Another Sunny Day, "Genetic Engineering"

Another Sunny Day was an excellent Sarah Records roster member. One of my favorites, frankly, though they only ever released a grip of singles and EPs, all of which were collected, in 1992, for a compilation titled London Weekend. Delicate, brittle guitar-led indie pop that fit snugly next to other dealers of twee melancholia like the Field Mice, Hit Parade, the Sea Urchins.

Take a quick jaunt through their discography. It's satisfying and equalizing, calming. When you're done, survey that scene at large with a skim through some of Sarah's excellent mixes, like Glass Arcade and Air Balloon Road.

But it's their cover of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's "Genetic Engineering" that led me to write this post in the first place, so I should touch on that briefly. I think I picked it as the starting point because it's so unexpected considering their sound and disposition, and, as a rattling, crunchy mess of wall-of-sound distortion and dissonance, quite a reinterpretation of the original. (The flip, on the other hand, is another unexpected choice, a sensitive, gentle take on the Bee Gees' "Kilburn Towers," one of their earliest—and most psychedelic—tunes.)