nautical William, the Minnows and the Church Grims, none of whom I heard at the time. I don't like any of the tracks cursed by the phenomonom of 'indie brass' -usually a mate's out-of-tune school orchestra trumpet. Why bother?
To listen to the CD is to recall the backlash against C86, the rise of the 2-dimensional Velvets and Stooges pastiches that was Creation, and then the Beatles pastiches from Manchester followed by the flipover into baggy music and indie-dance. Leamington Spa recalls a fascinating and forgotten stage in indie music.
I still think the Hellfire Sermons song sounds different - there is a darker under-pinning, and the song and sounds are less straightforward and deriviative. But I would say that wouldn't I?
Andy - 25/08/04