1995

Belly - King
Throwing Muses - University
Moloko - Do You Like My Tight Sweater?
Stereolab - Music for the Amorphous Body Study Centre
Unun - Super Shiny Dreams

An all female vocalised year this one, I was going to list Pavement's Wowee Zowee, but that would have messed it up.
The Stereolab record's only a mini (but perfectly formed) album, recorded to go with some arty bloke's sculpture exhibition in New York. I never got to see it since I was a poor student and it was in New bloody York, but I guess it was the same idea as that V&A Shhh... thing from a couple of years ago, and I very much enjoyed that. Anyway, you don't need the amorphous bodies in front of you to appreciate the music, which I can only describe as pink & spongey.

I saw Unun at the BiC supporting Björk and I had to check twice that the pink be-mohicaned girl on stage wasn't Björk in disguise. The sound is quite sugarcubesy, partly the fault of the aforementioned björk-alike and partly because the guitarist is both a former Sugarcube and the former husband of Björk. The album is so mmmm I couldn't understand why it didn't get a proper release in this country. Good old fashioned Icelandic fun.

Moloko's debut is possibly the first concept album about a chat up line (do you like my tight sweater, see how it fits my body), well maybe the whole album's not about that, but it should be. It included a song from the point of view of the giant from 'Jack & the Beanstalk (or at least one of the many mythical giants from my childhood) and a tune about playing dominoes with a gang of nutty geriatrics & a cheeky monkey. Some of these things may not be true, but listen and dance around your mind anyway.

I came to Throwing Muses through hearing Belly on the radio back at Brock College, this is the first Muses album I bought at the time of release and is still my favourite.
Though it was slated at the time I always thought this Belly disc had a better flow than the first. Maybe there weren't so many individual standout songs, but the album as a whole held together better and had a cohesive sound that I appreciated.

You may be detecting a small 4AD bias at this point, a result of the fact that I was more than a little bedevilled by that particular record company at the time. Ah, the music-noise, the eye-design, the smell of fresh Bovril, it was all there.