For a while now I've had a deep love for iconic british indie label 4AD, who in the 1980s curated a dreamy, ethereal goth-y sound and released some of my favorite albums of all time. This week I got tipped over into another 4AD hyper-fixation so I spent a lot of time exploring their catalog for new stuff
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Pale Saints, The Comforts of Madness - Buuuut despite that I'm gonna start with this, a long-standing personal favorite of mine. Pale Saints are underappreciated and I firmly believe that their debut LP is one of the very best albums to come out of the first-wave shoegaze/dream-pop scene. This album takes the noisy squall of shoegaze, cuts it with hooky song structures and buoys it all on Ian Masters' lovely vocals. "Sight of You" is a major highlight and arguably the band's best song but every track is killer and they're excitingly diverse as well, from the galloping opener "Way the World Is" to the lovely hazy sonic cloud that is "Sea of Sound". I beg you, listen to this album!!! It is so good
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Belly, Star - Tanya Donelly co-founded iconic alt-rock acts Throwing Muses and The Breeders before striking out on her own to form Belly. Their debut Star is part hooky early-90s alt-rock but it's much more than that, as it's abundantly clear that Tanya Donelly has the heart of a witchy post-punk folkie. I'm sad this band broke up after only a couple of years because they definitely had something special
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Lisa Germano, Geek the Girl - Lisa Germano understands how much it sucks to be a woman and in 1994 she decided to write an album about it. Geek the Girl is 12 tracks of spare folk laden with pain and sadness and the kind of dreamy, ethereal production typical of the 4AD sound. It's a downer of an album, but a beautiful one that is so, so good
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Colourbox, Colourbox (1985) - I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into when I threw this on and I was blown away by how good it is. The (excellent) first two tracks belie what turns out to be a killer soul/R&B/pop album laden with electronics and sampling. It is extremely 80s and I mean that in the best possible way. It's also a great dance record that just makes you want to move. Honestly this should have been a huge hit, it's a shame it's been largely doomed to obscurity
