During the mid-to-late 1980’s in the UK there were a bunch of bands playing intelligent, jangly, melodic pop music. A lot of so-called people found most of these bands (like the Loft, the Bodines, Close Lobsters) to be overly awkward, unpleasantly earnest or too pencil-necked to be pop musicians; all of those complaints are actually positives in my book. Possibly due to the UK music critics being the people who disliked them so much, most of these groups never got very popular (though the June Brides did hit the cover of the NME on what must have been a slow week) and most of them have been forgotten. Thanks to the occasional reissue and the magic of You Tube, we can rediscover some of the gawky, angular brilliance of late ’80s UK guitar pop…..

The June Brides

The Loft

The Bodines

The Servants

The Chesterf!elds

And simply because they’d rather drink motor oil than be lumped in with the rest of these groups, here’s a live television performance by Primal Scream. The song comes from their very pretty, very jangly 1987 album Sonic Flower Groove.