VA - C85 (2022)

Following the success of the three-disc compilation, ‘The Sun Shines Here’ (which documented the roots of Indie Pop from 1980-84), the prequel to C86, C85 combines “name” bands with many obscurities making their debut on CD. Several acts on C85 would eventually feature on that NME’s C86 collection: Primal Scream, The Wedding Present, the Mighty Lemon Drops, etc, who all had singles released in 1985.

Back in 1986, the NME’s latest mail-order cassette, C86, captured the latest trends in Indie music, inspired by the C81 tape from half a decade earlier. C86 became the NME’s best-selling compilation, selling an estimated 40,000 copies and eventually being re-issued on LP and cassette by Rough Trade the following year. Fast forward to 2014, the triple-CD edition celebrated the cult status of C86, which had come to embody a whole style of indie guitar music with 50 extra tracks.

C85 bridges the gap between ‘The Sun Shines Here’ and ‘C86’, opening with undoubtedly the most vital British breakthrough band of that year in The Jesus & Mary Chain and closing with the debut from a band who’d have to wait several years for their chance, The Stone Roses. Along the way, we hear many key records by the likes of post-Undertones band That Petrol Emotion (their blistering debut ‘Keen’), The Woodentops, James, Del Amitri, The Housemartins (their debut ‘Flag Day’) and a then largely unknown Happy Mondays (again represented by their first single). Where discs one and two reflect the predominant indie pop sound with which C86 was most closely associated, disc 3 acknowledges the harder, more angular sounds of that era (encapsulated by the bands on the Ron Johnson label).

Alongside band biographies for every track is an introductory essay by one-time NME scribe Neil Taylor, the original co-compiler of C86 and author of the book C86 And All That. In short, C85 is essential for any fan of 80s independent music.