A couple of years ago, Calvin Harris came out with ‘Acceptable in the 80s‘, a song that seemed to collate every single jaw-clenchingly bad cliche from that decade – flatulent bass, tacky synthetic synthesiser, a bad impersonation of Bowie vocals, drum machines – and turned it into something that was pretty good. In a knowing, ironic, aren’t I clever type way.

Well, who’d have known it? The ’80s appear to have become cool again. Critically esteemed (ahem) acts like Keane, The Killers and The Ting Tings have blasted away the prejudice against that most disdained of musical eras. I’d say David Cameron is rubbing his hands with glee.

It was bound to happen. After Franz Ferdinand, LCD Soundsystem, The Libertines, Bloc Party, The Rapture et al had mined the gold seam of post-punk, and !!! (pronounced “Chk Chk Chk”, I’m told) had brought us all the way up to 1981, there was nowhere else to go. So now, the ’80s are fashionable. And here is your prime exponent – Australian band Cut Copy.

Their album, In Ghost Colours, is getting very high ratings on MetaCritic, PitchFork, rateyourmusic and other places of interest to the taste-setters. Reviewers are saying things like “glossy optimism” (Prefix magazine), “a triumph of craftsmanship rather than vision” (Allmusic), and “shimmering retro-electro-disco” (Filter).

I first heard the song ‘Lights & Music’ on the soundtrack to the excellent FIFA 09, a frankly unputdownable soccer game that has had me hide my copy of Pro Evolution Soccer for the first time ever. While I have tried to build Tottenham into a Champions League-winning side, this song, along with MGMT’s ‘Kids’, has been the soundtrack to my inconsistent season, forming a backdrop to me shouting at Gareth Bale for not covering the left-back space like I just told him.

Anyway, back to ‘Lights & Music’. The song starts of in a very similar vein to the aforementioned ‘Kids’, before a nice little bassline bubbles in. A ghostly synthscape shimmers in the background, along with some trebly guitar. The rhythm section sounds like commercial Gang of Four with the volume turned down. A disembodied ‘Aaahh’ voice acts as harmony, as it builds up to the chorus.

And when you hit the chorus, it might as well be 1985. There is no Internet, only an Amstrad CPC 464; your hair appears to have gotten longer at the back, and shorter at the front; Liverpool are winning absolutely everything; and you’re trying to get this song taped off the radio before the schoolbus arrives.

The lyrics are throwaway, the keyboards whirl around and hit the right melody, and it’s all very poppy and hummable. You can imagine some guy in a terrible haircut and a leather waistcoat singing this on the Terry Wogan show.

In reality, the ’80s were a terrible decade for music, with only a few shining lights. The Fall, Tom Waits, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, New Order, Talk Talk, Spacemen 3, The Replacements, Sonic Youth…there are a few others, but the list isn’t that long at all. These bands ploughed a lonely furrow in a decade that swallowed, and spat out, Bowie, Weller, John Lydon, and quite a few other legends. Bad hair, bad economy, bad music…you’ve got to wonder if a revival is needed.

Well, maybe it’s the recession. Or maybe it’s just that, when music gets into revisiting the past (which it’s  been doing ever since The Stones went back to Robert Johnson), it’s got to be a linear thing.

Cut Copy’s album is a good listen, and worthy of a lot of the positive praise it’s receiving. And ‘Lights & Music’ is a good tune, poppy and hummable. Whether or not it’ll be remembered in 20 years time is another thing. But for the time being, pop it on, get out your air-synths, and dance away your job insecurity. And let’s hope the Stone Roses revival is just around the corner. Here’s the video for ‘Lights & Music’.

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The latest in a long line of faux-androgynous English guitar bands, Suede burst onto the scene with an image that threw Bowie and The Smiths together, with one of the best guitar players of his generation and a lead singer who would surely have been a hit in the PR industry if he had failed in music. Yes, Brett Anderson had all the right headlines, and Suede’s first singles – ‘Metal Mickey’, ‘The Drowners’, ‘Animal Nitrate’ – and their eponymous debut delivered on their promise.

But second-album syndrome can be a bitch, and the ruin of many bands. Think Stone Roses, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Strokes…Jesus, even The Clash and The Jam suffered from it.

Suede’s answer was to stick to a tried and true formula: soaring guitar anthems, with lyrics about, essentially, taking drugs to escape the grinding monotony of suburban life.

The tune crackles to life with Bernard Butler’s hard-edge guitar, the standout instrument on the Dog Man Star album. It’s heavily distorted, and not a million miles from Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust stomp-pomp.

Anderson does his usual shtick, dropping references to “all the boys in all the cities”, “catalogue town”, “breeding disease”, and suchlike. The key line here is probably Anderson’s chemical romance:

She and I will soon discover,
We take the pills and find each other

That line pretty much sums up Suede.

Of course, Butler left before this was released, so the video shows his replacement, 17-year-old Richard Oakes, playing the riff. And there were grander plans at work – while Suede had toured their first album, Oasis and Blur had adopted a more laddish, working-class sound that drew more on the Kinks and Jam than Bowie and Smiths, and soon Suede found themselves out of fashion. With grunge on one side and Britpop on the other, Suede were sent to the margins.

But for me, ‘New Generation’ is probably their high watermark, and they are an important group in the history of British music. Here’s the video for ‘New Generation’. Great music, but they were a big influence on my purchase of a way-too-tight black leather jacket and a pair of oxblood Doc Martens when I was 17. Thankfully, no photos survive.

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