50 albums to take to my grave #37: Lovely

Hands up who wasn't in love with Tracy of the Primitives circa 1988. Thought so. She defined every teenage indie boy's crush. That might have been part of the band's appeal, but the truth is, without the songs they would have languished in obscurity.

Only a handful of singles on their own label Lazy Records preceded their big money signing to RCA. Their first release of the new deal was the now classic Crash which opened their debut album 'Lovely'. What a way to start - a real rip-roaring ride; the brakes have failed and we're going to crash. Except that before we do, we hurtle through Spacehead, arguably the album's overall highlight. If you loved those early singles, you couldn't have hoped for a better opening.

It's not all fuzzy two-minute guitar thrashes though. Shadow is awash with sitars and tablas, a hippy-dippy excursion through the psychedelic turf once briefly so beloved by the flower children 20 years earlier, and perhaps a hint of what was to come (the so-called second summer of love was only a year and a bit away). Thru' The Flowers retains the blissful mood and still stands as one of the Prims' finest pop songs. Run Baby Run has guitars straight out of the Velvet Underground's third album; Don't Want Anything To Change is another dreamy 60s-charged pop tune; Carry Me Home and Buzz Buzz Buzz lend a rockabilly flavour with Paul Court taking lead vocal duties. And so on - fourteen (count 'em) wonderful examples of guitar pop that it is almost impossible to fault. 'Lovely' doesn't have a weak track on it, it's pretty close to being the perfect debut.

Dreamwalk Baby, Stop Killing Me and Nothing Left may all have that trademark buzz buzz buzz sound of those early singles, but 'Lovely' showed the band had some depth and the potential for great things. Yes, they did run out of steam and the media soon moved on to other things, but I maintain the two albums that followed 'Lovely' had some glorious moments on them. It's just a shame that pretty much everything that remains memorable to most people about the Primitives is contained on an outstanding debut album. But then, very few acts even have one record as good as this.






BONUS: Crash on Top Of The Pops. See how Tracy fondles the microphone stand, flirting incessantly with the camera. Imagine hormonal teenage boys watching that. No wonder it was such a massive hit!