Those of us who spent our teenage years reading coffee-stained copies of The Catcher in the Rye or Tess of the d’Ubervilles while bitterly lamenting the fact that not a single girl in our school, college, or workplace had the good sense of noticing the painfully shy bookworm sitting with his tongue tied at his side, often taking refuge in a particular form of popular music. Despised and tormented, we wasted our teenage years in the self-imposed exile of our back bedrooms, comforting ourselves there by listening to a flurry of indie bands that had somehow cornered the market with youthful angst and self-pity. We took perverse pleasure in the confessions of these kindred spirits, as they meekly extolled the trials and tribulations of loveless lives that mirrored our own teary existence.

The Smiths, in this sense, were beyond compare, and in Morrissey they possessed a songwriter without equal in the wretched pantheon of pop. However, there were other bands that had a lot to say on the subject of unrequited love. An entire genre of indie-pop, whether you call it twee, shambling, or C-86, after the legendary NME mix tape, I was absolutely immersed in it. While bands like The Wedding Present (and to me David Gedge was the unofficial spokesman for the legion of shy guys who couldn’t muster the courage to front up at the Friday night club) enjoyed a long stint in the center of attention, many of their C-86 compatriots simply faded into obscurity. In some cases, no doubt, this was a blessing in disguise. However, bands like The Servants and Birmingham’s Mighty Mighty surely deserved to be more than a footnote in indie-pop history.

Pop Can: The Definitive Collection 1986-1988, in Cherry Red, tries to set the record straight. Comprised of all of Mighty Mighty’s excellent singles, B-sides and EPs along with a few selected cuts from their debut album, the underwhelming Sharks, with a handful of tracks from the ‘lost’ second album The Betamax Tapes (eventually released in 2013), Pop Can certainly does what it says on the tin, bringing together the best moments of this short-lived combo.

The album, while not arranged in chronological order, begins with debut single “Everybody Knows the Monkey,” an edgy affair that sets the tone (orange juice and a dash of organ vocals) for Pop Can’s frothy content. Other side one highlights include the enhanced single “Built Like a Car”, which reached no. 6 on the independent chart, his highest charting effort, and the supremely catchy follow-up, “Law.” Fortunately, it’s the C-86 version that appears here, rather than the inferior “dance remix” that Chapter released on 12-inch in late 1987.

Side two begins with “Is There Who Out There for Me”, which is probably still the band’s best-known song, peaking at no. 44 on John Peel’s holy fifty festive 1986. This is also the Mighty Mighty song that unsurprisingly appears on Cherry Red’s definitive Scared To Get Happy compilation, The Story of Indie Music 1980-1989. The song features a terrifyingly effervescent chorus that also captures the brutality of teenage loneliness, with Hugh McGuinness haplessly begging for true love to cross his path.

‘Is there anyone out there for me, is there anyone else alone / I can’t take another summer alone.’

Other standouts on side two are “Let’s Call It Love” and a couple of tracks from The Betamax Tapes; “Touch of the Sun” and particularly “Unsteady” which brings to mind the cult/sophisticated pop of Lloyd Cole or Prefab Sprout. While lyricist Mick Geoghegan may not be up there with Cole or Paddy McAloon, “Unsteady” points to the more mature direction the band would surely have traveled, had they continued:

‘Do you remember that letter of mine / When I changed my mind every two lines / Now that I’m sure, you will condescend / To be introduced, as my unstable girlfriend.’

Strangely, Mighty Mighty achieved notable posthumous success in Japan, while remaining unhonored prophets in their own land.

Well, now we’re all grown up! Decades separate us from our former self-pitying selves. Gone are the days when David Gedge’s plaintive ‘aaaaaargh’ of despair reverberated through the streets of Leeds city center at closing time. However, even when taken out of its original context, the music still stands the test of time. Pop Can is full of gourmand vignettes, brimming with stories of lost loves that you can sing along to. Ultimately, this is a truly worthwhile trip down memory lane and a fitting tribute to one of the lesser-known practitioners of the genre.

While we’re on the subject of the genre that doesn’t dare speak its name, here are my top ten twee-related songs.

1. The sun, a little star: the servants

The dreamy, absent-minded vocals, the sepia-tinged harmonies, the golden splashes of guitar raining down on both verse and chorus should have ensured “The Sun a Small Star” became a mainstream radio staple for the next few decades. manner of “There She Goes” by The La. However, the track, which was taken from the sublime EP of the same name, stalled on release, managing just a solitary week on the indie charts reaching no. 47 in November 1986.

2. Is there anybody out there for me?: Mighty Mighty

The song that soundtracked a succession of summers in love in South Wales in the rain as Thatcher pummeled the valleys into submission. Dry humor, self-pitying sixth grade poetry, and a starry tune that still manages to send chills down your spine, as well as bring tears to your eyes!

3. Almost Prayed: The Prophets of Time

The sun-splashed guitar licks alone were enough to give many of the light-skinned wallflowers who bought this, The Weather Prophets’ debut single, a bad case of sunburn and the passing of the decades has done little to lessen its luminescent beauty.

The group, consisting of Peter Astor and Dave Morgan, after The Loft went up on the roof for the last time, achieved minor chart success when “She Comes from the Rain” peaked at no. 62 in March ’87. Their second album, Mayflower, from which this track is taken, is arguably the best album in a subgenre that (wedding present aside) can’t be said to have produced anything resembling a classic 33rpm record.

4. Word around town: Westlake*

Having fired his Servants, David Westlake released a self-titled Mini-LP, via Creation Records, before embarking on a career in academia. “The Word around Town” is the album that reserves Westlake’s place on the list of the best British lyricists of the decade, along with David Gedge, Robert Lloyd, Elvis Costello and Morrissey. A masterpiece of cult pop that includes this wry self-analysis:

“The word in the city among those for whom nothing is sacred / Is that the Emperor’s clothes do not exist but he is beautiful naked.”

* Be careful to avoid the demo version that is currently circulating in the Small Time build.

5. My favorite dress: the wedding gift

“Some rare delight in the city of Manchester / It was six hours before you let me down / See it all in a drunken kiss / A stranger’s hand on my favorite dress.”

David Gedge, the George Clooney of indie pop, may resist the company he’s asked to keep here. There was always something fundamentally more muscular and unhealthy about this angry young man’s amorous musings, allied to the bellicose guitar outbursts that characterized songs like “Brassneck,” which put his C-86 compatriots to shame. For starters, there was a sense that Gedge’s dysfunctional relationships were actually with real women, rather than the imaginary girlfriends his faery counterparts and, more often than not, his devoted followers sickenedly fantasized about. .

The band released two classic albums, George Best and Bizarro, before the law of diminishing returns took hold. However, they enjoyed spectacular success on the charts, racking up half a century of hit singles between 1988 and 2005.

6. Pristine Christine: The Sea Urchins

This gleefully upbeat single was the debut release on Sarah Records (twee’s unofficial home) and spent six weeks on the indie charts. However, her love affair with Sarah was short-lived and they sought solace in Cheree’s sexy disco arms at London venues, before parting for good in the summer of 1991.

7. She always hides: the servants

A passively beautiful pop song, situated somewhere between Galaxie 500 and Real Estate, with a final guitar solo that slips languidly, like an Indian summer, before dissolving into the shimmering haze of our subconscious. Why David Westlake traded the sublimely elegant sound of these early Servants singles for the more claustrophobic tones of his scruffy albums will forever remain one of pop’s most perplexing career moves.

8. Messy Towns: The Blacksmiths

Although newcomers to the “anorak” scene (the Melbourne-based combo only formed in 1993), the group can claim to have produced the most consistent body of work the genre has produced on either side of the world. These shy boys recorded eleven mostly good albums before parting ways with the company in 2009. Influenced by all the usual suspects (The Smiths, Orange Juice and The Go-Betweens), they also acknowledged a debt to bittersweet love songs. from Britain’s most underrated wordsmith. , Billy Brag. “Untidy Towns” is a random selection, there are over a hundred soft vignettes as touching as this one hidden in his backpack.

9. Fabulous Friend: Field Mice

Had New Order not discovered Arthur Baker and the New York club scene, as they struggled to come to terms with the deaths of Ian Curtis and Joy Division, they would have been forever frozen in time as The Field Mice! Smaller tunes like “Sensitive” and “Emma’s House” couldn’t quite suds up a pint of bitter, but that’s all part of the band’s fragile charm.

10. I’m in love with a girl who doesn’t know I exist: another sunny day

The title alone deserves its inclusion on this list, as it manages to sum up the entire raison d’être of the genre in one undeniably painful phrase. However, Harvey Williams, the young Werther of twee, deserves credit for his work as an ASD and as a guitarist with fellow Sarah Records stablemates The Field Mice.