Cranes

Portsmouth dockside

Cranes were founded in Portsmouth in 1985 by the siblings Alison and Jim Shaw, named after the mechanical cranes around the dockyard. As teenagers in the mid-1980s they made noise in the family garage; Jim got his first drum kit around fifteen and they recorded on a four-track from a local music hire shop. The cassette mini-album Fuse came out on Bite Back!, a Portsmouth indie run by a friend, in 1986, and Martin Hannett praised it, the first feedback they got. Self-Non-Self (1989, or a 1988 EP per Bandcamp Daily) led John Peel to play a track four nights running, and two Peel sessions followed, in 1989 as a trio with Mark Francombe ("E. G. Shining" and "Starblood") and in 1990 with Matt Cope's debut.

They signed to Dedicated in 1990 and made Wings of Joy (1991, UK 52) and Forever (1993, UK 40); Robert Smith of the Cure remixed "Jewel" (UK 29) and they toured the world with the Cure in 1992. Alison's high, childlike voice has been compared to Claire Grogan of Altered Images and Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins. Loved appeared on September 12, 1994, after which Matt Cope left. In 1996 the Shaws made La Tragédie d'Oreste et Électre as a duo, from Sartre's Les Mouches, and Population Four (1997) was written and recorded at a farmhouse in Sussex, funded by BMG via Dedicated.

Dedicated closed in 1998. The Shaws re-formed in 2000, launched their own Dadaphonic label and released Future Songs (2001), Particles & Waves (2004) and Cranes (2008); they supported the Cure at Hyde Park in 2002. In 2023 they reformed for their first shows in eleven years, in Portsmouth and then London, with Francombe and Cope rejoining and the London show selling out in two or three days; the Peel Sessions 1989-1990 were released that year. Fuse was reissued on April 5, 2024, and Music On Vinyl issued a 30th anniversary Loved, limited to 1,000 white marbled copies.