The Wallflowers

 

Hard enough being the son of a legend but then your music becomes so associated with a certain era (mid-90s rootsy rock) that it's hard to be seen/heard for the consistently good songwriter you are.

Wall Of Voodoo

Wall of Voodoo were a quirky LA band, with strange synth sounds and Stan Ridgway's warbly voice.  Ridgway left after 2 albums and was replaced by Andy Prieboy, but success eluded them and they lasted just 2 more albums. Ridgway has continued his solo career right up until today.

Skinny Puppy

Hey, it's Halloween soon, right? So, the Big Three of industrial - Ministry, out of Chicago, melding hard rock guitar into their martial beats; Belgium's Front 242, making cold Euro-centric music for the dancefloor; and then Skinny Puppy, Canadians who occasionally rocked, occasionally had a 4/4 danceable song, but more often, they worked in cacophony, purveyors of noise, with the odd hint of melody here and there. Endless soundscapes for dystopian times!

Del Amitri

 

 

Del Amitri are a band from Scotland who started in the early '80s, an unfashionable folk-rock-pop group who scored a minor hit in 1989 with "Kiss This Thing Goodbye." Their sound was just right for the '90s, though, and their biggest hits "Always The Last To Know" and "Roll To Me" fit perfectly beside bands like Counting Crows and The Wallflowers.

Singer/songwriter Justin Currie has perfected that slightly rustic acoustic guitar/organ sound, with occasional strings, that always feels like sitting on the back porch while the Autumn leaves fall. He is second to none in whatever subgenre that is.

Pseudo Echo

 

 

Pseudo Echo were an Australian band whose first release was a lush synth album with a sound similar to Ultravox or Visage. It was a minor hit in their home country and was quickly followed up by a similar-sounding album, Love An Adventure, which became a huge hit. Their record label then made them re-record the catchiest tunes from those 2 albums in a more direct pop rock style, adding a cover of the '70s hit Funky Town. The result was released internationally as Love An Adventure and became a huge hit.

Their next album, Race, leaned more into the pop rock sound but the label did no promotion for it outside their native land and they broke up a couple years later. They reemerged nearly a decade later, returning to a synth pop sound and have played their homeland sporadically ever since.

Then Jerico

Then Jerico will probably be of interest to people into "The Big Music" - if only they had emerged a couple years earlier, they would've fit in perfectly with 1984-era Waterboys, Big Country, Simple Minds, U2.

Icicle Works

Ian McNabb & Co. With his latest release, McNabb has been releasing albums for 40 years!