THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH -- Tonight I Fancy Myself, Choke (1990)

The missing link between THE SMITHS and BELLE & SEBASTIAN. Yes, that means that they sound like a mincing lounge band that parents can approve of from under the bedroom door and hymn their child's well-adjustedness to. It also means that the lyrics, upon close inspection, are the ravings of a sickened-unto-death misanthrope who will teach you to recognize that everything is, in fact, shit, but on the bright side are vodka and handjobs and the major scale. Why kill yourself, after all, when you can spend the decades becoming a progressively older, sadder bastard and never shut up about it to catchy tunes?

MORRISSEY -- I Have Forgiven Jesus, You Are The Quarry (2004)

In which The One With Perennially Perfect Hair abandons the hyper-literate sophistication of his SMITHS prime for everything-sucks playground jibes, lines such as 'life has killed me' and 'do you hate me?' being teamed with weeping-in-widescreen strings and the general production values of PULP's This Is Hardcore to produce a song that remains slightly ambiguous (Everything sucks, but what sucks more? Mortality? Morality? The fact that the person I want to bang doesn't want to bang me?) but definitively Ess Ay Dee and lush and, okay... pretty. Having unresolved issues with fundamentalist Christianity may contribute to instant anointing of the track as 'best song ever, ever, ever'; the rest of you should nonetheless enjoy the chord progression and hum along and make resolutions to wear more scarves and read more Proust and not get old and walk away from your brilliant band unless you produce something like this twenty years later.

THE BEACH BOYS -- You Still Believe In Me, Pet Sounds (1966)

Brian Wilson obviously grew up waiting by a record player—waiting for that half-second-long favourite bar in each song, the point at which the harmonies were sweetest, the licks catchiest. Eliminating that waiting time, cramming every second with as much sonic cheesecake as possible—shovelling the cream and the syrup and the dangerous comfort eating (and the booze taken up in rehab, and the pills taken up in rehab for that) so thick as to entirely obscure the plate—seems his cyclopean aim here. This excess is a good thing, of course, rock'n'roll being chiefly about drinking Bacchus under the table, scrawling on his face with lipstick and taking embarrassing polaroids. Still, I dismissed this album upon first listen, as if waving away a dessert-bearing butler without making eye contact and waking up later that night with a craving for cheap ice-cream. I rediscovered Pet Sounds only a few days ago, and already the abundance of loveliness almost seems too much— no, not like that knob in AMERICAN BEAUTY with his plastic bag; think of me as having more dignity. Not much more, but do what you can...

CRADLE OF FILTH -- The Forest Whispers My Name, The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh (1994)

THE DARKNESS would be cool if they wore ten times as much makeup, played everything ten times faster, referenced Baphomet and Artemis and read Swinburne and Baudelaire, took photos of blood and breasts and blood on breasts and made records to package them with, sang about black candles and black goddesses rising and demanding to be served breakfast in bed, and refused to wear funny hats. You see, CRADLE simply can't not be serious. To write lyrics about Satan and tits, to write said lyrics in iambic pentameter—then scream them, and scream them with rap MC vocal rhythms—over finger-tapped guitar and pipe organs and operatic divas and the 'sands through the hourglass...' guy—while wearing gigantic pentagrams and white-face—and sell millions of records... Somewhere in the centre of the earth, Dr. Faustus is pissed off. He almost asked for this, felt like a twat, and requested something else. Seriously: is this track not the essence of rock'n'roll? Ridiculousness taken seriously? Knowing that your decibels actually aren't audible from space, but refusing to acknowledge it?

THE MODERN LOVERS -- Roadrunner, The Modern Lovers (1976)

To be a rock icon you will need glue, scissors, cardboard, and:

1. Two chords.

1a. These don't have to be your own chords. Two of THE VELVET UNDERGROUND's will do.

2. A desire to drive around looking for chicks.

3. An aesthetic appreciation of asphalt and neon and how the road-trip is a metaphor for the human condition and... I dunno—read Kerouac when you can't find any chicks.

3a. Inevitably read a lot of Kerouac.

4. Express the above desire and appreciation while alternating between the above two chords.

5. Have part of your band's paragraph in an online column 28 years later bizarrely morph into an appeal for reader mail. Tell me what songs cheer you up, people.

© Reuben Ham

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