Spoon And Rafter (LP)

Mojave 3's founding members are vocalist/guitarist Neil Halstead, bassist/vocalist Rachel Goswell, and drummer Ian McCutcheon. The band broke cover in 1995, when a six-track demo impressed 4AD sufficiently to offer them a deal, despite a then prevailing musical climate of bumptious Britpop that seemed totally at odds with what Mojave 3 were doing. Their incongruence was hardly surprising given that Halstead, Goswell and McCutcheon had formed as members of definitive shoegazers Slowdive.

Spoon and Rafter marked another shift for the band. While still containing echoes of singer-songwriters and alt-country, the record represents a technicolour expansion of their palette that utilises electronics, glockenspiels, melodica, and Beatlesque production.