JANE WIEDLIN – Rush Hour, Fur (1988)

...recommended by Collin M.

I am now officially cheating on my beloved BELINDA CARLISLE with her band's former guitarist. This is possibly the girliest song in the history of girly songs and somehow, due to the ingenious intervals between the notes (a major second here, a minor third there) dictating its pop brilliance, more likely to incite air-guitar and jumping-around-bashing-into-things than MOTORHEAD. It's that good. This doll makes me want to be a rockstar more than anyone else at the moment...

BEULAH – Gene Autry, The Coast Is Never Clear (2001)

...recommended by Dylan G.

'Everybody drowns / Sad and lonely'. What's more, they do it to WILCO tunes! A crowd cheers and sings along. Someone plays a trumpet. Songs don't suck anymore. People get drunk and establish that they do, in fact, love each other, man. Then it ends, and Reuben realises that he only had three other tracks sent to him this week, and he really really doesn't want to have to start talking about MOGWAI and ELLIOTT SMITH again.

PAVEMENT – Zurich Is Stained, Slanted And Enchanted (1992)

...recommended by Guillermo S.

First Reaction: It's THE MAGNETIC FIELDS without the vocal melodies!

Second Reaction: Without the guitar melodies as well!

Sudden Thought: I'd better not trash this; I could lose readers.

Internal Dialogue: Dude, two weeks ago you dedicated your popcorn column to 19th century painting. What readers?

Third Reaction: I don't know. This is kinda growing on me. Maybe because I'm no longer expecting melodies.

Inner Monologue: 'What the hell? You give me one line? Write me a poem in heroic couplets!'

Fourth Reaction: They sound like they tried really hard to sound like they didn't try...

Fifth Reaction: Enough. Time for ale, audible vocals and guys who didn't know their guitars could be tuned, let alone tuned so that every string is F# because that's how Jean-Paul Sartre would've wanted it or some shit. Time for THE RASPBERRIES.

MORPHINE – In Spite Of Me, Cure For Pain (1993)

...recommended by Marc S.

Stop press: band famed for not using guitars use a guitar and are embarrassingly good. And not just 'a guitar'. A guitar played in an empty cathedral. Beneath a lake. That's frozen. The guy playing it has been sleeping on the front pew for weeks, chain-smoking and doing origami and drinking cheap gin because he spent all his money on LEONARD COHEN records before the lake froze, when he was still able to make his weekly run to the city for supplies (gin, cigarettes, easy-folding paper). So now he's strumming this song and it is quite wonderful and goddamn she must have been beautiful and cruel and all that and please send more gin and cigarettes. And one of those little fan-forced heaters.

FLESH FOR LULU – Postcards From Paradise, (1987)

...recommended by Timothy Y.

These guys sound like a NEW ORDER who gave up, let themselves go, began playing pub-rock, and actually managed to convince everyone that this was a good idea. Allmusic.com bizarrely trumpets their 'gloomy Gothic sound'-- this is apparently code for 'exuberant, dangerously teenage pleasure-pop; oh, and they, like, dress all in black'. This is the soundtrack to a roadtrip with all the fatalistic promise of debauchery and inferno and staying up late and not eating properly, but which plays out as nothing more than a cardigan-foiled fumble in a too-clean motel room followed by a solitary beer beneath parking-lot flood lights. Are you with me? As you brood, 'Postcards From Paradise' becomes audible from a nearby fourth-floor balcony upon which people are dancing and laughing and enjoying life like you never could; and, oh--the wistfulness in that frontman's voice... He understands. One day you'll take this same trip, and FLESH FOR LULU will be on the car stereo, or perhaps the MARY CHAIN, because you'll be wiser and colder and not averse to a little distortion now and then, and this beer will taste better, and people will no longer wear cardigans...

Yes, it's arena-pop. And it's every bit as glorious as Finnegans Wake or the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

© Reuben Ham

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