Melody Maker Albums of the Year 1988

Oh god Scritti or PE can't decide

Oh and the only non-Birthday Party Nick Cave album I can wholeheartedly get behind.

8. All About Eve - All About Eve = loling my knackers off

Never understood how all about ever made it, either at the time or in retrospect. I knew people who absolutely loved them! There was NOTHING THERE!

Melody Maker = Goth fanzine, is why

Still, they were good on Top of the Pops that one time

I ought to vote Butthole Surfers really if people are gonna be all gothtarded about this

Also if Bug was a single it might be in with a shout

Maybe it's just cacky nostalgia but 1988 indie makes 2008 indie look like dogshite

(xpost)I suppose?! I never understood the goth thing with them, I mean they weren't actually tr00 gothick, really, were they? If I'd been a goth, I'd have hated them for selling out and not using enough flanger on the guitars or something.

Maybe it's just cacky nostalgia but 1988 indie makes 2008 indie look like dogshite

I don't think it it cacky nostalgia. indie '08 does seem to stay within v v narrow boundaries.

I guess AAE were the proto-Evanescence or something really. Yeah they wasn't Gothick, but they were definitely Celine Dion for your goth girlfriend.

Seriously there's like at least 15 albums here that are deathless.

I think it's cool that All About Eve covered a Mellow Candle song FUCKING HIPPIES!

I never understood the goth thing with them

I think that singing on that Mission record semented the goth affiliation.

Thin White Rope are another of the many bands on this list that deserve to win way more than the inevitably My Bloody Valentine bollocksy landslide.

Oops, sement? x-post

They covered a Trees song as well, didn't they? "Garden of Jayne Trelawney", I think. I kind of want to like them, just to be contrary, but the couple of tracks I just played on Youtube, the only memorable thing is the duff lyrics. Julianne Regan's britpop band (yes, I KNOW) "Mice" had a decent single that I still play, but the album was weak.

She would've had a decent voice to do folk-rock, but the rest of AAE were MOR hacks of the most cackhanded kind.

Obviously I'm hoping the mode lurker vote is for the ILM-acclaimed critically-lauded utterly-unprecedented "most daring album ever", but maybe that's too much to ask for.

(xpost) yeah, all these tracks sound like folksy test card music with someone doing vocal warm-up exercises over them! NO TUNES. NO GROOVE EITHER.

Oh yeah, Trees! See, I want to like them in hindsight too, but it's like trying to get stiff with a porn mag you've found in a pond.

They remind me of, ergh, what's that crappy sub-fleetwood mac neoprog band that classic rock used to prop all the time...er...

mostly autumn! Terrible.

Also the twatting Wonder Stuff placed above Nation of Millions, 1988 indie already proudly marching towards the apartheid years.

Another thing that used to amaze me! All the props that band got! They were total shit! "Miles Hunt, the great songwriter of our time" How come I can't remember a single one of their tunes then? And I can remember a couple of Skinny Puppy's "tunes" (cough) quite well?

I thought I just remembered a Wonder Stuff tune but it was a Kingmaker one.

Miles Hunt was yr OG racist indie cockwad, eh?

I don't recall the racist bit, what I mainly remember was the weird passive-aggressive thing he had about running their single videos down and suchlike. The album title was laughable - "8-legged 'groove' machine" - "Groove" lololololoool they were surely the unfunkiest, most rythmically plodding band EVER

Well I was stretching racist to include seething condemnation of any music remotely connected with black influences ever so yes.

i.e. 'Who Wants To Be The Disco King?'?

This is the dude who also "ironically" called for the execution of Rick Astley for making records that people actually liked.

Aside from the Mission thing, a lot of the AAE goth tag came from the first single on 4AD when Julianne still worked for ZigZag, and was a total Xymox pastiche.

Also, dressing up like Goths.

Didn't they have some dood that looked like Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen on guitar?

If I hadn't smothered my inner 7-year old with a pillow, I'd have married up the Butthole Surfers' tracks with the top ten.

Cocteau Twins would get this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Butthole_Hairway_6.jpg

Pixies would get this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Butthole_Hairway_1.jpg

Bollocks, didn't work, but Gibby Haines was sooo OTM.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7f/Butthole_Hairway_1.jpg

Hooray!

Aside from the Mission thing, a lot of the AAE goth tag came from the first single on 4AD when Julianne still worked for ZigZag, and was a total Xymox pastiche.

AAE were never signed to 4AD - isn't the story that Ivo rejected Regan's demo but put her in touch with Manuella of Xmal? I owned that first album. I think I bought it the same day as Blue Bell Knoll. Oh dear.

(A couple of years ago I was on a train behind a couple of 40-something geezers - they were raving about some recent AAE acoustic show and how it was a crying shame they didn't have a recording contract anymore when "the charts is full of all this monkey music"). :/

Maybe they meant the arctic monkeys, eh. (ok maybe i'm being over-charitable here)

xpost woah

The Waterboys always reminded me of a deer taking a dump, yes

it's gotta be miss america. shit, that's twenty years ago. i remember the day i bought that album like yesterday.

Hmm, I was convinced D For Desire came out on 4AD. Maybe the Vaughan Oliver sleeve fooled me.

GUESS WHAT I VOTED FOR.

Isn't Anything and Surfer Rosa and ITANOMTHUB bringing up the rear.

^^^voice of reason

I prefer the other AR Kane album.

Would I like AR Kane?

I only managed to listen to Daydream Nation once, and didn't like it much, which is odd, as I like the one with 100% on and love the last three.

Um, quite possibly, yes.

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/on_second_thought/ar-kane-i.htm

groovy