Music Bank
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Moose
Not so much underrated as unheard, Moose grew up in Britain’s distortion-heavy shoegazing movement of the early ’90s but soon shed the fuzzy wash of their compatriots to embrace a clean, acoustic-based style — inspired by ’60s icons Burt Bacharach and Tim Buckley as well as jangle merchants like the Byrds and R.E.M. — that still relied on the intense guitar effects which characterized the band’s early works. Moose was formed in early 1990 by the songwriting team of Kevin (K.J.) McKillop and Russell Yates…
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Robyn Hitchcock
One of England’s most enduring and prolific singer/songwriters, visual artists, guitarists, live performers, and genuine eccentrics, Robyn Hitchcock started his recording career with the Soft Boys, a punk-era band specializing in melodic pop merged with offbeat lyrics. Heavily influenced by Syd Barrett, John Lennon, and Bob Dylan, and prone to telling long, improvised, surrealist monologues during live performances, Hitchcock embarked on a solo career in 1981 and never looked back, releasing nearly an album a year well into the early 21st century, both as a solo artist and with his bands the Egyptians and the Venus 3…
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TV Smith
With TV Smith’s Explorers having imploded in late 1981 and the success of the Adverts receding further into the past, TV Smith launched his solo career in early 1982, cutting a single, “Burning Rain,” with Rondelet labelmates the Nervous Germans. Label politics conspired against the release actually taking place, but the new year saw Smith convene fresh sessions with guitarist Tim Renwick and ex-Adverts keyboard player Tim Cross.
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Bryan Ferry
While fronting Roxy Music in the 1970s and early ’80s, Bryan Ferry devised a blueprint for art rock, and as a solo performer, he brilliantly updated the parameters of the pop songbook. Although Ferry’s solo career has included several excellent self-penned tracks, he’s best-known for his adventurous interpretations of songs from the rock and pop canon. Combining a studied, wry, lounge-singer persona …
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Kaiser Chiefs
Specializing in a melodic blend of classic Brit-pop, post-punk, and new wave, Kaiser Chiefs’ early blue-collar, pub-style take on indie rock managed to split the difference between timely and nostalgic … Kaiser Chiefs resurrected the mod spirit of the Jam in “I Predict a Riot,” a supercharged class-of-1977 power pop single that quickly electrified the British press when it was released in 2004…
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The Coral
Since their debut in the early 2000s, the Coral proved to be one of the most consistent bands in the U.K. retro-rock scene thanks to their knack for crafting sneakily good hooks, the jangling interplay of the guitars, and James Skelly’s powerful vocals. Their rambunctious sound deftly mixes together elements of ’60s garage rock, psychedelic pop, and folk-rock, spicing it with bits of Merseybeat, Motown, vintage blues, and even sea shanties…
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Lyn Cornell
Lyn Cornell had been a prominent member of the Vernons Girls when she married drummer Andy White and subsequently recorded solo for Decca Records when the original troupe was nearing its 1961 disbandment. She is remembered chiefly for the much-covered, Greek-flavoured film title theme to 1960’s Never On Sunday (her only UK Top 30 entry) and an ebullient ‘African Waltz’, which paled in the shadow of the bigger-selling John Dankworth instrumental. Its b-side, an arrangement of the Jon Hendricks jazz standard ‘Moanin’’, illustrated that, beyond mere pop, Cornell could unfurl a suppleness of vocal gesture that was denied to luckier but less stylistically adventurous contemporaries … In the 70s Cormell along with Ann Simmons formed the duo, the Pearls…
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Paul Haig
Paul Haig might be best known as the frontman of Scottish post-punk band Josef K, whose lone official record played a major role in the development of the C-86 scene that followed a few years after the group’s disintegration. Haig continued with a number of involvements in the following decades, releasing a number of records on his own in addition to issuing several collaborative efforts…
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Alice Cooper
The man (and the band) who first brought shock rock to the masses, Alice Cooper became one of the most successful and influential acts of the ’70s with their gritty but anthemic hard rock and a live show that delivered a rock & roll chamber of horrors, thrilling fans and cultivating outrage from authority figures (which made fans love them all the more). The name Alice Cooper originally referred to both the band and its lead singer…
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Rick Astley
Wielding a rich, deep voice, Rick Astley became an overnight sensation in the late ’80s with his well-crafted dance-pop. Astley was discovered by producer Pete Waterman in 1985, when the Merseyside native was singing in the English soul band FBI. After that, Waterman’s production team — Stock, Aitken & Waterman — took Astley under their wing, writing and producing such impeccably crafted pop singles as “Never Gonna Give You Up” and “Together Forever”…
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