This Nation's Saving Grace

The line-up had been stable until November 1984, when brothers Paul and Steve Hanley quit after a night when the band's equipment was stolen from a van in Cardiff. Paul's departure was permanent, leaving Karl Burns as sole drummer. Steve was persuaded back, and in the meantime Simon Rogers, a classically trained musician, played bass before moving to guitar and keyboards when Hanley returned mid-sessions. Smith marked the return with the words "S Hanley! He's Back" etched into the run-out groove of side one.

John Leckie, who had produced the group's previous album, recorded it in London between June and July 1985 at the Music Works and the Workhouse on Old Kent Road. His aim was to keep the rough edges and the solid rhythm section while bringing forward Brix's pop-oriented guitar, and Smith later said they were after a "well-produced bedroom sound". Brix and Craig Scanlon wrote most of the foundation riffs, with the work split roughly 60/40 between them by Hanley's estimate.

The album includes the instrumental "Mansion", the tape collage Paint Work, and "I Am Damo Suzuki", a tribute to the Can singer Damo Suzuki, whom Smith often described as an early and major influence. The singles were "Couldn't Get Ahead" and Cruiser's Creek. It reached number 54 on the UK Albums Chart.

Reception and legacy

David Quantick of the NME wrote that it was one of their most accessible LPs yet but also more peculiar than almost anything else released that year. The NME ranked it sixth best album of 1985, and it placed 13th in Pitchfork's 2002 list of the best albums of the 1980s. Listeners of John Peel's show voted six of its songs into the Festive Fifty, with "Cruiser's Creek" at number 3. Brix Smith and Steve Hanley both count it among the band's best.

James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem bought it in 1985 and said it sounded "broken and wrong" to him. He later said it opened abstract paths for him, and he linked the lo-fi intro of "Yr City's a Sucker" to the tape experiments of "Paint Work".