Foetus

Gash
Sony, 1995

"The alternative boom of the early 90s reached a point of no return when someone, somewhere, thought J. G. Thirwell would fit at home on a major label", Victor W. Valdivia.

Gash is so dense – so full of impenetrable noise – that the disc feels as if it should weigh a tonne. The opening track, 'Mortgage', sounds like it was mixed together from field recordings of an old factory, with wheezing hydraulics and a cacophony of pistons. The lyrics are suicidal and the beat plodding, but there's also something beautiful about it. Who'd have thought a song could be made from such strangeness?

J. G. Thirwell is one of Australia's most eccentric expatriates. He left Melbourne for London in the late seventies with the likes of Nick Cave and settled in New York a decade later. Rather than varying album titles, Thirwell experimented with band names. Under monikers such as Foetus, You've Got Foetus On Your Breath, Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel and The Foetus All Nude Revue, he released umpteen albums with strictly four-letter titles: Hole, Nail, Deaf, Ache and so on.

Gash was one of Thirwell's creative peaks. 'Verklemmt', which translates into "emotional tension" in two languages and a type of sandwich in another, is the most accessible track. Mainly, because its pummelling rock melody hides the lyrical references to hepatitis and strangled chickens. On 'Slung', Thirwell trades in noise for a brass section and finger-clicking swing beat. Putting a twelve-minute swing track in the middle of an otherwise tortured, ear-shocking album might be ridiculous, if it wasn't so brilliant.

One of the most raucous moments of Thirwell's impulsive output, Gash was also the only one released on a major label. Keen to cash in on the mainstream success of Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, Sony looked to Foetus for another industrial hit. Unfortunately for them, deafening tracks like 'Take It Outside, Godboy' and 'Mighty Whity' didn't sell quite as well as the polished funk of 'Closer'. Thirwell was promptly dropped from the roster. Six years later, he would release a follow-up, Flow, which was just as good. The same couldn't be said of his aforementioned peers.

Pedro The Lion

Winners Never Quit
Jade Tree, 2000

It's a challenge to write about an artist so lyrically astute. David Bazan, the former junkie and born-again Christian behind Pedro The Lion, is more economical with words than most editors. On one song, 'Rapture', he captures the pace of hotel sex in a neat couplet without using either obvious word: “Gideon is in the drawer/ clothes scattered on the floor.”

Bazan has rarely earned praise from chic critics. By penning catchy, lo-fi pop songs about God and giving lectures on the intersections of music and belief, he became a pin-up boy for young Christians and dismissed by almost everyone else. His optimism soon wore off, though. When he began writing increasingly violent songs about hypocrisy, faith and politics, Bazan alienated many of his religious fans.

Winners Never Quit is the first and finest example of this. It's structured as a play told in three-minute acts of folk and indie-rock. The opening track is a fable of two brothers' journey "all the way to grandma's house" in which the victor, after following the narrow path, gives little regard to his lost sibling and eats both their meals. It provoked an interesting reaction on internet forums, where some fans missed Bazan's derision entirely and thought it a proper lesson on righteousness.

The rest of the album is less equivocal. Its climax is the black-humoured pairing of 'A Mind Of Her Own' and 'Never Leave A Job Half Done', describing the murder of woman and then the clean-up of her body. They're the album's two catchiest songs, set to its bloodiest and most cold-hearted scene. It's chilling how well Bazan embodies his characters. As a drunkard pleading with police, he implores “for a week I have been completely dry” in a drawl convincing enough to make seven days seem like an eternity.

After Winners Never Quit, Bazan's music became much darker, especially on its sequel Control. By the time he penned the protest song 'Backwoods Nation' about the US occupancy of Iraq (on Jade Tree sampler Location Is Everything 01), there wasn't a trace of hope left in his voice: "Calling all rednecks to put down their sluggers/ Pick up machineguns and kill camel-fuckers."

Paris

Sleeping With The Enemy
Scarface, 1992

Sleeping With The Enemy’s first single opens with a collage of quotes on the US-Iraq war. “The media had become part of the Bush administration,” opines one voice, while another describes invasion in terms of “the right stuff”. It’s easy to forget they were recorded more than a decade ago.

At a time when NWA were glamorising life in the slums, Paris – born Oscar Jackson, Jr – was well-educated and had a degree in economics. He rhymed "seditious" more often than "bitches" and sang, in a subtle dig at his peers and detractors, “I ain’t from Compton, I can’t be fucked around”. He mixed the outrage of groups like NWA and Public Enemy with even-darker beats and uncompromising politics, espousing revolution and explaining structures of economic inequality.

But such militancy didn’t help his career. Paris’s first single was banned by MTV and Sleeping With The Enemy was rejected by every label the artist approached, thanks to 'Bush Killa's graphic fantasies of executing the president and rat-tat-tat beats designed to simulate gunfire. His original label, Tommy Boy, even paid out his contract to get away from it. By the time the album was released – independently and late – political hip-hop was half-way down the throat of gangsta rap.

It’s a pity, because Paris was ahead of his time, drawing on funk- and rock-infused electric guitar loops and beats later familiar to drum’n’bass (thanks to a young DJ Shadow assisting with production). His rhymes and rally cries matched the very best of political rap – arguably Public Enemy’s 'By The Time I Get To Arizona' – and his records are still sampled here and there, most recently by indie stars The Go! Team on 'Huddle Formation'.

After gangsta shot its way to the top of the hip-hop food chain, Paris traded his ‘outraged oppressed’ persona for a job as a stockbroker and nowadays the genre is swamped with bling, bitches and booty. But for a while, hip-hop was both aurally and intellectually exhilarating. When The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy got around to releasing the well-intentioned 'Television...' a few years later, they couldn’t help but sound cheesy in comparison.

Spiritualized

Let It Come Down
Spaceman / Arista, 2001

For Jason Pierce, heaven is made of puns and used syringes. Early in his career, as half of droning psych-pop duo Spacemen 3, he thought he’d already found it. On 'Walking With Jesus' he described chatting with the son of God, realising his hedonistic, drug-soaked utopia was sinful and then freaking out at the prospect of not making it into the real heaven. “’Cause if heaven’s like this,” he mused while stoned, “then that’s the place for me.”

Of course, there’s always the coming down. For Pierce, no morning after was heavier than his break-up with girlfriend and Spiritualized keyboardist Kate Radley, who went on to marry The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft. Broken-hearted and finding warmth only in “my spike and my spoon”, Pierce created a masterpiece of dream-pop, gospel and apocalyptic jazz, Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, which beat OK Computer to become NME’s album of 1997.

For his next record, four years later, Pierce swore to do something totally different. Instead, he took some drugs, fired most of his band members, hired 120 studio musicians and made something remarkably similar: Let It Come Down. It’s a re-make in almost every way. The alternation of genres at particular points is virtually identical, though the sentiment is more pleasant and less tortured, though also less visionary.

The album’s biggest number is 'Out Of Sight'. Depending on taste, it sounds like an orchestra successfully simulating a drug high or, as an ex-girlfriend once described it, “a Kahmal show-tune”. Pierce lets his circular wordplay run wild, looping puns over the bombast of horns and harmonica: “I was just looking for some peace of mind/ but I just couldn’t find a piece of mine…”

The charm of a record so indulgent is that every note is infused with its creator. Pierce trumpets defeatist wit like an ethos for living, but sings with the conviction of the second coming. There’s something wonderful about a self-aggrandised rock star who pens sappy love songs and prayers to God while offering the following advice to his peers: “If you’ve got the money for a rehab cure/ you ain’t got a problem you can’t afford.”