25 Years Of 4AD

Decorate the cake, wrap up the presents and prepare that fireworks display. 4AD is twenty-five, and there is no shortage of past and forthcoming exciting events to mark the esteemed indie imprint’s first quarter of a century in the business of moulding the musical landscape. 

Together with a series of exciting gigs featuring the likes of Mark Kozelek rolling out a whole set of teary-eyed Red House Painters fare, Kim Deal taking time out from the her Pixies duties to get busy with the Breeders, Kirstin Hersh revisiting the Throwing Muses songbook, there’s also the release of '1980 Forward', a new mid-price compilation featuring 18 carefully selected golden greats from 4AD’s veritable back catalogue -released  on November 21. As if that wasn't enough the label have put on a series of exclusive sessions from 4AD artists on BB6 Music. 
     
Twenty-five years might not be much of a ripe old age in general record company terms – the three-letter abbreviation favouring major label likes of EMI and RCA have, after all, been touting their wares for something in the region of gazillion years – but it’s a remarkable achievement for an independent label that’s always proudly placed quality and distinction ahead of commerce. 

These days, record labels are merging into a few near-identical gigantic corporations operating under the auspices of even more humongous entertainment conglomerates with fingers in everything from publishing to movie production at an ever-accelerating speed. This process, coupled with a diversity-annihilating, unflinching focus on the bottom line, has pretty much removed risk-taking and innovation from the process of releasing music, a few honourable fringe exceptions notwithstanding. In the musically fertile post-punk days of 1980, however, there was still ample room for defiantly independent labels with a strong sense of identity in both musical and visual terms.

The likes of Postcard and Factory might not have made much of a dent in the stratospheric profits of their larger colleagues, but what they lost in commercial terms to the publicity machinery of the majors was generously compensated for in the kind of forward-gazing, genre-hopping, influential innovation their acts excelled in. Few of them bothered the upper echelons of the charts on a regular basis, but the continuing relevance of the best bands from this era is more pronounced than ever in the mishmash sounds of today’s top-ranking pandemonium-peddlers.

Alone among its contemporaries, 4AD is still going strong, and the label has come a long way since an irate phone call from a publishing company that shared the label’s original handle prompted a hasty switch of title from Axis to the label’s current iconic moniker, tailored from the heading ‘1980 Forward’ on a promotional flyer with a bit of typographic trickery. 4AD’s initial roster operated primarily in the chuckle-resistant pre-Goth zone tilted precariously between the atmospheric angst of Joy Division and the grim, dry ice-drenched gloom that the cavernous perma-frown style of bands like Bauhaus would eventually mutate into. A worrying direction, perhaps, but adding the likes of the Birthday Party and Lydia Lunch, although both acts were undoubtedly equally enamoured with all things nocturnal and nasty, to the roster in 1982 added vast quantities of substance, macabre humour and infernal racket to the fledging label’s expanding catalogue. Equally important were the entrances of designer Vaughan Oliver, whose stylish sleeve designs quickly landed 4AD with a distinctive visual identity, and who continues to be in charge of the label’s art direction to this day, and the Cocteau Twins, whose beguiling mixture of ethereal atmospherics, post-punk guitars and Elizabeth Frazer’s wordless, otherworldly vocals soon turned them into the most celebrated act on the 4AD roster – and something of an epitome of the kind of intense, artful sounds the label was striving to champion.

The rest of the 1980’s included several landmarks for 4AD. First full-time employees were hired to assist founder Ivo Watts-Russell in running the label in 1982, whilst This Mortal Coil, initially envisaged as little beyond a low-key 4AD all-stars covers project, outgrew its humble origins by landing the label with it’s first minor hit, an Elizabeth Frazer-helmed rendition of Tim Buckley’s evergreen ‘Song To The Siren’, in 1983. The accidental nature of 4AD’s first taste of mainstream success was prescient, as the label’s first bona fide smash hit, their biggest to this day, 1987’s sample-happy global chart-topper ‘Pump Up The Volume’, was also the result of a short-lived, spontaneous collaboration, on this best-selling occasion between AR Kane and Colourbox under the banner M/A/R/R/S. The enormously successful dancefloor-bound single, alongside world music-pioneering albums of traditional Bulgarian folk songs delivered by the Women’s Choir of Bulgarian State Radio under the banner of Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, saw 4AD diversify its roster by inching away from a menu consisting exclusively of guitar-toting outfits.

The real bombshell of the label’s first ten years, however, arrived in the shape of fierce quartet from US. Rhode Island’s Throwing Muses, 4AD’s first US signing, had already inserted some much-needed fresh verve and ideas into increasingly bland and generic guitar rock, but it was the infectious melt of ferocious punk rock energy and unashamed pop chops of the Pixies that really set the tongues of those in the know wagging, with the whole of music press and John Peel both quickly won over by the Boston Juggernaut. But despite all the superlative-laden acclaim, the Pixies failed to set the charts alight, although avowed fan Kurt Cobain managed to appropriate both the band’s quiet-loud dynamics and chief songwriter Charles Thompson’s, a.k.a. Black Francis’, a.k.a. Frank Black’s bloodcurdling screams in Nirvana’s output with the well-known world-conquering consequences just as the originators themselves were disintegrating amidst inter-band bickering and the demoralising effects of fearsomely industrious tour schedules.

The 1990’s were leaner times for 4AD. The Pixies threw in the towel just as the grunge sound they’d helped to originate was reaching its peak commercial clout, and the label’s artful, stylish direction seemed like an anachronism from an earlier, largely extinct era amidst the Britpop party’s fug of excess, although Lush managed to capture the relentlessly cheery mood of the times with the Jarvis Cocker duet ‘Ciao!’. Rather than join in on the fickle fun, the label kept at what its core competencies, and when Britpop eventually fizzled out 4AD’s reputation remained untarnished by bandwagon-jumping and embarrassingly inept signings. During the nineties, 4AD signed a sales-enhancing US distribution deal with Warner Brothers Records, landed a massive hit with the insanely catchy ‘Cannonball’ and its Steve Albini-produced parent album Last Splash by ex-Pixie Kim Deal’s new band the Breeders in 1995, and added fine new chapters to their illustrious canon with a string of strong records from Mark Kozelek’s San Francisco slo-mo sadcore mopers Red House Painters, Iceland’s nine-piece multimedia collective Gus Gus and the sparse Americana stylings of Mojave 3 and Tarnation.

The last five years have seen 4AD embrace the era of the retrospective by repackaging gems from label’s back catalogue, and compilations from, among others, the Birthday Party, Red House Painters and Cocteau Twins (a 4-CD box set from the much-missed band is to be released shortly), as well as all-star anthologies such as the brand-new 1980 Forward, have landed in the record racks. Some old favourites have also returned with aplomb, among them the Breeders with 2002’s Title TK (after a mere seven years’ absence), former Belly frontwoman Tanya Donelly, chief Throwing Muse Kristin Hersh with her much-acclaimed new band 50 Foot Wave and, most significantly, the Pixies. After endless rumours followed by increasingly less convincing ‘never-will-happen’ denials, the band patched up their differences to play triumphant gigs in front of their biggest audiences ever in 2004. Far from a cynical cash-in on former glories, for many commentators’ ears the matured band was tighter, fiercer, better than ever on these reunion outings. There’s even been talk of a new album to capitalise on the band’s ever-expanding audience’s demand for new material, but until then the 2003 best of Waves of Mutilation will have to do.

Not content with merely gazing backwards, 4AD has naturally also continued working with fresh talent. The electro tones of Magnetophone and Lisa Gerrard’s (Dead Can Dance) soundtrack to the popular independent film Whale Rider from New Zealand have catapulted 4AD to previously uncharted musical territory, whilst the two most recent US acts to sign on the dotted line of a 4AD contract, Blonde Redhead and TV On The Radio, both of whom perform live as part of the label’s 25th birthday celebrations, are a proof of rock’s continuing capacity for invention, ambition, artfulness and uniqueness. As such they are perfect fodder for the 4AD portfolio, as is another recent addition to the roster, the legendary existential crooner Scott Walker. Whether the famously reclusive singer, whose work-rate makes the recent release schedule of Kate Bush look positively hectic by comparison, manages to complete a new album before 4AD’s 50th birthday bash is due remains to be seen.