I thought their shoegaze round up was excellent; broadly in content, rankings and write ups…much harder to do a Britpop round up I feel…Britpop was a scene that seemed to knock off into the long grass some interesting movements in “indie-music” by coincidence or not - US indie-rock, shoegaze and grunge (even though I only liked a portion of that scene) seemed to be shunted to one side for a more straight forward homogenous sound that lacked subtlety, creativity and ambition - but on occasion gave some strong tunes. I do wonder if Ride and Verve’s diminishing returns from stellar heights was in part due to the influence of Britpop. I’ve never thought of Giant Steps and Grand Prix as britpop albums, whilst the Bends is stretching it but I can kind of understand why they are in there. If the rankings were based on quality rather than quality + scene-defining-ness (so to speak) then surely they all should be near the top and I’d have Modern Life is rubbish right up there too - although I don’t obviously think of it as shoegaze.
This list kind of needed to include Space, Sleeper and Echobelly as a reflection of those times but if it was purely ranked on quality I am not sure they would be in…that;s the challenge with these lists I guess.
Next up the Top 50 - NWONW list
