If for some reason in 1986 you had heard the legendary C86 mix tape then been knocked into a twenty-three-year coma, your family would look and sound different but all the bands you hear sound exactly like the tape you had in 1986.
That’s a rather convoluted way of saying that this year has seen a resurgence in shoegaze/twee ‘indiepop’ and following 1994’s first effort the nice folks at Rough Trade have compiled another mixture of jangle pop comprising of the scene’s forefathers and current young bucks.
Made with the sort of supreme eye for detail John Cusack in High Fidelity would be proud of, this twenty-five track album is shorter than its predecessor due to “the economy and current climate” but its brevity is actually a major plus. With no time to dwell or indulge, this is a solid gold collection of hits that will no doubt turn people onto many great bands they simply don’t know they love yet. Kicking off with Tullycraft’s ‘The Punks Are Writing Love Songs’ is an inspired choice and sets the distorted and aggressive tone of the mix nicely.
By ‘aggressive’ read ‘a bit narked’, as a band like Los Campesinos! don’t really do angry very convincingly; they do, however, do eloquent and erudite very well, which ‘You Say Party! We Say Die!’ goes to show. Elsewhere great new bands like Girls, Vivian Girls and Dum Dum Girls show that beyond name similarities they also share a sense of scruffy punk spirit teamed with a keen ear for melody. Manhattan Love Suicides make for some nice nostalgia but ‘Indiepop09’ shows that the genre is more exciting in the present than the past.
8/10
Words by David Renshaw
