100 Greatest Songs of the 90’s #97 Paris Angels – Perfume (All On You)

Released : 1991

The history of the indie-dance movement of the early 1990’s, like Britpop, has come to be written by the winners (More of that as this countdown goes on), but like it’s successor – discounting shoegaze for now – if you dug deep enough between the hoodies, E and faux Manchesterisms, there were both great stories and better tunes than Step On.

Paris Angels were swept along with the rush, but their influences – 60’s psychedelia, post punk, acid house, the Velvet Underground (A cover of What Goes On featured on their only album, Eternity) – were as cosmopolitan as their seven piece line up. After rejecting an approach from Factory supremo Tony Wilson in which he suggested losing one of them, Perfume would quickly become a utopian anthem that proved him right and wrong.

Originally a more pedestrian indie rock jangler, not for the first time in this period a remix turned the song’s charachter inside out, as Blue Monday producer Michael Johnson transformed it into a 1am, blissed out monster. Now, this bastard cousin to early New Order layered spiraling guitar, male/female vocals and Moroder-esque synth bubbles, a DIY alternative to the glossy contents of Technique, a tune on which you could almost feel the ceiling’s sweat dripping on you and the shared joy of being lost in a crowd that was one single organism. The band were dropped by EMI in 1992, but Perfume remains one of the era’s defining cuts, blue plaque or no blue plaque.