Editor’s Note: Our new, recurring “Albumism Recommends” series aims to shine a bright light on our favorite albums of the past, with an emphasis on the records that arguably never achieved the widespread or sustained attention they rightfully deserve. As you’ll see below, unlike our longer-form feature articles, we’ve intentionally kept the accompanying commentary to a minimum, so as to allow the great music to speak for itself.
We hope that you enjoy discovering (or rediscovering) these musical treasures and if you like what you hear, we encourage you to spread the good word far and wide so that others can experience these under-the-radar classics as well.
ARTIST: Salad
TITLE: Drink Me
RELEASED: May 15, 1995
LABEL: Island
NOTABLE TRACKS: “Drink The Elixir” | “Motorbike To Heaven” | “Your Ma”
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In hindsight, Britpop often seems to have been comprised of only a handful of the usual suspects—Oasis, Blur, Suede, Pulp, Elastica—but the genre actually included many more satellite acts, and several fronted by women. Salad was one such band to receive acclaim in the mid-’90s at Britpop’s zenith—their first spark of attention came after supporting Blur on tour in ’93—before eventually fading from mainstream consciousness by the end of the decade. Their best album from that era is arguably their 1995 full-length debut Drink Me (it made it to #16 on the UK album charts), though Salad recently re-formed and continue to put out music that deserves a listen.
Fronted by former MTV Europe veejay Marijne van der Vlugt, Salad paired the Dutch singer’s innocent, whispery, crystalline vocals with her English bandmates’ shimmery, soaring indie-pop. Unsurprisingly, Salad also had fantastic music videos—like the ’60s-inspired, James Bond-tinged “Motorbike To Heaven” and the camp, slightly Eurotrash “Drink The Elixir.” Then there’s “Granite Statue,” which served up a logoed, ultra-modern, tongue-in-cheek corporate aesthetic. (Each video is an artifact of a European indie-rock style and sensibility, which was different from the American ’90s aesthetic, and even British style at the time.)
As for the music itself, “Motorbike To Heaven” features a loud-quiet dynamic with soft-spoken interludes offset by jaunty, jangly guitar swells. There’s a sad, resigned quality to it (“I’m gonna drive my motorbike…to heaven”), followed by a manic, determined sunniness (“I’m gonna shine my bike instead”). (Its sound is similar to Dutch rockers Bettie Serveert, who also had a ’90s moment).
On the other hand, “Drink The Elixir” (“about a man who drank a young woman's pee,” says van der Vlugt) is a much more straightforward rocker, with a dance-y staccato groove and van der Vlugt’s mounting wails. “Granite Statue” is strutting and slightly avant-garde in its lyrics, and here again we get a juxtaposition between melancholy and happy, a bouncy determination to break down the stonewalling that’s calcified a romance.
Though Drink Me’s three main singles are definitely the album’s highlights, there are plenty more gems, like the folk-pop “Overhear Me,” the interior “Gertrude Campbell,” the wistful, grunge-y “Muscleman,” and the rumbly, punk-ified “Your Ma” about, yes, a racy sex scene with none other than your mama (“I’ve got a problem with someone’s mum / But she relieves me of my daily humdrum / And while I stand there taking off her dress…).
I bought Drink Me in high school knowing very little about the band, and it ended up being a fun, quirky surprise—an Alice In Wonderland rabbit hole I still enjoy going down today. “It was great to be creative and get away with it,” van der Vlugt recalls. “It was also quite an honor to have been part of Britpop since I am actually Dutch.”
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