We all have cultural moments we're sorry we missed. Saint Petersburg in the summer of 1917, Paris in 1968 and London's punk scene in 1977 do it for me. On a micro level, the same sense of lost glory affects bands that have moved past the moment when you loved them best. Watching the Manic Street Preachers perform their tawdry late albums in 1998, I thought the whole crowd was probably pleading for "forgotten" album tracks from The Holy Bible - ie, back when they were good.
Suede had the decency to acknowledge the power of past favourites last year, playing not one but four farewell gigs at the ICA: one for each album. It seems to be catching, especially with the launch of Don't Look Back, a series of gigs where bands past and present perform long-lost but much-loved albums in their entirety.
Pick of the bunch is Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister, their first album proper from 1996, a parade of whimsy so rich in imagery, you can almost smell the baked beans congealing down the greasy spoon. Their 25 September Don't Look Back gig sold out in nanoseconds, but console yourself that the album is not lost for ever. If you want to cherry-pick, "Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying" and the title track are essential - on www.emusic.com.
Also worth resurrecting is the Lemonheads' It's a Shame About Ray, another Don't Look Back highlight, downloadable off iTunes. Again, every track is a gem, with gentler interpolations of grunge the key to its blessed-out warmth. The self-explanatory "My Drug Buddy" and a rollicking version of Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs Robinson" are the stand-out tracks, indirect reminders that grunge's lasting legacy ought to be rock's rediscovery of the joy of melody, not Pete Doherty's narcissistic self-abuse. Sometimes it's worth looking back.
