THE ICARUS LINE – Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers, Penance Soiree (2004)

(Pretty) young, (very) sad, (extremely) high, and (ridiculously) self-mythologizing, the LINE have 'the right idea' like no-one else in rock'n'roll right now, and stroll the heights in June 2004 as a result of nothing more than having appropriate interests (sex, death, Psychocandy, Fun House, THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, liking Jason Pierce, hating everyone else) and playing too-loud too-messy guitars while a stringy-haired skinny guy screams about taking off one's clothes and being God. Recent reports have Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and a disembodied Anton LaVey blinking and scratching their heads, cursing the fact that they didn't ask for more when they made their deals with the Devil. As for you, your summer is made: draw the curtains, cue this on endless repeat, and awake on the first of September with crumpled party-hat in hand and strange juices coating your bedroom walls...

THE CHURCH – Under The Milky Way, Starfish (1988)

Alternatively, open said curtains at night and inhale this narcotic wisp of hummable despair which—one imagines—would sound especially delicious lying open to the sky in an empty field off an unlit highway, t-shirt painted to one's chest with spit and gin and the sweat of a vacant-eyed, long-haired doll—curled into the crook of one's arm, jammed pulsing against pockets fat with dye-stained cash and lawmen's wallets. One imagines.

THE BOYS NEXT DOOR – Shivers, Door, Door (1979)

...And you shall know your bedroom by the trail of stars seeming to traverse its high-vaulted dimensions, Rowland S. Howard's cavern-bred guitar anthemics tonguing Nick's boyhood wail toward a back-arching chorus bigger than Jesus' sweat-beads. Yea, let there be light and THE BIRTHDAY PARTY and another round of Singapore Slings...

SLOWDIVE – Alison, Souvlaki (1993)

You've been contemplating suicide, but it really doesn't suit your style: you'd rather fill your belly with 'the fire that fills and fuels emptiness' (you've been reading Baudelaire, naturally) and stare at the ceiling while envisioning the pigtailed girl who broke your heart on the monkey-bars when you were six. Relax—this isn't emo; she's now twenty-something, and looks like Grace Kelly, and reads Baudelaire, and is busy kissing and doing drugs with shy, contemplative boys like you. In Prague. (You're in Cleveland.) What's left, other than singing 'Alison, I'll drink your wine / I'll wear your clothes when we're both high' to the most beautiful melody this side of Rubber Soul, switching the lights back on, catching a sitcom and embarking upon dreamless sleep?

PALE SAINTS – A Thousand Stars Burst Open, In Ribbons (1992)

Okay, now we're getting literal. The COCTEAU TWINS obviously lost this song-title in a drinking-game with their 4AD labelmates (hell, I'm still jealous, 12 years later—I want it for one of my 'ethereal' [read: white-noise] four-track compositions), who managed to check into some strange and wonderful sonic hotel under it. The opening bars proffer a bid for Best Effect Ever—'Dude! The stars are bursting open! And they sound like guitars!—and the whole thing somehow moves from sing-songy cotton-wool to bluesy solo bluster while ensuring that you, the listener, are never allowed to touch ground. The whole album, in fact, is quietly transcendent: be thankful that after MY BLOODY VALENTINE's Loveless (1991), not all gauze-pop bands gave up and began studying carpentry or basket-weaving...

RIDE – Dreams Burn Down, Nowhere (1990)

Pre-Loveless—that is, when hope still existed that you could unprecedentedly touch the sublime with distorted guitars and smothered vocals—this Oxford quartet were visited by an enormous pepper-mill from the sky which intoned the opening drum-roll here and kicked all of their amplifiers into a region previously only occupied by migrating snow-geese caught in the engines of international passenger jets. The result, of course, was a thing of splendour, and every pale boy with cheekbones and a floppy fringe thought he was Jesus when he stomped on his Metal Zone pedal (some of us still do), and the vocal performance of the line 'She's effortlessly cool...' was so meta that it imploded upon itself in a fog of self-pity and warm lager and rainy skies, and ensured that nothing much in 2004 would sound any good.

MAZZY STAR – Fade Into You, So Tonight That I Might See (1993)

--'Dude, do you know what happens if you play 'Fade Into You' alongside 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door'?

--'Uh... no.

--'The chord progressions are identical. MAZZY just threw a new melody on top.'

--'Really?'

--'But it sounds like the best song you ever heard when you're alone in a dark room and shivering cold and kinda depressed about everything.'

--'Yeah? Awesome. [beat] What happens if you play 'Fade Into You' alongside THE WIZARD OF OZ?

--'Nothing.'

--'Oh.'

© Reuben Ham

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