When I made it to the college radio station in the fall of 1988, I was focused on those performers who knew how to make their guitars do wonderfully noisy things. I came late to the stirring population of artists who populated the subgenre of “college rock” after flailing around all over the radio dial during my teenage years. When I arrived, I was especially susceptible to the guiding judgment of my peers, and when the less tolerant denizens of my high school (a phrase you may accurately read as “every other student in my graduating class”) deemed a band like The Smiths “faggy” I shamefully acquiesced, shaping my opinion accordingly. The poppier something was, the less interested I was. I arrived with a well-bolstered disdain for the wimpiness of New Order and Erasure, convinced that if I used Jesus and Mary Chain as my baseline, I’d be free from ridicule. (Of course, I didn’t noticed at the time that the skin-searing guitars of the Reid brothers were layered upon killer hooks, and they were really just a pop band with volume knobs.)

That armor started falling away almost immediately once I noticed how snugly the sweet songcraft of The Housemartins fit alongside the headlong distortion of Husker Du and the crunchy power pop of Hoodoo Gurus. By the time Alison Moyet’s Essex was released in 1994, I was entirely prepared to fall under its thrall. Moyet was formerly the lead singer for the U.K. band Yazoo (know as Yaz on these shores). Upstairs at Eric’s was an album that all the cool kids went hunting for in the C Stacks. Essex was her fourth solo album. I’m not even sure if any of the other three ever crossed the 90FM transmitter (although it seems that Hoodoo must have), but I was certainly responsible for a respectable amount of on-air attention for Essex, even though I had moved on from leadership to community volunteer status by that time.

Moyet isn’t someone I’ve continued to follow (at least in part because it took eight years before a follow-up to Essex was released), but I can still throw that CD into the player and be reminded that a grandly powerful voice and pristine pop arrangements can be just as tough as any number of unwashed boys with noisy guitars.

Alison Moyet, “And I Know”

(Disclaimer: Alison Moyet’s Essex is seemingly out of print, although it is available through the iTunes store and perhaps via other online outlets. But you’re not going to find a hard copy without a dedicated perusal of the used bins. If you can’t but it from an independent record store, it’s fair game for this feature. However, should someone with due authority to request its removal come knocking on my electronic door, I will gladly comply.)