VELVET THUNDER

Go back, if you will, in your musical time machine to sometime around the late 80s early 90s……a time when ‘Indie’ hadn’t really been fully defined as a genre, The Smiths and their ilk were gone, and a new batch of small bands were vying for a piece of the pop music pie. With Acid House ‘larging it’ all over the country, guitar music was about to get a brand-new set of heroes. The House of Love; My Bloody Valentine and The Sundays were the coolest new kids on the block. Manchester, or Madchester, was kicking off again with the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, who along with Primal Scream were about to launch the indie dance craze ‘baggy’. And a bunch of small venues with new promoters, new record labels and new journos were going to spread the word. Things were thriving.

Along with the aforementioned ‘baggy’ we got the Camden Lurch, Shoegaze, Fraggle and whatever other labels the music press decided to dream up; and nestled amongst the list of Indie hopefuls were Blur and Suede (with Justine Frischmann later of Elastica on guitar). Big names now, but in those heady times before Britpop (1989 – 1992) just another couple of bands playing the indie circuit like everyone else and looking to get noticed. Blur did, though it would be a few years before Suede would. But in between were many who caught the eyes and ears, some would live on, and some would burn bright before fizzling out. Though it could be argued that every one of them helped create what was to come.

One of those shining brightly but briefly was Honey Smugglers….. A band whose place in that crazy but pivotal time before Britpop is only now slowly being revealed thanks to a series of extensive compilations of that era by Cherry Red Records – they’ve featured in no less than six of them! Honey Smugglers happily rubbed shoulders with the likes of Blur, Suede, Dodgy and Levitation (Ex House of Love guitarist Terry Bickers’ new band) without sounding like any of them – an uber-tight organ-driven music machine that mixed pop, groove and a lot of psychedelia into a bunch of catchy, inventive, eclectic and very English songs, they were un-pigeonholeable at a time when everyone was looking for a pigeon to hole!

Notwithstanding this, Honey Smugglers did enjoy plenteous rave press reviews and copious airplay from the likes of John Peel and Gary Crowley, and were a band more than capable of taking their place on the stages of the dozens of indie venues which thrived across the UK at the turn of the 90’s. And they had their fans too…

“The Honey Smugglers were such an important band when Dodgy were getting our shit together. They were dead cool and in the scene that we wanted to be in“. (Matthew Priest, from Dodgy);

“I loved the Honey Smugglers, that awesome groove and organ swirl. Saw them many times from London to Brighton and Paris. Great nights, wonderful music” (Jo Bartlett, It’s Jo and Danny, also co-founder of the Green Man Festival);

“It was a sonic kind of honey being imbibed by audiences during the halcyon days of the early 90’s, and if the creators cannot be here in person, then let this comfort you…listen, it’s not the sound of dying“(Tara Milton, 5:30); and

“A melange of great tunes, oddball words and perfectly in sync with the prevailing zeitgeist of swirling organ and shuffling drums. What grabbed me most was Chris Spence’s voice – at once both fragile and powerful, unique yet utterly listenable” (Ben Wardle,Warner Bros, A&R, and muso author).

Although the Smugglers released a couple of EPs, rapturously received, for whatever reason they sadly never delivered an album….until now, a mere thirty-five years later, we finally have So Far, the Honey Smugglers’ long-lost debut album – and it’s pretty impressive!

This is the summation of the three years writing, rehearsing, recording and gigging that they did between 1988-1991, and many of the songs will be familiar to anyone who saw one or more of the 125 gigs they performed at this time (not a bad work-rate!). Sadly, they split before the album could be released, but the band are still fondly remembered as stalwarts of a vibrant indie scene.

The twelve tracks on So Far were carefully chosen and sequenced by the band as the best representation of their achievements, and what comes across is the sheer diversity of their song-writing and performance. The song-set opens with a pure slice of melodic English guitar pop in She Doesn’t Know (see the video below), very reminiscent to me of The Seahorses, the alt-rock but still very Britpop-ish band formed in 1996 by guitarist John Squire after his departure from The Stone Roses. The similarity continues in that The Seahorses too were briefly great before splitting up. Mind you, the Seahorses were from Manchester while Honey Smugglers were from London, so maybe the similarity does end there! Either way, this is a great opening track, lots of jingle-jangle guitar, sadly over all too soon – an apt metaphor for this band?

Blind is the first of several vivid urban stories worthy of Ray Davies, years before Blur would hitch a ride on that particular wagon. Lots of 60’s flavour guitar tones beefed up with a strident organ sound, followed by another dose of VERY 60’s dreamy sunny afternoon pop in Good Afternoon. And maybe it was those late 60’s / early 70’s vibes that hampered the band in the less innocent mood of 1990? Certainly the swirling organ notes, almost hippy-ish lyrics and semi-spoken singing style conjure up something from an earlier, simpler time. There’s certainly more than a touch of psychedelia to this one with its mantra-like lyrics, Doors-like keyboard sound and ‘thin’ guitar lines

Greatest Lovers is a fragile song, languid and laid-back, a luscious yet sparse arrangement that seems to hark back to that earlier time of “free love”, before it winds up into another freaky psychedelic conclusion that again reeks of Jim Morrison and The Doors. Shake Free continues the gently wacky, psych-pop mood, a tinny but funky, bubbly arrangement. This keys-led rhythm drags the song from Sergeant Pepper era Beatles to something more definitely 90’s (complete with manic shrieking at the end!)

Sad Parade is another track very much in the wacky early70’s mode, lyrics including the singer losing himself “in a blade of grass still damp from 1973”, a repetitive mantra of subversion / cultural revolution? Next up is Listen, their best-known song, for the first time on record being the original and definitive six-minute version of this indie dancefloor filler. It’s great, imagine a swirling full-on “in-yer-head” epic blend of the Charlatans and the Stone Roses, with a dose of Inspiral Carpets and The Doors thrown in – keep still to this if you dare!

Rocking Horse comes in with a quite scarey snatch of nursery rhyme before the psych-pop vibe kicks back in. I’m still amazed at the vocal similarity between Chris Spence and The Seahorses’ Chris Helme! The organ and (I think) tinny guitar get progressively more frantic on this one, not sure it’s their strongest moment. Mrs C follows, showing how the band’s sound is getting progressively slightly heavier, darker, less psych-pop more early Brit-pop? The guitar is getting beefier, the organ less prominent and more a background synth? Which is not to say this isn’t a good track, it’s very catchy in a more sardonic 90’s way.

Stay drifts in, sounding even more like the Doors, a mix of dreamy melody, a jarring multi-layered chorus, the main arrangement is nicely sparse to begin, echoey guitar notes drifting through the mix abetted by a laid-back keyboard base, the whole thing being a more drawn-out affair than their earlier, taut, three-minute jobs. Chris Spence could do a cracking take of Jim Morrison if he wanted to!

Apple Tree is another urban tale, shades of Ray Davies and even more so Blur (think Park Life). It’s gone before you know, a mere 2:21 mins, edgy. The set closes with another more expansive chunk of psychedelia in No, with more edgy lyrics about destruction, again Blur-like but with added bite, the organ again receding in the background with abrasive guitar work much more up front – and that perhaps illustrates the band’s gradual switch from light-weight poppyness to something altogether darker, more psychedelic with attitude. An odd one to finish this compilation with, but given the specific track order chosen by the band, perhaps this consciously underlines their gradual metamorphosis / increasing frustration with the industry?’

The album is without doubt a rewarding listen, and revealing of a band that had one foot firmly in the Pop scene (they knew how to write a good tune) and the other in a more musically expansive world, thanks to their collective musicianship and singer/guitarist Chris’s singular lyrics and melodies, the Smugglers were of their time but in many ways ahead of it too, as the arrival of Britpop a few years later would testify. So, like anything worthwhile, it is never too late to lend it an ear – even if it has taken 35 years to get to yours!

Released by UltraMarine Recordings, on CD and Digital on October 10th 2025, the tracks were recorded between 1989 and 1991 at various studios (Raezor Studios, Bark Studio & Protocol Studio, and now remastered by Pete Maher.