Forgotten 90s Bands That Should’ve Been Huge

Genre: Shoegaze/Dream Pop

Lush were basically the musical equivalent of lying in a field, stoned, watching the sky melt. Ethereal vocals, walls of sound, a sense of melancholy so sharp it could pierce Kevlar. They pioneered shoegaze before ditching it for Britpop just as the genre imploded like a soggy soufflé.

I remember hearing Sweetness and Light for the first time and feeling like someone had plugged a dream directly into my ears. Their 1996 album Lovelife is a sugary dagger to the heart, and their earlier work like Spooky and Split practically demands a vinyl resurrection. The documentary? “Fade In, Fade Out: The Rise and Blur of Lush”– ideally narrated by Jarvis Cocker while chain-smoking.

Genre: Space Rock/Alt Rock

A band called Failure releasing an album called Fantastic Planet in 1996 was always going to confuse people. They made brooding, cinematic space rock that sounded like it was beamed in from a dying star. Too dark for grunge, too clever for the masses and entirely uninterested in smiling in promo shots. A worthy entry in to this forgotten 90s bands list.

I still play Stuck on You when I want to wallow in beautiful existential despair. Their cult status has aged better than most of their contemporaries, and a reissue of Fantastic Planet with a bonus disc of existential dread would go down a treat. The doc? Something bleak, dusty and narrated by a robot slowly losing the will to live.

Genre: Low Rock/Jazz-Rock

Morphine made music that sounded like someone playing saxophone in a coffin. No guitar, just a two-string bass, baritone sax and the voice of a man who’s definitely done time for arson. Their music was smoky, sensual and weirdly addictive, like if Tom Waits moved to Boston and joined a jazz-noir biker gang.

I once tried to explain Cure for Pain to a friend as “music for drinking alone in a jazz club that only exists in purgatory.” Mark Sandman died on stage in 1999, which is darkly poetic and also one of the most Morphine things imaginable. A proper remastering is overdue and their doc should be black-and-white, narrated by someone who sounds like they’ve smoked gravel.

Genre: Alt Rock/Soul Rock

Greg Dulli’s band of romantic miscreants blended soul, grunge and a deep well of personal shame into something genuinely unique. Listening to Gentlemen feels like waking up hungover in someone else’s motel room, with lipstick on your shirt and no recollection of how you got there.

They were brooding, theatrical and emotionally unwell in a way that felt thrilling rather than performative. I used to blast Debonair during breakups just to feel something. Remaster Black Love, stitch together old camcorder footage and slap together a documentary called “Cigarettes, Confessions and Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms.”

Genre: Shoegaze/Alt Rock

If you took the emotion of Slowdive, added the muscle of Smashing Pumpkins and dunked it in petrol, you’d get Catherine Wheel. Their albums Ferment and Chrome are shoegaze-adjacent classics that deserve way more than being remembered by blokes on Reddit.

I remember discovering them via a dodgy mix CD someone made in university. Their sound just swallowed me whole. Reissue everything with embossed covers and a Spotify visualiser that looks like a lava lamp having a stroke. Their doc? Full of ’90s footage of men in oversized T-shirts whispering about guitar pedals and heartbreak.

Genre: Shoegaze/Motorik Rock

Shoegaze for petrolheads. Swervedriver made road music for the emotionally unavailable. Raise and Mezcal Head are criminally ignored records, filled with shimmering guitar textures and lyrics about cars, deserts and dread.

I once tried listening to Duel on a motorway and nearly missed my exit from sheer euphoria. Their sound was like My Bloody Valentine on Red Bull, which might be why the industry didn’t know what to do with them. Bring back the back catalogue and give us a slow-burn doc called “Too Fast to Care.”

Genre: Psychedelic Folk/Electronica/Alt Rock

Once famously proclaimed by John Cusack to guarantee five sales with a single spin in High Fidelity, The Beta Band were just too weird to live. Their music was part folk, part trip-hop, part “is this a malfunctioning Radiohead remix?” and that was their charm.

I remember playing their Three EPs compilation at a party once and watching the room collectively wonder if they were having a stroke, it reminded me a bit of that scene from the record shop in High Fidelity. They were experimental in the way most bands only pretend to be. Give us reissues with deliberately confusing liner notes and a documentary that’s one part acid trip, one part mockumentary, one part existential crisis.

Genre: Britpop/Post-Punk

Everyone remembers Connection because it sounded like the audio equivalent of a migraine in a nightclub toilet. But Elastica were better than that. They injected punk sneer into Britpop’s otherwise anorak-clad smugness, with Justine Frischmann fronting the band like she’d headbutt you for fun.

Their debut album is 38 minutes of snarling brilliance, filled with hooks, bile and Wire riffs stolen with such blatant audacity it was practically a tribute. I’ve still got the cassette somewhere, probably warped from overplay. A doc featuring catty Britpop anecdotes and Gallagher shade would be essential viewing.

Honourable Mentions (AKA: “How Was THIS Not Massive?”)

The Auteurs – Luke Haines’ cynical snarling soundtrack to every dinner party breakdown. Imagine if Morrissey actually read books and hated the music industry even more.

Gene – Doomed by comparison to The Smiths, which is unfair. Their frontman had pipes, the songs had punch and Olympian still sounds like a beautiful nervous breakdown.

PJ Harvey (Band Era) – Before she became a Mercury-dominating solo genius, she was fronting a raw, rage-fuelled trio that made Rid of Me sound like an exorcism performed in a public loo.

Soul Coughing – Jazz-funk-hip-hop poetry from a man who sounded like a malfunctioning airport tannoy. Think Tom Waits remixed by Beck. Criminally overlooked.

Shudder to Think – Imagine Queen got signed to Dischord Records and started doing math-rock opera. Equal parts genius and complete nonsense. Should have been enormous. Weren’t.

The Grifters – Lo-fi Southern sleaze filtered through a haze of tape hiss and regret. Like Pavement, but sweatier and less amused by themselves.

Quickspace – Psychedelic noise-pop that sounded like it was being broadcast from inside a malfunctioning lava lamp. Mad and magnificent.

That Dog – Violin-infused power pop with whip-smart lyrics and just enough bitterness to rot your teeth. A band so ahead of their time they lapped the timeline.

Rialto – Orchestral Britpop melodrama, too earnest for the sarcasm-soaked ’90s. Their debut was majestic. Nobody cared. Typical. still a worthy mention in this forgotten 90s bands list.

Brainiac – Synth-punk chaos merchants who made Nine Inch Nails look like Enya. Their frontman died before they could truly explode. Imagine a doc that makes The Devil and Daniel Johnston look like a rom-com.

My Final Thoughts: Forget the Reunions, Give Us the Archives

We don’t need another Blur reunion with holographic park benches. What we need are the deep cuts. The bands who weren’t photogenic enough for Kerrang!, or didn’t fit the Britpop narrative, or simply released their magnum opus six weeks after Kurt Cobain died.

Give us the reissues. The 180g vinyl. The boxed sets that weigh more than a human child. The documentaries with handheld camera footage, bruised egos and someone confessing they once punched a bassist over a snare sound.

Because nostalgia’s already being sold back to us, might as well make it the good stuff.