Catherine Wheel had established their shoegaze bonafides (not that they knew that’s what they were doing) with their first two albums Ferment and Chrome, but made a conscious pivot towards the mainstream with album number three, 1995’s Happy Days. Now keep in mind that in the mid-90s the mainstream was a wide, chaotic landscape but for CW, this translated into drier production, riffier guitars, and a general embrace of their rockier instincts over the atmospheric.

They telegraphed that shift with the first single “Waydown”, but quickly followed that up with a showcase of their poppier side in “Judy Staring At The Sun”, which found frontman Rob Dickinson duetting with Tanya Donelly of alternative nation sweetheart dreampoppers Belly, with whom they would tour Europe, complete with a fun DIY sci-fi video that reinforced Dickinson’s penchant for sparkly shirts.

They played a Tanya-less version of the song on MTV’s 120 Minutes in August 1995.

There’s footage of Tanya joining the band live in New York in June 1996 but as the poster notes the audio has been replaced with the studio version of the song.

While Happy Days did do some chart action, it didn’t break the band in the way they hoped and so for their next record Adam & Eve, they pivoted again to prog and honestly the world was better for it.