When the book is written about the great UK indie labels of the post-punk era, it's going to go down as a Beatles vs. Stones-style matchup between Factory Records and Cherry Red. Factory had a much longer period of relevance, for sure -- Cherry Red's most interesting period by far was the three years that Mike Alway was the label's A&R director, '81-'84 -- plus Factory had Peter Saville's gorgeously unified design aesthetic and an overall patina of hipness that the more earnest Cherry Red never could quite pull off. But for those three years, Cherry Red was making some of the best British indie records of all time. For sure, if you wanted to know where Sarah Records copped most of their ideas, Cherry Red is the place to begin.

The first Cherry Red band I knew was Everything But the Girl, but before that duo formed, both Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt had already released albums on the label. Thorn's gorgeous solo acoustic record A Distant Shore and her earlier records with the adorably inept Television Personalities protégées the Marine Girls are more well known, largely because they're simply better. Ben Watt is a remarkable arranger/producer and a talented songwriter, but he simply can't match Tracey Thorn's dead gorgeous voice as a singer. But there's a delicate charm to Watt's solo works, which I prefer to his vocal turns in Everything But the Girl because he doesn't seem to be trying so hard. This miniature, the flip of the 1982 single "Some Things Don't Matter," is a personal favorite.

-Stewart Mason