What I do remember well is Kingmaker’s first album ‘Eat Yourself Whole’. I am sure some people will lump them in with ‘Britpop’, but this release was a few years ahead of albums such as Parklife. Their sound I think has more in common with bands like The Wonder Stuff and James. The tracks are melodic, heartfelt and like all good indie they were tunes with emotional depth. You can hear strains of their melodies in the later catalogues of bands like Supergrass.
It is hard to choose a favourite track, but one I keep coming back to is the more emotional ‘Hard Times’, which is included here on disc one. You can tell a quality album when every track could have been a single!
Great article, I loved Kimgmaker and find it sad that Loz Hardy seems to have disappeared because he wrote great tunes, was intelligent and had a lot to say, his voice should have been word widely heard
Thanks for your comment Rich, much appreciated.
Unfortunately music is littered with bands that deserve more credit and as well as Kingmaker my other bugbear is Pele. Another band that should have been huge!
I was a big fan of Kingmaker – along with bands like Senseless Things, they were adjacent to the grebo scene of Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, PWEI and The Wonder Stuff – all of whom had great albums and singles that still stand up today. I’ve still got an early Kingmaker 12″ knocking about and the first album is a corker. Such a shame that Britpop killed off all these early 90s bands – especially as so little of that era has stood the test of time (apart from Suede, The Verve and probably Blur). I’m listening to the box set on Spotify as we speak and they really did have some great songs.
Thanks for your comment Dom.
Totally agree, there were some great bands around at that time, PWEI are one of my all-time favorites. I spent many happy hours at sweaty Poppies gigs.
I always found a lot of Brit Pop just boring. ‘Landfill indie’ is a great phrase that sums up a lot of those bands.
With some great new bands emerging, at least the indie scene now is very vibrant.
Cheers