18) The Black Watch – Sugarplum Fairy, Sugarplum Fairy
These guys have been kicking around forever. They’ve never really gotten the respect they deserve but over the course of their career have been fairly consistent when it comes to producing very good pseudo-noise pop with an 80’s British pop feel. Sugarplum Fairy, Sugarplum Fairy is no different and only serves to build upon their mythos. As if to prove the point that they don’t get the respect they deserve they don’t have one single video on YouTube!
14) Eureka California – Crunch
Happy Happy Birthday To Me never let you down. They’ve released so many seminal indie pop and indie rock records it’s hard to keep track of. Crunch is yet another one in their catalog. Crunch is classic indie rock in that Merge records kind of way. It’s noisy, shambolic and seemingly held together by duct tape but the band create melodies out of all that and make it a fun, white knuckle ride through a set of guitar strings and broken pedals. Not sure if they’re named after the earthquake that happened years ago (Google it) but it would kind of make sense if they were…
2) The Primitives – Spin O Rama
This was perhaps the biggest surprise of 2014. Having been a fan of this band since 1992 (and collecting every single and album in every format imaginable) it gave me goosebumps when I actually got hold of Spin O Rama. What’s truly amazing about this album is that they’ve somehow managed to sound exactly the way they did from 86 – 92. Tracy Tracy sounds adorable as ever and the band sound as if they haven’t left the flowers they wen’t through in the mid-80’s. Spin O Rama is a masterwork of fizzy indie pop that serves as a reminder that you can teach old dogs new tricks.
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