I’ve been driving up and down the M1 today with my son, Kieran, to pick up his stuff from the house in Nottingham where he lives during the university term. It’s summer hols now – three months! Ah, to be a student again…

Anyway, as I drive, I can stick one of my iPod mixes on in our new car and enjoy the sounds. Most of the journey today we had an “Indiemix” on: 700-odd tunes from the early 80s to the present day. One that came up today I hadn’t heard for a while: rather forgotten it, even. But what a good tune tune! I got it on a CD compilation that NME used to put out every year in the 90s of some of their singles of the week. This was from 1993, and the song was “Madder Rose” by Madder Rose. It’s just a quirky, catchy bit of Indie, with some languid slide guitar. The band was from New York and the singer was called Mary Lorson. I remember buying one of their albums on the strength of this track, but it can’t have made much of an impression. I loved this one, though.

As ever, YouTube obliges with a recording. From this it seems the single first came out – presumably in the US – in 1992.