Various – Too Good To Be True: The Very Best Of El Records 1985-1988 (Cherry Red)

Many legendary indie record labels (Sarah, Sub Pop, 4AD) are founded upon a certain aesthetic, but it was only eccentric A&R conceptualist Mike Alway’s playfully arch El Records that dared to be genuinely Aesthetic with a capital A.

Emerging in 1985 seemingly fully-formed like Athena from Zeus’s skull, this witty and most shamelessly indulgent of indie imprints offered a well-dressed alternative to the Alternative. It was a friendly arm offering directions to a quieter, jollier, more downright fabulous party where ‘The Prisoner’, ‘The Avengers’, Noel Coward and The Monochrome Set were far more influential than The Velvets or The Smiths.

Defiantly anti-fashion and pro-style, wry and well-dressed yet sincere and heartfelt, the El world is one of haughty cocktails and romantic references to Cecil Beaton (not least from both eternally catchy offerings by The Would-Be-Goods), a world where The Monochrome Set are always in the Top 10, of stunning sleeve designs influenced by obscure Sixties & Seventies Spanish bands, of outrageously florid liner notes by fictional Firbankian characters, mysterious and exotic groups that may or may not actually exist.

A bowtied Vic Godard croons the blissful easy-listening finger-clicker ‘Nice On The Ice’, while Shockheaded Peters growl their classic anti-reproduction cabaret chiller (and El’s plaudit-guzzling debut platter), ‘I Bloodbrother Be’. For me, this latter track remains one of the most remarkable and gripping singles ever released in any world regardless, real or unreal. Karl Blake’s beat-poet vocal twang prowling with zoot-suit scuffle-demons on bloodstained double-bass and brush drums, was surely forged in Hades itself rather than some obscure offshoot label of Cherry Red Records. It was like nothing else around at the time, and is still like nothing else around now. “Wanna walk through Sodom with a boy on my arm / Nothing out of our loins sweetie/Will ever see the light of day.”

Of all people, I have UK Riot Grrl pioneers Huggy Bear to thank for my introduction to El. They performed a startling version of ‘I Bloodbrother Be’ when supporting Sonic Youth and Pavement at an early Nineties Bristol gig. I was intrigued when a clued-up companion of mine filled me in on the provenance of this curious cover: “Well, you see, there was this label called El Records…”

The imprint may have run for a mere three years in the Eighties, but thanks to a gaggle of carefully themed compilations trickling out on CD ever since, of which this is the latest, the dust has never quite settled. Here’s prolix pervert Momus’s debut recordings ‘Nicky’ and ‘Circus Maximus’, updating Brel’s ‘Jackie’ and the Bible to make his own lasciviously reptilian post-graduate gushings against an exquisitely stark classical guitar. Jessica Griffin’s elegant pop guise The Would-Be-Goods anticipated The Divine Comedy’s suave besuited pre-chart period album ‘Promenade’ by some years – Neil Hannon as a very English Kensington girl reading Harpers Bizarre through a rainy Kings Road café window. Bad Dream Fancy Dress were El Records’s Shampoo (years before they existed): two overexcited shouty girls singing about curry and discos like a suburban sitcom Shangri-Las.

And yes, early Rough Trade pioneers The Monochrome Set are represented too, cruelly and bafflingly omitted from Simon Reynolds so-called ‘definitive’ book on postpunk, Rip It Up And Start Again. Well, behold their influence throughout this compilation. Their own fast and winning politico-pop stormer ‘Jet Set Junta’ nestles here alongside singer Bid’s gloriously giddy and graceful solo offering ,‘Love’ and Anthony Adverse’s full-on big band version of the Set’s priceless social satire ‘The Ruling Class’.

This searingly essential selection (featuring John Steed on the cover with bowler hat and umbrella hung over his champagne-brandishing arm – what else?) marks 25 years of Mr Alway conceiving the Idea – and indeed the Ideal - of El. And as Stephen Pastel reported in a recent Plan B, the good news is that El is back in 2006 as the most impressively idiosyncratic re-release label in the word, giving CD permanence to startling rarities by the sensational likes of Elizabeth Taylor (from a Sixties TV special), Twiggy, John Barry, Ennio Morricone, The Scaffold and The King’s Singers.

Glowing proof that while duller bands will always talk in cliches of ‘world domination’, it’s far more rewarding and fun to create a world of one’s own. Overlook El Records at your peril.