BITTER SPRINGS, THE - (Suburban Crimes Of) Every Happiness (Sealed) (2LP)

A near-invisible presence on the margins of underground pop, Simon Rivers is well into his fourth decade of making sweet, powerful, crushing records. Weaving the messy threads of suburban life into dense tapestries, he has something of the Go-Betweens' gift for melody, something of Mark E Smith's ear for language, something of Vic Godard's common touch, and almost none of the acclaim that should have been his due. Boo hoo. Every Happiness should have been a word-of-mouth sensation when it was released, but one way or another there were no mouths, no words. The music papers had the Strokes and the Libertines to write about; the Bitter Springs - a bunch of shambling middle-aged men from the western fringes of London - stood no chance. "My songs are the things they leave out of history books," Rivers says with a shrug. "We never really fitted in with any musical movements. We were as outside of any industry as you could get. We were completely ignored by record labels. We really were the epitome of Independent DIY." "Since 1997, we had made an LP a year with great things expected for all of them and were always disappointed when we'd get barely a radio play and a couple of reviews," Rivers says. "I was always a bit down after each one, as they take a lot out of me personally. but I'd be: 'Fuck it: on to the next one that'll be better received'." When it came to Every Happiness, that certainly should have been the case. If previous Bitter Springs LPs could seem like random explosions of material, this one carried a more considered heft. Released the year Rivers turned 40, it was - deliberately or otherwise - a no-budget parallel to Pulp's midlife cry for help, This Is Hardcore; an infra-red goggled view through the darkness on the edge of town. "Grayson Perry was on the box last night and he had people send him pictures of the view from their windows during lockdown," Rivers reflected as COVID-19 washed over the UK. "They were all great, all different, and maybe that's a good analogy for this LP. Anyone else wouldn't be able to make it because, for all its merits and faults, it's what I see out of the window." The view, needless to say, is something else. Jim Rivers (excerpts from the album's 2020 liner notes) Every Happiness is as brilliant a "lost classic" as one could hope for. Equal parts storming anthems, introspective wonders and deranged bits of social observation. Released for the first time on vinyl and now expanded to more than 80 minutes, with "Under The Rainbow", a track only heard before on an obscure Spanish compilation album, which was built around what Simon describes as a "disused Kitchens Of Distinction backing track". 2019's The Odd Shower was the first Bitter Springs album to receive a vinyl release, and its public reception merited a look at back catalogue. The band's first pick was this, from the middle of their career. The band move in a dozen directions at once. The first tracks from the album, The Red Mist Descends and Muggers Take A Beating are a one-two punch that hold up against any pop music album's opening statement. Vlad The Inhaler, a Simon Rivers / Vic Godard co-write, isn't a million miles from his hip-hop influenced album, Sansend. But these are just a few wonders from one of independent music's best albums of the 21st century, even if many have yet to hear it.