Album covers don't come much more 80s than the one for "Sulk", by the Associates, from 1982. Singer Billy MacKenzie and keyboardist Alan Rankine sit on facing garden benches, covered in dustsheets, looking more like they're in a drained swimming pool. Both are dressed like a cross between Star Trek crew members and Hitler youth, and leer poncily at the camera. They're surrounded by what is probably fairly standard British vegetation, but the lurid lighting makes the whole thing look more like they're on Mars.

It stood out a mile in the window of Ace Music, in dreary old Musselburgh. It spoke of a world of impossible decadence and sophistication, like the first line of the hit single "Party Fears Two"-

I'll have a shower and call my brother up
Within the hour I'll smash another car

Actually it turns out to have been "I'll smash another cup", but I'll stick with the former. It's still a great song, rolling along on a sprightly piano line, and with Mackenzie's voice swooping up and down with a degree of melodrama that would shame even Christina Aguilera. It was followed by "Club Country", more urban decadence, with a rhythm like train wheels clacking, and stabs of cossack-like keyboards.

The rest doesn't really stand up. They produced a few more albums throughout the 80s, which made no impression on me. Rankine became a lecturer and helped launch Belle and Sebastien. MacKenzie attempted a solo career, producing several albums, but killed himself about 5 years ago. I don't know if it's a tale of how the music biz doesn't sustain careers, or how certain people can't handle being anything less than a gilt-edged star. Maybe it's just a sad case of someone who only had so much good art in him, and never regained that peak. But it burned itself onto my childish psyche enough for me to recognise it again and buy it 24 years later.