Kitchens Of Distinction hid their difference in plain sight. The Tooting trio were fronted by singing bassist Patrick Fitzgerald (not the punk poet), a trained medic and proud gay man who not only spoke about his sexuality in interviews, but sang about it with rare candour, shocking the indie scene’s more conservative elements. One of three tracks backing Julian Swales’ swirling guitar soundscapes on ‘The 3rd Time We Opened The Capsule’ was this bruising self-analysis. In ‘Four Men’ Fitzgerald breaks down his conflicting hopes and fears on a night of unexpected romantic triumph, before its short-term joy is trumped by self-loathing and shame. That Fitzgerald held nothing back on perhaps their most outwardly poppy moment made it feel even more incisive (he would do it again on ‘Margarets’ Injection’ [‘Elephantine EP’, 1989], portraying himself as a willing doctor of death). As vital as anything on that year’s excellent debut Love Is Hell, and in total accord with its title, KOD seemed to belatedly grasp the potential of ‘Four Men’, re-recording it for 1992’s The Death Of Cool but over-producing it, blunting its sharp edges and coiled tension.