That Music List: LIST 238

Hello again,

First of all, a big thankyou to everyone who has reached out since I reactivated That Music List earlier this month.

I'm very conscious that looking at a page of links isn't necessarily how everyone chooses to consume music these days, and that the adverts on YouTube in particular can rankle. If everyone's stuff was on Bandcamp, and Bandcamp could be nested in Blogger in the same way as YouTube is, I'd be all over it more.

I've already had one friend comment that I wasted no time in namedropping The Field Mice once again. Guilty as charged! He'll note that they're even more present this week, as Skywriting is the subject of the first edition of my A Loved Album feature.

This is an unashamedly personal choice, as this 1990 work is not just loved, but endures as my all-time favourite album ("long-player" seems barely appropriate, given it clocks in at a mere 34 minutes and bits).

If the prevailing narrative that Sarah Records was the preserve of jangly indiepop and nothing else had already been dealt a few blows (many by The Field Mice themselves) by the time Skywriting hit the shelves in June 1990, then this wildly diverse album killed them stone dead. Six tracks, each a different genre, but at least five of them still recognisably the work of the same band despite the eclecticism.

Triangle attempts sequencer-driven baggy, albeit with muted vocals and existential crisis lyrics replacing the cocksure swagger and hedonism of so many of the genre's then chief practitioners. Canada's introduction promises some sort of US soul pop, rather than the neat little paean to The Stars Of Heaven which follows.

Clearer is the nearest thing on the album to indiepop, albeit executed with more polish and confidence than the band had ever managed previously; had I first heard this song in 1990, rather than on belated purchase eighteen months later, it would have been a shoe-in for my Favourite Song of the Year feature, so highly do I rate it even now.

It Isn't Forever is Movement-era New Order, glacial synths, Morse Code, thrashy outro and all. Below The Stars offers a vision of an early 1990s world in which the then still nascent Spiritualised aren't already hoovering their way through the medicine cabinet. Only the staggering Humblebee doesn't immediately (if at all) identify itself as a Field Mice track, the Clock DVA homage containing no vocals from Bobby Wratten and an atypical guitar drone buried deep amid the multilayered sample barrage.

Many present-day reviews posit the idea that Skywriting was a deeply divisive release at the time, one which split opinion among those who'd followed the band unwaveringly to that point. Was it? It went further in pushing the variety envelope than predecessor Snowball, but that had still opened with another extended sequencer-driven meditation and signed off with a multiple guitar-layered thrash followed by a dark ballad reminiscent of Black.

From my point of view, the mix of styles was just the ticket, mirroring as it did listening habits to that point largely informed by the stylistic gear changes of certain radio programmes and various artist compilation albums. Indeed, as regards the latter, my first exposure to the track Triangle had been through the inclusion of an edited version of it on Beechwood's Indie Top 20 Volume 10 not long beforehand (NB In an exchange of letters around the time of Sarah Records' retirement in August 1995, one of Matt Haynes or Clare Wadd insisted I was the first person they knew of who'd discovered the label that way).

Whatever the truth of it, were Skywriting a new release in the present day, that genre-hopping likely wouldn't raise too many eyebrows (either in general, or in the specific context of Wratten's impressively broad body of work in the intervening years), and I doubt I'd love it any the less for that.

Astonishingly, considering I've included somewhere in the region of seventeen Field Mice tracks across That Music List's lifespan previously, none of Clearer, It Isn't Forever or Humblebee has ever featured before, and it is a pleasure to be able to include all three now.

It is, of course, not just all about a 36-year-old album from the depths of south London this week. 8th Deadly Sin gives us the chance to consider the tremendous third coming of Miki Berenyi, once of Lush, then of Lush again, and latterly of Piroshka and her own Trio. I sense a liberated air about Miki these days, the product of either or both of the greater autonomy she retains over her music career now and the release - in both senses of the word - of her searing memoirs (albeit one would perhaps like to see Emma Anderson exercise her right to reply on some clutch points).

It was a shame that last July's Pop At the Lock alldayer clashed with the Nev Clay gig I mentioned last week, as seeing Miki live for the first time would have been a genuine treat.

Then And Now this week heralds the unexpected and joyful return of Hydroplane after just shy of a quarter of a century. The echoey production, Kerrie Bolton's clear and heartstring-tugging vocals, the gentle percussive ticks and messrs Cummings and Withycombe's tasteful guitar insertions are still all present and correct, not just from the last time those named convened as Hydroplane but stretching back further to their more overtly indiepop-focussed days as The Cat's Miaow. One of my all-time favourite Australian bands back then, one of my all-time favourite Australian bands now.

Plenty more I could say on the remainder, but whilst (obviously) recommending every track I've shared this week, permit me to draw your attention also to the finest pop statement of a Yorkshire musical genius (Bill Nelson); a piece of German punk-pop that would have been a scene staple had an indiepop band recorded it (Die Ärzte; and yes, this is a hill I'm prepared to die on); as excellent a pop track as Nottingham's lovely Alexander Christopher Hale has ever crafted (August Actually); a pre-fame Ian Broudie (Care); and a tribute to the late Stephen Luscombe (including something quite extraordinary he played clarinet on in the 1970s).

J xx

Click on the video to play each tune (links last checked as all working 30/01/2026).

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MING - La ballade de Johnny Guitar (2001)