Retroactive : 1985

1985 : The Year in Music

Every decade is entitled one year to write off as a total tax loss, a creative pause to leave the fields of musical inventiveness fallow for twelve months as the rot sets in and things generally begin to suck. 1985 saw pop relegated to the sidelines after the lascivious highs and lows of the previous year which were tackled head on by the PMRC, a coven of Washington wives led by Tipper Gore who appointed themselves as moral guardians of popular music and saw to it that much of the year was swallowed up by a largely pointless debate on the corrosive influence of chart music that ultimately saw numerous undeserving records stickered with 'Explicit Lyrics' warnings resulting in many middle-American chain stores simply refusing to stock them. Pop cleaned itself up to avoid further disturbance and the youthful exuberance of the early 80s chart sensations gave way to more mature, tempered efforts that seemed to be aimed at the parents more than the kids : mothers jacked up on hairspray and shoulderpads went wild for #1 hits like Elaine Paige's 'I know him so well', Phyllis Nelson's 'Move Closer' and Jennifer Rush's 'The Power of Love' (the year's best-seller in the UK) whilst dads could cream over Clarkson-endorsed service station rock LPs from the likes of Dire Straits and Simple Minds along with era-defining radio hits like Don Henley's 'The Boys of Summer' and The Carrs' 'Drive' (Radio 1's radical overhaul in the early 90s prompted by the realisation that their listeners were all the wrong side of 30 may have its roots right here). Elsewhere gacky soul pop from bands like Simply Red, Sade and Level 42 filled radio playlists alongside weak-wristed forays into world music from fly-by-nighters like Go West, Mister Mister and Red Box. Stateside fans went equally wild for the garish likes of 60s Yuppie convers Starship and Patrick Bateman favourites Huey Lewis and the News whilst a fresh-faced poppet named Whitney Houston began laying down the blueprint for the persil-washed melisma soul pop that would dominate charts for years to come. Even rock become all grown-up and socially conscious with the Live Aid gig roping together what now seems like a somewhat conservative line-up of platinum-plated rockers whilst the Band Aid inspired 'We are the World' single proved the Yanks could put in an even more nauseating turn in the name of charity. There were glimmers of hope though - pop struggled through with only the likes of A-ha and the Pet Shop Boys to inject new energy whilst Stock Aitken and Waterman notched their first mega-hit with Dead or Alive's inescapable 'You spin me round like a record'. The Aussies weighed in with sweaty vest warblers like John Farnham and Jimmy Barnes notching massive hits and the Yanks provided pink lipstick and billowing sleeves romantic pop from glam rockers like Heart to sweeten the pill slightly but the best moments in the singles charts came from folked-up fantasists like The Waterboys, Dream Academy, The Pogues and a resurgent Kate Bush, all of whom succeeded in weaving a bit of much-needed magic into an increasingly turgid music scene. The mojo would return the following year so let's perceive 1985 as somewhat of a stopgap and enjoy what gems remain from a fairly underwhelming musical harvest.

(Check out my bitchin' Spotify playlist for the official soundtrack to 1985!)

Albums of the Year

1. Kate Bush - Hounds of Love

Have you heard (insert name of next big thing) yet? They're so hot right now! Their music is great, it's totally unique but at the same time really catchy, but the best thing about them is that they became successful, like, totally on their own terms and stuff. No compromise! You should totally check them out blah blah blah.....Dear reader, does any of that sound overly familiar? We've all been guilty of tossing around terms like 'unprecedented', 'unique' and 'one of a kind' when describing artists we like but let's keep them reserved for those who truly deserve them, folks who've turned up out of nowhere with a gateway into their private universe and gone on to totally change the musical playing field around them. Led Zeppelin. Elvis. Pink Floyd. Prince. Kate Bush. She's up there with the greats because there's nobody else like her, a creative force so beguiling that aspiring imitators wouldn't even know where to look for a foothold. Lightning struck when she was plucked from obscurity by Floyd's Dave Gilmour in the mid 70s and went on to drop possibly the best début single ever in the shape of 'Wuthering Heights' in '78 which kickstarted a spell of success that would keep her in the limelight until '82 when the commercial misfire of the underrated 'The Dreaming' LP prompted the first of many retreats into the shadows as she morphed into her next creative form. The wide eyed wicca nymph that disappeared from view at that point would return as a more poised, elegant lady for 1985's 'Hounds of Love' - the princess was no more, this time we were dealing with the Queen. The yowling eccentricities of her earlier work hadn't been consigned to the past along with her look but rather channelled into a more composed, slow release form that proved just as compelling and commercially viable - indeed, as the market had evolved from the rapid creative turnover of the early 80s to the more stable 'Brothers in Arms' era of long term sales returns, 'Hounds' proved to be her most established hit and prompted a career retrospective the following year before she settled into a slower, steadier release schedule that would encompass equally solid follow-ups in 1989's 'The Sensual World' and 1993's 'The Red Shoes' before she disappeared again to raise her kid. Since then she's bided her time between records, dropping 2005's engrossing twinset 'Aerial' before staying peripheral until last year when she released one record of reheated classics and another of trippy new stuff - wherever you parachute into her career you'll find music made by a lady who lets the rest of the world set their watch by her rather than the other way round. 

All her stuff is great and well worth soaking up at your own pace but my personal fave has always been 'Hounds of Love' and it's perhaps the record of hers that gelled most successfully with the prevailing musical trends of the times, chiming in with the echoic production and dry ice mystery of mid 80s pop music. The brazen synth fuelled chart electro of the early 80s was by now dead and buried and pop progressed into music suited for wider spaces and more elaborate ideas. Whilst the viril, studious likes of Dire Straits, Simple Minds and Bruce Springsteen satisfied period appetite for epic stadium anthems, 'Hounds' occupied a creative hinterland far away from sweaty arenas (Bush only toured once and that was in the late 70s) where imagination and atmosphere were as important as hit singles. The first half of the album features a five song set encompassing some of her better known tunes; ghostly opener 'Running up that hill', the slow-building magic of 'Cloudbursting' and the thunderous title track, all radio staples that would help the album go shoulder to shoulder with Springsteen and co on both sides of the Atlantic. But that's only half the story - keep listening and the remainder of the record unravels a multi-track story piece mixing Arthurian legend and dreamy mysticism, kinda like Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' transported to Middle Earth. It should suck and anyone else would have surely turned such a premise into a cackhanded shambles but Bush rises above it all to draw the listener in and accompany them through a complex dreamscape in the same way David Lynch does in his films, drifting through layers of bliss, panic and isolation before closing track 'The Morning Fog' soundtracks your emergence from the dream and the journey finally ends. Having run into all this from the hit-straddled first half you're greeted with a series of WTF moments before it all starts to fade into focus but repeated listens make this sequence perhaps even more rewarding that the more accessible earlier segment, and the fact that Bush effectively succeeds in doing both on the same record only goes to show how far ahead of the pack she's always been. If her earlier albums had provided the inspiration for generations of female performers, 'Hounds' casts the net even wider and has proved a massive influence on genres stretching from goth, indie, folk and even the murkier subgenres of metal where corpsepainted Norwegians are often known to cite her as an inspiration. Add to that the various cover versions of tracks on here from bands across the musical spectrum (Utah Saints' re-appropriation of 'Cloudbursting' for 'Something Good', the Futureheads' mid noughties run through the title track and even The Prodigy's sample from 'Hello Earth' on their first album) and you can see how far and wide the spell cast on here has spread. The understated promo campaign of this album may explain why it's not regarded as an 80s staple in the same way as 'Thriller' or 'Purple Rain' but don't let that fool you - there's no need to trumpet this record's virtues to get people interested, they'll come in their own time and will most likely fall in love with what they find when they get there. If you've not travelled through the universe of Kate Bush before then I envy you the journey - start here and call me when you're done. Take your time.

Check out : 'And dream of sheep', the spellbinding entrance to the Ninth wave. 

2. The Jesus and Mary Chain - Psychocandy

British indie was enjoying a fairly robust period of success in the mid 1980s, albeit one often restricted to critical circles in the music press and underground radio. Acts like The Smiths, and Echo and the Bunnymen had broken into the top ten but still remained bands more synonymous with drinking tea in provincial bedrooms rather than going out and conquering the world. There was definitely room for a bit of cocksure swagger and confrontational rock 'n' roll, the likes of which hadn't been seen since the advent of punk the best part of a decade earlier and it eventually came not with the arrival of one band but with the founding of a record label that provided the springboard for countless British guitar bands to break into the mainstream over the next decade. The label was Creation Records, run by Alan McGee, a Scot who had relocated to London in order to indulge his passion for punk and subversive rock 'n' roll and ended up founding a record label to promote the bands he felt shared his passion for the R'n'R looks and lifestyle - the first group that fit the mould were fellow Caledonians The Jesus and Mary Chain who broke big with their raucous début 'Psychocandy' in 1985 and set the scene for the next ten years of freakish R'n'R success stories on the label including The House of Love, Primal Scream, Ride, Swervedriver, Teenage Fanclub and finally a little known band from Manchester fronted by the Gallagher brothers. The Mary Chain's musical legacy would feed into the output of many of those bands but it was their grouchy nonchalance and provocative public appearances that defined them as the classic Creation band, surpassing even Oasis in their ability to capture people's attention with their intoxicating music whilst refusing to jump through any media hoops and winding up the press and their own audiences to create a dark, dangerous mystique around their abrasive take on classic pop and R'n'R. 

'Psychocandy' nails their signature sound in the record's title, a mixture of the sweet-tooth charm of classic pop music and imagery coupled with the menacing swirl of feedback and deadpan vocal delivery that characterised their songwriting style. The band revered Phil Spector-produced 60s pop and classic surf music but brought their own venom and introversion into the mix to make the populist more personal - a gaggle of misfits from the grey backwater of East Kilbride, they weren't about to act like they'd grown up with flowers in their hair and the candy-coated Ronettes-style pop they drew on was channelled through a wall of acerbic guitar fuzz and despondent vocal echo to satisfy both the melodic thrill of a pop record and the electric rock buzz of a guitar track. You felt like the Mary Chain could happily churn out top 40 chart records to rival the likes of Stock Aitken Waterman if they could be arsed but instead they stuck to their guns and brutalised the pop format to within an inch of its life and eventually breached the top ten on several occasions with their own venomous take on the formula. 'Psychocandy' is best appreciated in this context, as a new take on pop music rather than as a rock critic's wet dream - the band could churn out hits in their sleep and the record boasts several of their more memorable tracks in the feedback-soaked pop lunge of 'You trip me up', the dreamlike swirl of opener 'Just like Honey' and the rampaging warped take on surf music of 'Never Understand'. The latter track is perhaps their best song, essentially Jan and Dean's 'Surf City' soaked in toxic waste and repackaged as a sun-warped tale of alienation and frustration best embodied in the drawn out primal scream that closes the track over a wall of deafening feedback. The band balance out the rough with the smooth, laying out mellow swathes of laidback guitar pop on 'Sowing Seeds' and 'Cut Dead', the latter fading into the squalling bloodrush of 'In a hole' to kick things back up several notches and prevent anyone from drifting off into too comfortable a place (as I found out when I put the album on prior to a mid-afternoon snooze). The breezy surf rush of 'Taste of Cindy' would be laid bare as a perfect pop gem when they stripped it back to an acoustic version on B-sides comp 'Barbed Wire Kisses' a few years later and the dour Joy Division-esque sign off of closer 'It's so hard' acts as a reminder of the dark, foreboding headspace that they came from. The Mary Chain would win plaudits a plenty for the album and bag themselves a string of hits starting with non-album single 'Some Candy Talking' the following year whilst their labelmates Ride and My Bloody Valentine scored independent success with their own takes on the Mary Chain's fuzz pop. Drummer Bobby Gillespie would leave after the album's release to found Primal Scream and the Reid brothers would pilot the group through various phases of success before finally laying it to rest in the late 1990s, their final album perhaps significantly ranking as one of Creation's last releases before the label folded at the turn of the millennium. The legacy of both the band and their parent label is well-documented in the documentary 'Upside Down' (itself named after the Mary Chain's début single) which is well worth checking out as an introduction to loads of great bands that will feature on my yearly lists as part of this series so go take a look if you've not already seen it. 'Psychocandy' is the ideal introduction into that fascinating universe and still sounds great - if you've never had the pleasure then crank this one up loud and drink in the sweet rush of volume, lust and mystery than runs through every track. You'll be back for more. 

Check out : 'Never Understand', encapsulating alienation better than a planet full of emo bands ever could.

3. The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy and the Lash

Shane Magowan's decision to blend traditional Irish music with the modern punk of the mid 1980s was celebrated as a stroke of musical genius in some quarters but the man himself has always been keen to downplay his creation, often stating that he was surprised nobody else has thought of it before him. The cocktail isn't exactly rocket science in any case - both genres are widely appreciated and instantly accessible and have the added quality of sounding better the more you drink so it's little surprise that the Pogues went on to become such a well-loved institution over the years. Their clattering début 'Red Roses for me' landed in 1984 to much acclaim, mixing revisited folk classics with modern tales of drunken rampages but it was their follow-up 'Rum, Sodomy and the Lash' that cemented them as a force to be reckoned with - less scattershot than its predecessor, the record struck a perfect balance between rabble-ready folk punk and plaintive romantic ballads with Magowan's alehouse poetry fitting nicely alongside a well-chosen cluster of covers. The band's accidental role as the inspiration for numerous Celtic punk bands pedalling a tired stereotype-reinforcing brand of red-faced Oirish folk rock doesn't do them justice - the Pogues' repertoire was a lot wider than that of a St Patrick's Day house band, their material blended the raucous dynamics of 80s punk with Magowan's flair for poetry and storytelling which allowed them to explore romance and history alongside their ramshackle hymns to boozing and brawling. Their frontman's cult status as a defiant stance against the institutions of dentistry and sobriety is admired by many but Magowan deserves credit as one of music's great romantics, soaking up the amorous failings and refuge in history typical of your average barfly and translating them into heartbreakingly coherent form over music that wasn't too savage to drown out the tender wit and starry-eyed desire of his lyrics. When they tapped into the hopeless romantic in all of us over music that suited the six beers deep frenzied energy of a punk gig, the Pogues were pretty much unbeatable. 

Rampaging opener 'The sickbed of Cuchulainn' fires off every weapon in the band's arsenal over three minutes of relentless folked-up mayhem but they temper their assault from there on in, allowing slow boil storytelling to come to the forefront on Magowan's tragicomic tale of a rent boy's descent into ruin on 'The old main drag' and the hopeless romance of end of the night gem 'A pair of brown eyes'. Elsewhere history acts as the main subject matter : 'Navigator' pays tribute to the Irish workers who forged the railways of Britain, 'Dirty Old Town' pitches tender scenes of romance against a backdrop of industrial England and closer 'The band played Waltzing Matilda' unfolds slowly over eight minutes as an epic monument to the futility of war. The band aren't averse to a spot of punk humour either, drafting in sole female member Cait O'Riordan to sing trad staple 'I'm a man you don't meet every day' and mixing in screeching Widow Twankee vocals on their run through 'A Gentleman Soldier'. And when they decide to crank up the pace they don't fuck around - 'Billy's Bones' stampedes through two minutes of frantic folk punk whilst live favourite 'Sally MacLennane' acts as the perfect foot-stomping call-and-response show closer. The band strike the balance nicely : half their own material, half revisits of folk tunes or covers of songs by like-minded artists and a mix of influences from the emerald Isle as well as Australia, America and their period backdrop of urban Britain. 'Rum...' doesn't deserve to be dismissed as the aural equivalent of green beer and leprechaun hats, there's a lot more to love on this album than you might expect when confronted with the legions of cod-Irish chumps who've culturally adopted the Pogues since its release and it remains their most finely crafted set to this day. Shane Magowan's teeth and liver may not enjoy a particular long lifespan but you can count on this album surviving them to remain a perennial favourite.

Check out : 'The old main drag', an endearing honest depiction of blowing dick for a living.

4. Tom Waits - Rain Dogs

The music world needs its troubadours, those whose role it is to tell stories rather than just pen catchy tunes and sell records. Pop music isn't necessarily incompatible with such traditions but it does tend to present tighter parameters to work within than the more cinematic realms of modern folk, a genre that was very much in vogue in 1985 as the increasingly synthetic, inoffensive material padding out the singles charts drained media interest in mainstream pop and prompted many less likely hitmakers to emerge from the deeper waters. The likes of Shane Magowan and Nick Cave rose forth from the ashes of punk to draw inspiration from history and literature to fashion new, more substantial slabs of dive bar folk rock and dark-hued storytelling but both would freely admit that they were riding Tom Waits' coattails at the time - he had after all benefited from a ten-year headstart and was in the middle of crafting a three-album triptych that many regard as his finest hour when 'Rain Dogs' dropped by in '85. It didn't yield any hit singles or get his music on the radio but the rising tide of folk in the charts opened it up a path to critical acclaim and NME bestowed their coveted 'Album of the Year' award upon it as many listeners found a level of human drama on it that made most period pop records sound threadbare and pointless by comparison. Waits has retained that same appeal for generations of new fans since then in the same way that Johnny Cash did when he re-emerged in the 1990s, taking up pride of place in the record collections of people who look down their noses and rock 'n' roll whilst still crossing over to fans of punk, metal and alternative rock in their droves. His material has been covered by everyone from the Eagles to the Ramones and he's notched several huge critical successes over the years including a couple of well-deserved Grammies but has never lost the underground appeal that suggests he'd be happiest playing his music in a smoky nightclub to a crowd of drunken deadbeats, blissfully oblivious to the fact that platinum-plated rock stars are netting massive radio hits with covers of his material.

'Rain Dogs' works best as a journey through the fascinatingly grotty world of the mid 80s New York that provides its backdrop - apparently he wrote the whole thing over two weeks in a basement room in some shitty bit of NYC which somehow seems strangely appropriate. There's something about this record that makes it sound like it's piping out from the sewer, the soundtrack to stuff happening in the middle of the night in a city where there's still plenty going on in the wee small hours. Marimbas tinkle across the songs like skeletons dancing in the drains, discordant guitars twang like a drunk stumbling up the stairs and percussive thuds and clunks litter the record like the remnants of an argument several rooms away. And across the top of it all there's Waits' distinctive voice, sometimes a barely audible croak, sometimes a sinister spoken-word narrative and on occasions the booze-soaked foundations of a truly stunning rock vocal. He slips into the scratchy saloon-bar growl of a wizened country singer of 'Gun Street Girl' and 'Diamonds and Gold' and crafts a pantomime wheeze like a spluttering carny on 'Cemetery Polka' and 'Tango Til They're Sore' but never lays it on too thick, tailoring his delivery to each of the 19 tracks without repeating himself and lets each story develop it its own time. '9th and Hennepin' recounts a spoken-word tale of seedy city-dwellers with enough panache to avoid slipping into clumsy melodrama and tender end of the night ballad 'Time' commands total silence from the listener in the same way that Jeff Buckley managed with his cover of 'Halleluja' - Tori Amos covered it years later and pared it back even further for extra drama, although its to Waits' credit that he didn't have to go that far on the original to get the point across. That's equally true on 'Downtown Train' which presents the bares bones of a massive 80s rock anthem but goes no further, leaving the option for some sweaty stadium rocker to slam a bigger engine on it and ride it to the top - it came as no surprise when Rod Stewart released a high-octane version of the track a couple of years later and bagged himself a top ten hit. Waits' strength is his knowing when to hold back, leaving the commercial pot of gold for others and only hob-nobbing with like-minded souls - he drafts in Keith Richards for shit-kicking rockers 'Union Square' and 'Big Black Mariah' to perk up proceedings and prove that Keef still had some tricks up his sleeves back when the Stones were trotting out their shittiest material and Mick Jagger was dancing the street with David Bowie. In fact 'Rain Dogs' reminds me of 'Exile on Main St' in the way that you can stick it on random and run through a killer double album without wanting to skip any of the tracks, although where the Stones were soaking up riffs and grooves in a haze of tax-free coke, champagne and groupie poon in Southern France when they recorded 'Exile, Waits was scrutinising the underbelly of America's most cosmopolitan city and filling his music with the seedy, darkly fascinating charms that he uncovered. There's no wallowing in misery here, every track breathes and simmers with brooding urban sleaze, smoky nightclub gravitas and the spluttering life force that somehow refuses to die. 'Rain Dogs' is a journey through the depths that is well worth taking - you can imagine Waits' grizzled head popping out of a manhole and inviting you to climb down with him for a tour of the underworld. If that ever happens, GO! If not, content yourself with this LP, a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and thoroughly satisfying listening session buried deep within the wee small hours.

Check out : 'Jockey Full of Bourbon', a nursery rhyme slurred out through the smoke.

5. The Fall - This Nation's Saving Grace

Punk, when you think about it, was only a short term fad. The arrival of the Sex Pistols undoubtedly changed British music for the better but the band were only active for about 18 months tops and by the mid-80s even their peers had long since ceased to produce anything worthwhile - 1985 saw The Clash drop their universally disliked swansong 'Cut the Crap' whilst the Undertones' lead singer Feargal Sharkey went pop soul and bagged himself a chart topping single with 'A Good Heart'. Survivors of the first wave of punk in the late 70s must have wondered where it had all gone wrong. The best way of looking at the dissolution of the initial punk phenomenon is perhaps to view the emergence of the Pistols and their ilk as the boot in the arse British music needed in 1976-77 - they were a shock to the system and made everyone stand to attention but ultimately they all eventually sat down again. Post punk represented not the boot that initially made contact but rather the impact itself, the slight bruising to the spine that left the recipient shuffling in their seat for weeks afterwards, an unsettling discomfort that the victim eventually comes to grudgingly accept. The boot becomes only a distant memory but the pain in the arse remains. And that's the best way to view post punk's standard bearers The Fall, a long term musical pain in the arse that would linger in the background for decades after punk's initial explosion and come to influence numerous bands on both sides of the Atlantic to the point where it's difficult to imagine life/arse without them. 

Mark E. Smith and co. got off the blocks in 1978 and laid down some solid foundations with their early material but they were always in it for the long haul as opposed to overnight success and they were only just hitting their stride by the time the mid 80s rolled around. Along with its predecessor 'The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall', 'This Nation's Saving Grace' saw the band establish themselves as mainstays of British indie, triggering a period of commercial and critical success that saw them churn out a semi-decent album every year for over a decade and remain a consistent undercurrent to the changing musical landscape that surrounded them. Always far enough below the surface to evade mainstream detection, they nevertheless remained a constant presence and the occasional sea change would see them emerge into plain view as an ugly reminder of what lurks beneath the waves, the indie equivalent of the grim-faced socialist worker candidate present at every election since 1973. And even if their chart placings didn't see them taken seriously be the mainstream, it was perhaps unsurprising that their biggest fan allowed them to shine in a separate medium, John Peel's annual festive fifty embracing them over the years as the most featured band on the countdown. 'This Nation's...' isn't radically different to any of their subsequent releases and I personally prefer their 90s output but it nevertheless acts as a pretty good introduction to their art, combining the leering guitar menace of 'Bombast' and 'Barmy' with the infectious charm of Smith's rambling stream of consciousness delivery on 'Gut of the Quantifier' and period classic 'Spoilt Victorian Child'. The band have the enviable talent of being able to keep their remit fairly narrow yet still pen tunes that you can remember after one listen - Smith uses his voice as an instrument as effectively as any rapper and though the riffs are always catchy it's a given that the band are backing him up and not the other way round. Though for many they represent the embodiment of tea-drinking student indie rock, I consider The Fall as one of guitar music's closest links with dance culture, there's a rhythmic sensibility here that most of their whiteboy peers couldn't imitate if their lives depended on it. Their caustic sense of humour pervades throughout too, the derisive title placing them firmly in the Northern anti-establishment bracket of Viz magazine and underground indie radio (former member Mark Riley would later surface on primetime Radio One as one half of duo Mark and Lard). The 80s music scene was often too wrapped up in its own shtick to even notice bands like The Fall but time would reveal them as a force strong enough to withstand changing fashions as their peers fell by the wayside - if you're looking for a way in then bag 'This Nation's Saving Grace' and ride the wave out from there, it's a journey well worth taking and this is undoubtedly the best way to begin it.

Check out : 'Spoilt Victorian Child', Smith at his grizzly, shambling best.

6. The Cult - Love

After a frenzy of activity earlier in the decade, rock 'n' roll had slumped to a relative halt by the middle of the 1980s - the burst of creative energy that had seen numerous new bands surface during the initial NWOBHM boom had subsided with the scene leaders either aping Stateside pop rock (Def Leppard, Saxon, Ozzy) or ploughing the same creative furrow over and over (Maiden, Priest, AC/DC). Though the metal underground was bursting at the seams with tangents into extremity that would come to characterise the tail end of the decade, back in 1985 there was precious little in the public eye to get heads a bangin'. The only real glimmer of hope came from the nascent goth rock scene, itself an offshoot from the post-punk movement in which black-clad misanthropes could indulge their rock 'n' roll fantasies and covet major venue tours as opposed to the same old dingy provincial nightclubs full of pongy dry ice. Bands like the Sisters of Mercy, Fields of the Nephilim and The Mission all took the fashion and mystique of early 80s post punk and amped it up louder to create a guitar-heavy hybrid of gothic pomp and hard rock delivery - thing is, most of the records weren't actually that good and veered towards pretentious rock theatre with no real tunes. Some of the bands would improve with age (others wouldn't) but the only group to real nail a crossover success between goth and mainstream rock was The Cult, a bunch of enterprising scoundrels who managed to use their beginnings as a breakthrough goth success as the springboard to take them into the charts and establish themselves as a major force in British rock. 'Love' was their second album and has all the trappings of a record its creators fully intended to be commercially massive, shaking off the unglamorous confines of the provincial goth circuit and bracing themselves for a real crack at the main stage. It worked, and they'd go on to better it at least in commercial terms when their union with über-producer Rick Rubin and a further shift into hard rock territory saw them break America later in the decade, although for some this was a step too far from their roots and left them simply another bunch of leather-clad rockers in a sea of identikit bands clogging up the airwaves before the grunge boom cleaned house and flushed them all out. 'Love' remains the most endearing moment of their upward trajectory, a foot in both their past and their future and arguably their strongest setlist to back it up.

The band's charm came mainly from their front couple of vocalist Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy, both goth scene vets with designs on becoming major rock stars. Astbury saw himself as spiritual air to Jim Morrison and focussed his lyrical direction on shamanism, native American folklore and aboriginal rituals whilst Duffy had the rock god posturing down to a fine art and had a stockpile of chunky riffs and blazing solos for any occasion. Both get plenty of stage time on 'Love', Astbury's forays into mysticism taking centre stage on ballad 'Brother Wolf, Sister Moon' and opener 'Nirvana' and Duffy's wailing solos dominating cuts like 'Phoenix' and the infectious title track. Best of all are the singles 'Rain', 'Revolution' and the instantly recognisable 'She Sells Sanctuary' - whilst the first two showcase the band's mastery of straightforward arena rock, 'Sanctuary' is an altogether more complex beast, a twirling dervish of echoic guitar lines and thrusting rhythm all held together by Astbury's howling vocals that showers the listener in a sound equal to the mysticism of their lyric sheet. It became the band's breakthrough hit and remains an 80s anthem capable of livening up any DJ set - I remember seeing the crowd go ballistic when 2 Many DJs dropped it into one of their sets à propos of nothing. The rest of the record slips effortlessly between romantic folklore and stadium riffery, favouring straightforward statements of intent ('Nirvana', 'Revolution', 'Love') over poetic complexity and crafting every track into a potential arena anthem without fulling shaking off the nocturnal grime of their goth club background. The album crashlanded the UK top 5 upon release and saw them take up residence in the singles charts at a time when their peers could only dream of such success and they went on to graduate fully to mid-Atlantic arena rock as the decade wore on, eventually succumbing to changing times and infighting as the 90s rolled around. 'Love' sees them back at their game-changing moment and remains an endearing portrait of a band making their bid for mainstream rock success in cocky but calculated fashion. It'd be a pretty impressive set in any context but set against the relative creative wasteland of mid 80s British rock, 'Love' is out in a field of its own as the only rock LP worth bothering with at all. 

Check out : 'Phoenix' live in New York back in '85, Astbury and Duffy duking it out in their prime.

7. Possessed - Seven Churches

'Seven Churches on vinyl or fuck off!', as it says on the cult Lock Up T-shirt sported in extreme metal circles. Such is the reverence accorded to Possessed's splunderous début from 1985 by those drawn to the noisier end of the musical spectrum, and the praise is well deserved for a record that can claim its place amongst the elite releases that truly changed the course of heavy music. Whilst Venom's equally influential early releases had seen the Geordie shock rockers' scrofulous punk-metal hybrid unwittingly spawn a sea of imitators across the realms of transgressive music via what seemed like a fortuitous combination of provocative theatrics and shitty production, Possessed's equally ferocious début relied less on shock tactics and more on taking the music to new extremes of bovine brutality and rampaging speed. Released onto a metal scene becoming saturated by the thrash phenomenon when the band were still finishing high school, 'Seven Churches' bent the genre into such a warped, grizzly shape that people had no idea how to approach it and it represents what was arguably the first 'death metal' record (a genre named after the record's closing track that basically took up the mantle for musical extremity once thrash petered out in the late 1980s). The band were weaned on classic Bay Area Thrash (Metallica, Exodus) but side-stepped trends in favour of plumbing deeper levels of subsonic brutality and relentless rhythmic assault, resulting in a sonic cocktail that sounded like the band had dug right through the crust of the earth and come out the other side with something bafflingly alien and fiendishly addictive. Their innovative approach to creating new sounds granted them an otherworldly appeal that transcended the crude Satanism of their lyrics - vocalist Jeff Beccera's guttural bog-belch sounded like he was retching up his own intestines in sharp contrast to the high-pitched shrieking favoured amongst his thrash peers at the time whilst guitarist Larry Lalonde's distorted guitar lines and relentless shredding foretold the virtuoso lead mayhem that many of death metal's most revered guitarists would make their trademark at the turn of the decade. Coupled with Beccera's rumbling bass and drummer Mike Sus' pillaging rhythms, the record threatened to spin right off the turntable and splatter against the wall in an explosion of ectoplasmic gunk if you didn't keep a close eye on it.

An active interest in extreme metal generally depends on whether or not the listener actively want to stray outside their comfort zone and explore new options - not everyone wants to frolic in the sewers of the audio world and that's entirely understandable. For those that did back in the 1980s there were plenty of attractive options fermenting away as the decade progressed, some pandering to the anti-authoritarian thrills and spills sought after by the average hyperactive adolescent and others displaying new sonic delights to indulge in like a new flavour of candy or an innovatively violent video game. Possessed fall into the latter category - whilst their music packs enough punch to satisfy the transgressive thrill-seekers (from the inverted cross 'n' pointy tail logo to the lyric sheet peppered with profanity and occult references), their real attraction came from the almost psychedelic sonic stew they produced. 'Seven Churches' wasn't hell-bent on scaring the listener to death, its real strength lay in its lurid combination of mind-altering guitar noise and regurgitative vocal effects - you feel that as musicians the band could have gone off in all sorts of different directions outside metal but it just turned out that they had a set of cool ideas and metal was the ideal sphere in which they could be brought to life. Wacked-out film samples mingle with bonkers metal onslaught on cuts like opener 'The Exorcist', the metallic bell toll of 'Fallen Angel' and the backwards-masked 'Pentagram' whilst demonic riff whirlwinds engulf the listener on white-knuckle mindfucks like 'Satan's Curse' and 'Twisted Minds' - if the more traditionally minded thrash bands sounded like someone tearing your house to bits, 'Seven Churches' was the equivalent of having it sucked off its foundations and deposited in a trippy parallel universe to then be swarmed by Satanic Oompa-Loompahs and the remains of a partially squashed Wicked Witch. The ball-trippingly warped nature of the record would live on in the band's later endeavours, offering only one further full-length and a Joe Satriani produced EP before splitting in '87 just as the death metal movement they spawned had started to gain momentum - Larry Lalonde joined experimental thrashers Blind Illusion and later formed Beavis and Butthead approved funk metal nutjbos Primus whilst Jeff Beccera narrowly escaped with his life following a shooting that left him paralysed from the waist down but nevertheless went back out on the road in the late noughties as vocalist with tribute act Sadistic Intent to perform 'Seven Churches' to a new audience most of whom were still in nappies when it was first released. Such is the legacy of a true metal landmark, and the boys deserve the attentions of all those who worship at the altar of extreme music as well as a sideways glance from listeners who are merely curious of what your stereo would sound like if you stuck it in the microwave with the cast of the 'Hellraiser' horror franchise and a bubbling vat of black blancmange. This record will bend your brain into shapes you never thought possible. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Check out : 'Death Metal' live at Wacken 2007 with Jeff Beccera rocking the fuck out in a wheelchair. IN A WHEELCHAIR. Now tell me what's more metal than that?

8. The Waterboys - This is the Sea

You can't help but feel that pop had become a dirty word in the music industry by 1985, the quick-fix synth anthems of the New Romantic era and the simple riff-driven radio hits of the post-punk period having drifted into irrelevance as artists and punters searched for something a bit more tangible and earthy to hang their hat on. Folk's infusion of the mainstream around the same time came about not as a direct revolt against the plastic chart fodder of the era and more as a way for the more ambitious songwriters of the times to take their ideas to a more widescreen stage as production values improved and the focus shifted from the flash in the pan singles market to the more sustainable realms of the long player. Like Shane Magowan, Big Country's Stuart Adamson and New Model Army's Justin Sullivan, Waterboys mainman Mike Scott first cut his musical teeth in the punk scene but soon drifted towards the folkier end of the spectrum as a release for his more romantic ideas and keen interest in history - he'd arguably drifted further from the fist in your face appeal of classic punk than most of his peers by 1985 and the breakthrough success of 'This is the Sea' but the album was no commercial cop out and it still resonates with enough free spirit enthusiasm and whirlwind folk energy to reel in even the most casual listener. Scott had laid down two formative LPs with his folk rock outfit whilst taxing his ass on the touring circuit but his blueprint from the beginning was to create 'Big Music', material capable of filling huge venues and connecting with audiences spilling off over the horizon via a cocktail of familiar folk influences and a foray into the arena rock of the mid 80s - things came to a head with 'This is the Sea', thanks in no small part to its omnipresent lead single 'The Whole of the Moon' and the record went on to cement their position in the UK mainstream and establish Scott as one of the more likeable musical visionaries of the era, capable of dabbling in folk culture and eco-politics without turning into an irritating bore like many of his peers. He'd come ever closer to severing his ties with rock as the decade advanced and move steadily into traditional folk music via a move to Ireland that saw his band notch domestic success to eclipse even their most lucrative period in the UK before shepherding his project through various genres shifts as festival mainstays and widescreen rock revivalists but his mid 80s heyday is destined to be remembered as his finest hour and 'This is the Sea' is a pretty faultless trip through the sound of '85

Spinning folk music into the mix hadn't been a barrier to notching a monster hit before 'The Whole of the Moon' - Dexy's Midnight Runners had coined it in with 'Come on Eileen' three years previously but Scott's own crossover hit was much more of a slow-burning love affair than the drink-spilling anthem that 'Eileen' would come to embody as it began to lose some of its appeal via repeated airings at office parties and wedding discos. Striding in on the back of a thumping piano riff courtesy of Karl Wallinger who would later form World Party, the track uses every trick in the book to fill massive imaginary venues as it unravels - staccato drum cracks, trumpet cat-calls and a mellow female countervocal to undercut Scott's own scratchy delivery. The lyrics expand into an ever-widening arc of 'We're the same but totally different' romantic face-offs as the tracks spirals towards its climax and they even get away with throwing some sax in there towards the end without killing the buzz. The track became a moderate chart hit that year but went on to attain cult radio success and was eventually re-released in 1991 and went on to go top three in a year that saw a surge in nostalgia for mid-80s production values as Madonna's 'Crazy for you' and The Cure's 'Close to me' also resurfaced to improve on their original 1985 returns. There's more enticing depths to plumb on the full length too, the pseudo-Celtic groundswell of 'The Pan Within' giving a hint of where Scott would head to over later releases, 'Old England' casting an eye over past glories in contrast with the waning fortunes of the present and the grandstanding sonics of the title track succeeding in creating a sound big enough to carry across the ocean with just Scott's voice and acoustic guitar augmented with a bit of studio cushioning. Scott's not forgotten how to rock either - the rampaging folk rock onslaught of 'Medicine Bow' sounds like the ideal kickstart to every live show and the hoedown theatrics of 'Be My Enemy' can't mask the surprising seam of venom running through the lyrics. Period production tricks like the occasional belch of saxophone and the sort of soft focus percussive whump popular on the soul pop million-sellers of the day make 'This is the Sea' sound anchored to its era but this is only a bad thing if you find the wide-lens theatrics of the period off-putting, otherwise the LP will bring back the halycon days of pre-irony rock spectacle, all buckets of dry ice and drums that sound like they're echoing back off the walls of a castle. Scott's decision to not simply up the ante on his next release probably also spared the Waterboys much of the scorn poured upon their mid 80s peers as the laidback acoustic folk thrum of 'Fisherman's Blues' saw them sidestep the pop charts in favour of a more rootsy charm that saw them coin it in over the Irish Sea and set up a fairly reliable timetable of festival slots for years to come whilst their decade-ending best of reminded many of how many good tunes they'd written that had gone undiscovered. Mike Scott thus remains one of the 80s best-hidden talents, a songwriter capable of scaling the greatest heights yet savvy enough to take his foot off the pedal before he started to bore people and one whose music can survive endless repeats over supermarket radio without inciting hatred amongst unwilling listeners. You'll probably like 'This is the Sea' but if you do then please keep it under wraps - it's probably better that way for all concerned.

Check out : the title track live and organic - worth taking your time over.

9. Dream Academy - s/t

This is perhaps a tangent into relatively cheesy territory but I'm going to stand firm in my view that Dream Academy's début is actually a pretty decent album. You'll almost certainly never have heard it but you'll probably be familiar with their worldwide hit 'Life in a Northern Town' either in its original form or as the backbone to Dario G's late 90s dance anthem 'Sunchyme' - the band bagged a brief spell in the spotlight thanks to its success in 1985 but their star soon faded and their output has remained largely in the shadows of glove compartment tape graveyards and charity shop CD racks since then. Such an ignoble fate is hardly deserved - whilst it's true that their music hasn't aged particularly well it does provide a formidable dose of pastoral folk pop in the vein of Kate Bush and post-Waters Pink Floyd (Dave Gilmour was mates with their singer and co-produced the album). The band are settled in crossover chart territory and their début lacks the theatrical depth and cloud-hopping mysticism of 'Hounds of Love' but they draft in an impressively diverse range of instruments to fill out the colours and their pop-tinged compositions are bolstered by soft-focus swathes of woodwind and timpani that rebound off the walls to give things a theatrical wide open space feel. Big sounds were all the rage back then and 'Dream Academy' sounds soooo 1985 that it's hardly surprising they pretty much fell off the map after that, although the fact that they used so many different instruments during the recording process also made it practically impossible for them to tour which probably didn't help either. They started with the right idea though and their lofty ambitions resulted in a finely-crafted slab of period pomp that nails the dry ice and epic sensibilities of classic night-driving mid 80s chart pop with considerable aplomb.

One of the best things about the 1980s was the wealth of new technology available to make pop records and this meant that the music on the radio was constantly evolving as production methods moved forward as quickly as musical trends and underground fashion - put this album up against the cold analogue synth pop of Soft Cell and the Human League only three or four years earlier and it sounds like there were light years between them. I love those records too but for me they're music from a time I don't remember, hits that I know through their presence on latter day radio rotation rather than from when they first emerged into popular culture - in turn, 'Life in a Northern Town' pinpoints a stage in my childhood where I was able to remember songs and attach memories to their initial spell in the charts. One of my prized possessions was a 'Hits' compilation tape featuring the track alongside other soft-focus radio masterpieces like the Carrs' 'Drive', A-ha's 'Take On Me' and Echo and the Bunnymen's 'Bring on the Dancing Horses' and it evokes some of my earliest memories of disappearing into the intriguing world of pop music with all its inherent mystery and magic. The rest of the album lacks the immediacy of their global chart hit but there's enough spellbinding storytelling here to make you want to stay a while longer - 'In Places on the Run' 
drifts by like 'Momentary Lapse of Reason'-era Floyd (don't listen to Roger Waters, that's a good album!), woodwind-soothed smoothies 'Moving On' and 'Edge of Forever' turn the lights down low whilst staying the right side of coffee advert slush and they revert to potential hit-makers on upbeat chart botherers like 'Bound to Be' and '(Johnny) New Light' (why was every male protagonist in 80s pop called fucking Johnny?). 'Dream Academy' could be put to good use easing kids off to slumberland but don't let that detract from its value as a superb piece of period pop - 1985 was all about billowing sleeves, echoic production and fairytale endings and this record has them all in spades to craft one of the era's undiscovered gems and kickstart numerous dream sequences in the process.

Check out : 'In Places on the Run', and feel your troubles slowly fall away.

10. Anthrax - Spreading the Disease

Metal. It's a wonderful thing. The amount of stellar material unleashed onto the heavier end of the music spectrum across the 1980s is a joy to behold and the era continues to be held in high esteem by generations of younger listeners who weren't even born at the time - my recent experience getting the shite stomped out of me at a Kreator show brought home the wide-ranging appeal of old school thrash as patch jacket clad teenagers clashed heads with sweaty skullet-sporting veterans who were there back in the band's infancy. Metal's evolution across the 80s is as rich and varied as dance music's own trajectory across the 90s, each year signalling the emergence of a new sub-genre or a considerable sea change from one trend to another and a surfeit of new bands popping up across the underground who would rise into the mainstream as the years progressed. The dawn of the decade saw NWOBHM hit big on both sides of the Atlantic, swiftly followed by the US glam boom of Sunset Strip and a burgeoning extreme metal scene across Europe as the likes of Bathory, Mercyful Fate and Celtic Frost laid down pointers to the darker realms metal would explore later in the decade. The biggest boom of the mid 1980s was undoubtedly the thrash explosion though, an irrepressible fusion of punk's manic energy and classic metal's headbanging riffs that by 1985 had become the freshest, most vital sonic cocktail doing the rounds in underground clubs across the globe. Scenes blossomed across the globe as rivet heads sought to bring metal to new extremes, the Germans showcasing their brutal efficiency with the likes of Sodom, Destruction and Kreator whilst the US spat forth the 'big four' of Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthtrax, each pedalling their own distinct take on the genre to equally devastating effect. I've left the first three for 1986's listings along with Kreator as they all laid down career peaks that year as high top sneakers and neon T-shirt designs became metal's look of choice but Anthrax shouldn't be overlooked as a pillar of thrash's ascent to the top of the metal foodchain. Their delivery was perhaps the most lighthearted of the major thrash bands, injecting a dose of comic relief into their music and unashamedly targetting the singles charts with their colourful, cartoonish blasts of easily accessible metal but that's not to say that they weren't as lethal a proposition as their sour-faced peers - Anthrax could snap necks at will with the often overlooked arsenal of twin axeman Scott Ian and Dan Spitz providing the pit-friendly speed metal riffs and the relentless rhythm section of bassist Frank Bello and superhuman guitarist-turned-drummer Charlie Benante providing the engine room for some of metal's most rollicking moments. Add singer Joey Belladonna's soaring vocal yelp - pitched somewhere between the siren blast Maiden's Bruce Dickinson and the stadium howl of Journey's Steve Perry - and you had a potent cocktail capable of prompting Cheshire cat grins and furious circle pits across the world's metal clubs.

'Speading the Disease' was the band's second album but marks the beginning of their existence as a true force in metal - their bratty début 'Fistful of Metal' was an endearingly savage opening salvo but its scattershot approach was channelled to more lethal effect on 'Disease' as Bello and Belladonna both joined the ranks to complete one of metal's most accomplished squad sheets. They could match the face-melting energy of their grizzlier peers Slayer, Kreator and Exodus but decided against wallowing in occult mysticism or leaden cold war imagery in favour of brightly-coloured comic book thrills and spills and their music mirrored this appeal, keeping the pace frantic with a rush of positive energy and goofy humour to prove that you could be just as devastating without rubbing the listener's face in the darkside. Breakthrough hit 'Madhouse' hits the balance perfectly, kicking off with a grin-inducing sample ('It's time for your medication Mr Brown'......'BWAHAHAHAHAHA!') before a deluge of screwball riffs and pounding rhythms do battle with Belladonna's shrieking narratives and the band's gang vocal choruses which have more in common with classic US hardcore than the leaden crunch of Maiden-esque period metal. Better still are the breakneck riff assaults of 'Aftershock' and 'Gung Ho' that practically pin the listener to the wall with their ludicrously intense tempos and relentless enthusiasm - you can imagine just how much fun could be had down at the front of one of their shows back in the day. Comic book horror rears its head on the lurid likes of 'Lone Justice' and 'Medusa', both retaining the brightly coloured charm of pulp fiction comic art that the band would use to even better effect on their Judge Dredd-inspired breakthrough hit 'I am the Law'. They even nail a slow 'n' spooky mid-paced gem with 'Armed and Dangerous' bridging the gap nicely with their earlier material in the vein of Judas Priest's stadium-filling anthems of the era and just about avoid slipping into ham-fisted gratuitousness on Third Reich dissection 'The Enemy'. Metal often wallows in life's darker moments for its subject matter but Anthrax always kept their focus on the fun rather than downcast tributes to Satan and nuclear warfare and were open-minded enough to take on board influences outside the notoriously introverted world of heavy metal - they'd become the first metal band to fully embrace hip-hop via a twin-headliner tour with Public Enemy bolstered by crossover hits 'I'm the Man' and 'Bring the Noise', the latter combining PE's combative vocal delivery with Anthrax's balls-out metal assault to craft a universally-recognised classic. Their ability to hang with bands across the musical spectrum granted them an acclaim amongst the indie press that would never be extended to their peers and they remain one of the only metal bands you can get away with playing in front of people who dislike the genre without prompting sour looks. The fact that they've achieved all this without compromise deserves considerable praise and recent 'big four' revival tours have reminded new generations of listeners that thrash existed under many different guises back in its formative years. You're probably less likely to come across 'Spreading the Disease' than recognised metal classics like 'Reign in Blood' and 'Master of Puppets' in revivalist appreciation of heavy metal history but don't miss these guys out - 'Spreading' is as good a monument as you'll find to the irrepressible energy of classic thrash and acts as a timely reminder that this music has always been about providing the soundtrack to an evening's good friendly violent fun.

Check out : 'Gung Ho' live - baseball caps, bermuda shorts and enough energy to light up NYC.

Tune of the Year

Pet Shop Boys - 'West End Girls'

In a year where pop found itself dethroned by radio rock and wine bar soul, 'West End Girls' was like a breath of fresh air. Released as a bare-bones club version the previous year, the boys repackaged the track in a slicker, more streamlined format that married Tennant's spoken-word narrative with a lush backdrop of clubland hi-hats, funk bass and keyboards and that unmistakable dry ice synth rush. It gradually wove its way into the singles charts and didn't reach number one until early January 1986 but the track represented a turning point for British pop as the lurid theatrics of the New Romantic era gave way to a more straight-faced, calculated take on the genre. The subversive content and androgynous charm were still there but direct confrontation gave way to an understated, everyman appeal that saw bands like Erasure, Thompson Twins and Tears for Fears go toe to toe with the rock behemoths of the age and escort pop into the colder, harsher light of the late 1980s. The video patented the format for introvert/extrovert synth duos for years to come and the boys went on to outsell all of their rivals by a considerable margin, notching four #1 hits before the end of the decade and navigating their way through most of the 90s without slipping into wanton nostalgia. 'West End Girls' remains their one truly iconic moment (brilliantly paroided on 'Flight of the Conchords' here) and stands as a watershed moment in pop history that still sounds fantastic.