Over the course of 1990, while Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer poisoned American radio, Black Tambourine sat down and wrote eight songs in sympathy with the British noise pop they admired from afar. Few American bands have been capable of incorporating the 'Mary Chain wall of sound without coming off as funereal poseurs, but in Black Tambourine's case, the Psychocandy influence was tempered by a love for nascent UK twee-pop bands like Talulah Gosh and the Pastels. These two influences are equally distributed in Black Tambourine's music: princess-in-the-tower vocals retell lonely daydreams over fuzzy guitars and mightily reverbed drums.

Complete Recordings opens appropriately with the band's most accomplished song, "For Ex-Lovers Only," their perfect combination of post-punk toms and 4AD atmospheres. Imagine Ride's first EPs with Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier on vocals. And from the start of a ballad like "Black Car," you're spinning under the sun, staring up through trees-- the word "shoegazer" was a jab at insecure musicians; it made no sense if you actually listened to the music. Though the tempo of the song betrays Galaxie 500's influence on the proceedings, the sounds are decidedly British. "By Tomorrow" crops up as a sister-song to "Black Car" later in the record.

The only low-points here are "Drown," a dancing-days swinger that comes off a tad hokey, and a less-than-rousing cover of Love's "Can't Explain" fashioned exactly like My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything material. Poor drumming on "We Can't Be Friends" detracts from the song's otherwise catchy seashore promise. And two notably American-styled cuts-- "Pack You Up" and "Throw Aggi Off the Bridge"-- provide a glimpse at the direction band members Brian Nelson and Archie Moore were about to move in on Velocity Girl's Copacetic LP.

The record closes with an odd instrumental snippet called "Pam's Tan," a single melody played messily for a minute. It first appeared on the 1989 Slumberland compilation What Kind of Heaven Do You Want? It could be anyone-- it hardly mattered at the time of the comp's release-- but knowing in retrospect that you're listening to Black Tambourine's earliest work, it's a fond memory whether you were there for the original releases or not.

This new compilation, alongside Velocity Girl's early material, provides a glimpse back at a more innocent time in indie rock, when a group of young musicians realized there was an audience for their low-budget dream-pop records. Until that point, the underground was a mostly dirty place, full of political punk rockers and grubby garage bands-- only K had dared release a handful of pure pop, twee records. With the cross-coast emergence of bands from the mid-Atlantic coast, the pre-Internet early 1990s brought to light a frantic and involved group of melodic rock bands like veterans Unrest and Superchunk.

If there's any justice, Black Tambourine will see their name inserted into revisionist histories of American independent rock. Though their existence was laughably short, the band concocted a great sound out of step with even their peers, pointing the way for a string of female-fronted underground bands formed soon after their demise.

-Chris Ott