Great Underrated Bands #2

Inspired by Marilyn’s recent article on the same theme I thought I’d have a go in the hope that this might become a regular feature on AFIN. It’s a difficult question… there’s so much music and so many obscure artists that one might like to mention for sake of namedropping them but, in all honestly, their minor cult status is perhaps ultimately proportionate to their contribution to pop music. Then there are very well known and popular acts that are perhaps ‘misunderstood’. And overrated bands? Don’t even get me started… Anyway, here are eight more that, if you’re not already an avid fan, you might like to check out.

Brett Smiley

I would have included Jobriath here, the genuinely gay glam rocker who never quite achieved the highs that were hoped for him and who sadly died in the 80s. However Morrissey has already done a great deal to resurrect his legacy. For glam fans though Brett Smiley is, in sense, the next Jobriath. A camp glam wannabe that never was. Only a teenager when he was pushed into the limelight, Smiley was another of Andrew Loog Oldham’s many follies after the Stones (a list that also includes Billy Nicholls and Vashti Bunyan – the latter now relinquished from obscurity by a mobile phone ad), this time trying to cash in on the glam thing. But Brett is so camp, so fey and, unlike most glam rockers, genuinely pretty that maybe he was ahead of his time. I can’t help thinking that maybe he would have fared better in the New Romantic era…. To get a full sense of what I’m talking about you have to see his British television debut on the Russel Harty Show. Anyway, his reissued album Breathlessly Brett whilst not consistently astounding does contain some excellent songs if you like that kind of trampy, campy, overblown glam and his vocal style is always unique. Fact fans may like to note that, after commercial failure in the pop world, Brett played a cameo in the film American Gigolo. Also note Johnny Thunders sounds just like him on his brilliant 1984 album Hurt Me.

Philamore Lincoln
Driving through the English countryside late on a warm summers night with the radio on full, tired but in a slightly dream like state, the most breathtaking piece of orchestrated psyche transported me still further into the warm majesty of the night. This, the announcer told me, was ‘The North Wind Blew South’ by Headless Heroes. Needless to say I had to find this music which was, I discovered, an excellent album of covers called The Silence of Love which is well worth checking out. The song in question, it transpired, was by an obscure psyche singer/songwriter/arranger with the amazing name of Philamore Lincoln. When I was finally able to track down the original, I realised that the Copeland-esque string section like a janty psychedelic barn dance, the harmonies, the atmosphere – are all there in the original. I then managed to get hold of his one and only album The North Wind Blew South (1970) and his brand of gentle breathy psyche, dreamy but not at all ‘druggy’, very much appealed to me. The album also contains the track Temma Harbour which I had known and loved for a long time as a Mary Hopkin song, not realising it was one of his (kind of assumed Paul McCartney had written it!). Incidentally the CD is pretty much unavailable (in the UK) so I’m hoping for a reissue at some stage.

Urusei Yatsura Some of that 90s indie rock is now seeming so old it has a kind of retro feel already. Urusei Yatsura were a Scottish indie band extant from 1993 – 2001 and (rather inaccessibly) named after a Manga series roughly translating as ‘Those Obnoxious Aliens'. Maybe they weren’t the most original, I can't help feeling that Pixies must have been a massive influence, but they did rock and, if nothing else, their biggest (and best) single “Hello Tiger” has all the elements of great indie power pop song that the whole family can enjoy.

Duncan Browne
Probably already adored by many a middle aged folky hippie type (but who cares about them anyway, right kids !?) Duncan Browne, and in particular his 1968 album Give Me, Take You possibly deserves some reappraisal outside the hippie sphere because it has a number of unique qualities. The songs are, on the one hand, folky and acoustic but they also contain ambitious orchestrations, harmonies and multi-tracking that are rather ahead of their time. It brings with it shades of the ‘baroque psyche’ sound, but it doesn’t belong to that category either. The song structures are very innovative and un-formulaic, at times almost more in the chanson tradition rather than the British folk revival. His lyrics, unusually for the time perhaps, explore introspective themes, personal relationships and childhood memories. It's of its time, but also timeless.

Nirvana
No no, not that silly Cobain nonsense, the other Nirvana who never quite made the big-time in swinging London in the late sixties. Okay they are already adored by psych-enthusiasts but I do believe their appeal could be wider as, to my ears, their first two albums The Story of Simon Simopath (1967) and All of Us (1968) secure their reputation as more than ‘just another obscure psyche band’. First of all the whole set up is strange. Two slightly shy guys, one Irish and one Greek, with no proper band… they don’t fit the usual sixties story of art college drop-outs and, perhaps because of this, their music seems to come from ‘another place’ - and all beautifully condensed into short and fulsome pop songs, each a self-contained epic. I cannot say enough how highly I regard songs like Satellite Jockey, Pentecost Hotel, Tiny Goddess, The Touchables (written as a theme for a swinging UK film – check out opening credits here), In The Courtyard of the Stars and, possibly their best known song, Rainbow Chaser. After being dropped by Island they did another album Black Flower (aka To Markos III) that didn’t receive a full release at the time. It has its moments (and familiar moments for DJ Shadow fans) but I think, to be honest, their heyday had passed. Like other bands that were ‘good in the sixties’ like The Who and The Kinks they continued through the 70s but no one took any notice. The timeless genius of their early work however is something that I hope will continue to gain stature.

Yachts (aka The Yachts)
Liverpool based New Wave group who rose up on the swell of punk before crashing on the rocks of obscurity. It’s difficult to determine whether they belong to a punk, pub rock or power pop tradition and possibly it doesn’t matter. Whilst I’m not suggesting that Yachts should have been massive, I truly believe a great many more people could enjoy their unique brand of maritime pop, especially the stand-out singles “Suffice to Say” and, my personal favourite, “Yachting Type”. In terms of the basic sound I think of them as a kind of less unpleasant version of the Stranglers. Band member Henry Priestman went on to navigate his way to chart success in the 80s with The Christians.

Help She Can’t Swim
A particular kind of art-school hipster punk which I would perhaps ordinarily consider annoyingly vacuous and pretentious. In the case of HSCS however I get a real sense of disenchantment and rage – although I do find myself occassionally reminded of the Sonic Youth album Sister. There also some nice pop interludes, some killer riffs and the loud screamy bits are perfect for blowing the cobbles out of your hair. They disbanded last year apparently. If nothing else I would urge you to check out the track Hospital Drama - a power pop treasure from beginning to end.

China Crisis
I love the band Japan. I love them and have loved them for quite a long time now. No one else really liked them when I started liking them, except perhaps those who’d liked them first time around. Now I’m delighted (and a little bit smug and vindicated) that their reputation has been elevated to the status it deserves and hence they do not need to be mentioned in this article (but you just have mentioned them!?). So do China Crisis deserve the same reappraisal as Japan? Not sure, but nonetheless underrated they are, particularly their first two albums Difficult Shapes and Passive Rhythms, Some People Think It’s Fun To Entertain (1982) and Working With Fire and Steel - Possible Pop Songs Volume Two (1983) – if only for the titles alone. For ages they were seen as epitome of everything that was awful and pretentious about 80s pop music, but given that nearly every facet of what made pretentious eighties music ‘awful’ is now en-vogue once more surely the uptight soul, the mechanistic funk and general political-and-yet-also-not-political façade and the pseudo world-music of China Crisis would appeal more than ever? Back handed compliments aside however, I really do love them. The music is genuinely uplifting and they can also do hauntingly melancholy in the case of the stand-out song “Here Comes a Raincloud” which is one of the most heart meltingly sad-yet-redemptive songs that I know of.