Momus 'The Hairstyle Of The Devil (12" Version)' (Creation Records, 1989)

Outsider artist goes to the disco in the company of New Order and the Pet Shop Boys.

Momus has had a long, distinguished career, veering from Old Testament folk singer to Casio keyboard pervert-diarist to electronische balladeer and beyond.

His run of albums on el and Creation in the late 1980s and early 1990s are great, though I have to confess that I haven't kept up to speed with him more recently.

This minor-key indie disco classic managed to break the proper Top 100 and even received airplay on Steve Wright's afternoon show on Radio 1. That doesn't sound like much of an achievement nowadays but at the time it was almost unheard of. It was possibly one of the first Creation Records to do so.

'The Hairstyle Of The Devil' marries the spoken word observationalism of the Pet Shop Boys with the Chic-filtered dark disco style of New Order's 'The Perfect Kiss'. Momus, naturally, makes it more seedy and desperate than either of those bands could/would, this 12" Version unleashing seven minutes of dank magic and ending with some backwards-masked whispering - "Beelzebub's my master..."

Should've been massive. Maybe Cher Lloyd will cover it one day.

Download Momus 'The Hairstyle Of The Devil (12" Version)' (indie, disco, pop, CRE063T, mp3) (Box.net)

Breeders 'Grunggae (Cannonball Demo)' (4AD, 1994)

Early demo of 'Cannonball'. Class stuff.

Not sure if I've thought that 'Cannonball' sounded like Grunge-Reggae like Kim Deal obviously did. However, it's a mighty fine tune, certain to bring the roof down at indie discos wherever it's played. Not that I'm advocating tragic loss of indie life.

By the time of the second Breeders album, the angular, noisy, sinsister atmosphere of 'Pod' had been excised and Tanya Donnelly had moved on to form Belly. 'Last Splash' is a more straightforward alt rock album, with a much more summery disposition, and this shows in this version of a classic as a work in progress.

Download Breeders 'Grunggae (Cannonball demo)' (alternative indie mp3) (Mediafire)

Blessed Ethel 'Rat' (2 Damn Loud, 1994)

Strident, punkish indie rock, UK-style from Blessed Ethel

Two minutes of feisty, raw indie rock that starts out brooding in a Siouxsie And The Banshees, minor key kind of way before building to an earworm of a chorus.

Rough around the edges but well catchy, it's like a brattish, untrained version of Sleeper or a pre-punk (as opposed to post-punk) version of Elastica.

Download Blessed Ethel 'Rat' (indie mp3 download, Mediafire)