Month: April 2023

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The Big Heat, Stan Ridgway

Cover art for The Big Heat, an album by Stan Ridgway.

It’s the final song on this album that most people will know, and while it’s a piece of brilliance, we should start from the beginning.

The beginning of this album is storytelling. Each song is a vignette, almost a film script contained within four minutes or so of post-punk pop songs. Stanard Ridgway, as he was before he shortened his name for pop stardom, was already well known on the scene thanks to his previous band, Wall of Voodoo. Exhibiting a more synth-led sound, they had Stanard’s idiosyncratic voice and songwriting skills in common.

However, it was to be The Big Heat that ignited my fascination with Ridgway and his ability to conjure up an entire world within a song, complete with narrative, back story, and supporting cast. You get the feeling each song could win every Oscar going despite not being a film.

Whether the noir feel of Drive, She Said, or the Depeche Mode-esque Pick It Up (And Put It In Your Pocket), or the singalong melody of Camouflage, each song has depth that pop songs rarely had, or have. Ridgway brought several of his musical influences into the songs. It makes the album feel out of its time, yet nails its 1980’s colours to the mast at the same time.

Yet, the final song, Camouflage, a song about a soldier caught without a working gun in the jungles of Vietnam who is rescued by a man-mountain who can seemingly dodge bullets, is what takes all the ideas of every other song and pulls it into something special.

That man-mountain, the eponymous Camouflage of the song’s title, who you can picture as flesh and blood (perhaps mixed with Stallone’s Rambo in my head), saving the day even while he lies dead in a tent back at the army camp. It’s got a sing-along chorus, anthemic yet intricate, with a narrative arc that could have been written by Vonnegut. It runs for over seven minutes but never feels laboured or repetitive. It’s the perfect bookend for everything that comes before it, almost as if Ridgway perfected his performative songwriting just for this final hurrah.

It’s absolutely faultless, this album. It’s not shiny, throwaway stuff, this album. It warrants deeper consideration, like all Unspun Heroes. Even though many people I mention it to consider it to be gimmicky and full of novelty. Yet, great pop songs transcend novelty and The Big Heat is chock full of pop sensibility. It’s heinous that it’s not been reissued on vinyl since its original release in 1986.

Settle back, press play and enjoy an album that deserves wider attention.

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The Heart Is The Place, Goldrush

I guess the beauty of most of the music we love is that it can transport you somewhere else. To a place, a time, an experience.

I was hanging out with Robin, Joe, Garo and Growler a lot during the making of Goldrush’s 2007 album ‘The Heart is the Place’. They had a studio on a farm in Oxfordshire, nothing posh or noticeably state-of-the-art, but actually a couple of repurposed industrial containers. It was the same farm where they had started their own festival called Truck.

They were do-ers, excited and uncynical. They wanted to make things happen against the odds. It was an exciting time, of new friends, new music, new experiences. This album transported me somewhere romantic and magical back then, and now it transports me back to that farm fifteen years ago… equally romantic and magical from today, all these years away.

I’d just started making music under the name ‘Danny & The Champions of the World’ and these guys were the Champs. They still are, variously, every now and then. You’ll see Robin and Joe sometimes, now playing some of the instruments in the live version of Saint Etienne, or Bennett Wilson Poole, or Pete Gow, and more. Garo and Growler are often seen backing Gaz Coombes, Piney Gir, and others.

Goldrush were great and wide eyed, true believers. I love this record and I think not enough people have heard it. You should give it a whirl! It’s one of the Unspun Heroes, for sure.

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Please Describe Yourself, Dogs Die In Hot Cars

Cover art for the vinyl issue of Please Describe Yourself, the album by Dogs Die In Hot Cars

Not every Unspun Hero has to move you to tears or startle you with epic storytelling. Sometimes an album comes along that simply makes you happy and want to dance around in the kitchen. Please Describe Yourself by Dogs Die in Hot Cars is one of those.

Released in 2004, it’s the only album the Glasgow band released, but it’s a cracker – a collection of well-crafted, humorous and catchy pop songs that brighten up any mood.

The influences on the young band are clear to see, with elements of Big Country, Talking Heads, Dexy’s and more than a smattering of mid-career XTC running through the record. It could have been derivative. It could have been a bit of a mess. But it wasn’t. It was fab.

Each song offers the band’s own unique take on their influences, with witty lyrics and musicians that are obviously enjoying playing together. With the bouncy piano opening of ‘Godhopping’ (which reached no.24 in the UK singles chart), the jangly indie guitar of ‘Lounger’, and the ska-infused ‘I Love You ‘Cause I Have To’, the band opens the album with a bucketload of positive energy. Later in the album they add woodwind and vocal harmonies, dabble in country and reveal a slightly unhealthy obsession with Lucy Liu.

Yes it’s a bit naive in places and a bit goofy, but that’s its charm.

Someone has clearly been watching Talking Heads videos!


Please Describe Yourself was only released 5 years after their first single, and then only as a CD. It made number 44 in the UK album chart and received positive reviews, but somehow it never entered the mainstream. Apparently the band tried recording another album two years later, but abandoned it and went their separate ways. Demos of this exist (one of the Unspun Heroes co-founders has a copy!)

A long-awaited vinyl release of the album, with extra tracks, was issued by the band in 2020 after long delays, and it looks like there are still very reasonably-priced copies available. Do yourself a favour and give it a whirl.

Scotland has produced more than its fair share of indie musical heroes, Unspun or otherwise, so expect us to return north of the border in coming posts.

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The Unspun Heroes Community Playlist

Unspun Heroes Community logo

The best ideas are often the ones that appear to be the most daft, right?

Opening anything up to the hordes on the internet is often considered to be a silly idea – have you seen the comments on news articles? – so what could possibly go wrong by creating a collaborative playlist that allows anyone, anywhere, to add songs?

We like to think the music community is a great bunch of people – if it can make Twitter feel like somewhere worth going, then that’s a positive sign! Which is why we decided to create an Unspun Heroes Community Playlist on Spotify Apple Music – and YouTube.

You’ll need an account to add songs, but anyone can put their favourite, under appreciated artists on there. And while we know we will have to moderate it now and again – mostly to stop people adding an artist’s entire discography – we think it’s a great way to beat the algorithm and to bring your favourite music to a bigger audience.

Add your songs here!

We hope this will grow into an amazing playlist – based on the two songs so far, we’re confident of that. We’ll keep this playlist available on this page, too, for everyone to enjoy:

[EDIT: I have moved this playlist from Spotify to Apple Music as that is (slightly) less exploitative of musicians, and a whole lot less R*gan.]

Oh, we’ve also created a YouTube version where the artist appears on that platform. Artists that are not on either platform, well, we will try to find their music on the Web and pop a link on this post.

Feel free to comment with your favourite Unspun Heroes if you’re unable to add via the link!

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Friendship is Deep, Golden Shoulders

Cover art for Friendship is Deep by Golden Shoulders

Twenty years ago, there was an avalanche resulting in what is now known as the ‘Indie Landfill Incident’. It’s best not to mention specifics, for it only brings back some terrible memories (and the related purchases, since dropped in charity shops across the land). Instead, like the panhandlers of yore, we need to sift through the silt and pick out the nuggets.

One of the shiniest albums from that time is Friendship is Deep by Golden Shoulders, an indie rock/pop band from Nevada City in California. Formed around the mainstay of songwriter Adam Kline, the line-up changes often (but has included some notable musicians, including Joanna Newsom, Rich Good and Neal Morgan).

The album opens with beautiful piano and overlapping vocals that set the tone for what’s to come, before things pick up swiftly. You, the listener, are treated to a delightful mix of melodic indie pop and folk rock classics that you can’t help but tap feet and sing along to. Yet, there are multiple layers to this album, whether it’s the vocal harmonies, percussive breaks or clever word-play. Like all great albums, it rewards multiple listens.

The band first came to my attention via a now-defunct website called Elbo.ws, where you could type in the names of bands you liked and it would throw up .mp3 links to similar-sounding acts. (Yes, peer-to-peer sharing networks that were the equivalent of radio back in the early noughties.) I suspect I was probably listening to Neutral Milk Hotel, Arcade Fire and Modest Mouse, none of whom are directly similar (but yet share many compositional and songwriting elements, that your average algorithm lumps them together). I’d place them more in the same ballpark as The Dodos and mid-90’s Hoodoo Gurus, with a dash of Violent Femmes. Damn fine mix, if you ask me.

Now here’s the shock, the album has never been released on vinyl. Ever. It feels like it should be. To hear highlights such as I Will Light You On Fire, Nothing’s All Right, and the brilliantly punk-pop track, Years, would be amazing. Only bettered by seeing them live, I’m sure (mostly because the band play their songs based on how they’re feeling not how they were recorded).

Still recording and touring to this day, Golden Shoulders is deserving of wider attention. And Friendship is Deep is most definitely an Unspun Hero. But hey, don’t take my word for it, have a listen via their Bandcamp page, embedded below.

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Hips and Makers, Kristin Hersh

Cover art of Hips and Makers by Kristin Hersh © 4AD

1994. The year I went travelling. The year I turned 21. The year that Kristin Hersh released an album that changed my life. I say changed my life, it changed my guitar playing. I did a reverse Dylan and moved from electric guitar to acoustic. Kristin’s beautiful acoustic debut made that happen.

But this isn’t about me. This is about an album so unexpected and different, it deserves all the attention.

I’d seen Throwing Muses several times at various festivals and shows. Their gnarly brand of indie punk soundtracked my teenage years, alongside Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, Pixies, and The Fall. I probably got introduced to them through John Peel’s radio show, I can’t remember. When I heard that Kristin was releasing a solo album, I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to buy it.

That opening track, Your Ghost, featuring R.E.M’s Michael Stipe on backing vocals, set the scene for what would become my most played album that year. I hadn’t realised how poignant and fragile Hersh’s voice was, yet powerful and serene in equal measure. More than just versatile, across all 15 songs – which together run for a little over 50 minutes, so compact is the album – the whole gamut of emotions are run, by Kristin and, consequently, also by the listener.

Hips and Makers is an album I’ve gone back to many times since. One that I carried around Europe with me on my travels, copied on to magnetic tape and rewound using a biro so I could play it again on my battered Walkman-lite personal stereo (a Sanyo, in case you wondered).

Each listen brought out something new. The punk vibe still existed, on songs like Sundrops, Close Your Eyes, and, to some extent, on Me and My Charms. Yet, there’s a vulnerability, so often hidden behind the brash uniqueness of the Muses’ song structure and fuzzy guitars, that’s present on songs such as Teeth, Velvet Days, and The Letter.

And that song, The Letter, which feels like someone reading out a painful personal missive they’ve sent (or wanted to send but didn’t, or couldn’t) rather than a song they’ve written. How it sinks into your bones and makes you ache in ways you can barely describe. A song that has to be experienced, and then replayed and experienced again and again.

Hips and Makers. A solo debut of extraordinary songs from an extraordinary artist. Kristin still makes amazing records; other highlights would be 2001’s Sunny Border Blue, and 2018’s Possible Dust Clouds. Yet, Hips and Makers remains a highlight that still sounds as if it was recorded last year. And yet, when asking around it’s not an album that many people have heard – and as it’s not been reissued on vinyl since 2012, it remains an Unspun Hero.

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What’s an Unspun Hero?

It’s a good question. One we refer back to often, too. (By we, I mean the four people who were initially involved in this venture. More on that later.)

While there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to genre, every Unspun Hero is an album or artist who is under-appreciated – at the very least. Usually, their albums are not available on vinyl or have not been reissued previously. Like all rules, there are exceptions.

Everyone has an Unspun Hero in their playlist, or (if you’re of a certain vintage) on their mixtape.

The thing that we’ve discovered about sharing our own Unspun Heroes is that other people are unlikely to have heard these artists and albums, or been aware of later releases but not the seminal slab of plastic (or magnetic tape, if you can get a slab of it).

The other thing that has come out of our own discussions is that one person’s Unspun Hero is also someone else’s, so there is a mutual love of a specific album or particular track.

Who is this ‘we’?

There were four of us involved in kickstarting Unspun Heroes. Simon, Danny, Mark and Tom.

Three of us are from south London, one from the Midlands, here in the UK. We share a lot in common, but we’re also very different. Aside from music, the thing that bonds us is our openness to new things. Oh, and vinyl.

However, it’s now just Simon here running the label day-to-day, and financially supporting its releases. The others cheer loudly from the back and provide much needed encouragement. Without them, it would’ve stopped long ago.

What is Unspun Heroes?

Now we know what an Unspun Hero is, what is Unspun Heroes about?

It started as an idea for a listening party, bringing people together to listen to music that might have been forgotten. A way to find new music to enjoy without relying on an algorithm for discovery. Like vinyl, it’s the old skool way of finding new music.

When the ringleader of this merry band of vinyl-loving music fans (that’s Simon, the one writing this) turned 50, so he realised the idea of it just being a meet-up wasn’t bringing enough joy. That’s when he uttered the words that brought us to where we are right now: “Is it possible to find under-appreciated albums and reissue them on vinyl?”

Three other people said the magic word that kickstarts something that should will bring joy to other people: YES! 

Unspun Heroes became a thing.

This site…

Bringing our own Unspun Heroes to the world is the easy bit. Write some words about an album, link to somewhere so others can listen to it. Rinse, repeat. We’ll aim for once a week, but occasionally it might be more, and sometimes it’ll be fewer posts.

…the community…

Finding other people to bring their Unspun Heroes and sit around the campfire we’re looking to build, to chat and share, well that takes time. We hope it’ll be virtual and in-person. We hope it’ll become a vibrant Unspun Heroes community.

We’ve started in the usual social media places – follow us on Instagram and Twitter and Mastodon

…the records

The big thing for us is reissuing albums – or even issuing the first vinyl pressing of an album. We want to do this in conjunction with the artists themselves, to go on that journey together. This is the reason we wanted to do this, to spread the joy. And while we don’t want to lose money, we’re not here to make profits at the expense of those who create the music we love. The money we do make will finance the next release.

We also want this to be as eco-friendly as it can be, bearing in mind that we are making things out of plastic and all that entails.

Who knows where this might go? What’s important is that we’ve put the needle on the record.

Welcome to Unspun Heroes.