It started with a dissertation. In 1988, Harvard grad student, college radio host, and prolific indie-pop zinester Timothy Alborn spent much of his time conducting research in England. Already fascinated with the jangly, bookish music released by upstart labels like Sarah Records and The Subway Organization, he took advantage of the opportunity to witness the burgeoning scene firsthand and interview its key figures for an issue of his DIY publication, Incite!. This experience across the pond, along with inspiration from the scrappy ethos of Olympia, Washington’s K Records, laid the groundwork for Alborn’s own imprint, Harriet Records, which he founded the following year.
Alborn’s label, named after Harriet the Spy, the titular heroine of a series of children’s detective novels, followed him through his career at Harvard, where he soon found work as a professor of history and social studies for nearly a decade.
“During the ‘90s, I kept the space limited to a closet in my apartment, which was totally fine until my cat started peeing in there,” Alborn says. “I was reflecting on how little sleep I needed when I was in my 30s, but I somehow managed. Running the label was just one part of what was going on. An equal part of it was organizing shows, putting bands up in my living room. I have memories of going to see Mecca Normal, having them sleep on my couch, and then writing a lecture for my class at 3 a.m.”
Specializing in 7-inch singles and EPs, Harriet’s output included early works by artists who would rank among indie pop’s most celebrated names. Among this initial batch of records was the first release by The Extra Glenns (featuring John Darnielle), a slew of singles by Crayon and Tullycraft, Linda Smith’s first solo vinyl pressing, and most notably, The Magnetic Fields’s now-legendary “100,000 Fireflies” single.
“If I ever let on that I used to run a record label—or still do—people kind of look at me blankly,” says Alborn. “I’ll ask, ‘Well, have you heard of The Magnetic Fields?’ If they haven’t, then that’s probably the end of the conversation. But they often have, and then they get really excited. That’s my recurring 15 seconds of fame.”
Though Alborn retired his label in 1998 after landing a position at New York’s Lehman College, he returned to the project in 2021 when his friend Michael Train offered to digitize tapes in an indie pop Facebook group. Alborn hadn’t had access to a tape player in a while, and hearing an early Scarlet Drops demo tape for the first time in years inspired him to reach out to the band’s former members with the unearthed recordings. When this initial interaction inspired both parties to issue a compilation of Scarlet Drops rarities, Alborn decided to re-launch Harriet for real, selling off his record collection to fund the venture,
“I always used to be suspicious of bands that did reunion CDs or tours after years, but I’ve really warmed up to the idea thanks to the people I’ve been working with who have done that,” he says. “It’s really fun to be in this position now. When I was doing the label in the ‘90s, I had a full-time job and was still paying back college debt. It was a shoestring undertaking. That’s not the case anymore. My sights can be a lot lower in terms of who I want to make happy, and that’s mostly myself.”
Over the past three years, the label has been quite prolific, releasing expanded versions of Harriet classics, reissues of Alborn’s favorite hidden indie pop gems, and new music by old friends. Here’s a sample of some of Harriet’s latest dispatches.
Scarlet Drops
Scarlet Drops 1984-1992
Compact Disc (CD)
Alborn’s first reissue project was a retrospective disc collecting recordings by Canadian trio Scarlet Drops, who released a pair of 7-inch records with Harriet in the early ‘90s after submitting their “Poor Flowers” single for review in Incite!. Scarlet Drops 1984-1992 includes the entirety of the band’s small vinyl discography, along with a smattering of select cuts from their Moose Power A-Go-Go cassette and other various contributions to tape compilations. Mecca Normal’s Jean Smith, who designed the sleeves for each of Scarlet Drops’s Harriet releases, painted the CD’s cover.
“Dogma-Self” and “Cling,” which comprised the band’s final release in 1992, are the album’s best tracks, centering surf-y, post-punk basslines and shouted two-part vocal harmonies, but there’s plenty of fun to be had digging through the grittier early material. Songs like “Beer Store” and “Renny’s Riot” pile squealing garage-punk riffs atop a thrashing rhythm section, revealing their shared affinity for Dead Kennedys. Harriet might be associated with gentle, literary songcraft, but this retrospective is a solid reminder of its edgier formative years.
High Risk Group
Seconds Away 1988-1995
Compact Disc (CD)
After meeting Alborn at their first show, Boston’s High Risk Group became the first band to put out a record via Harriet. Their 1989 Flag EP was a blast of pure aggression, with droning guitars, serpentine violin, and martial drum beats backing Debbie Nadolney’s growled vocals. Its title track earned frequent play on John Peel’s show the following fall and garnered enough of a cult following in the UK to warrant a 1991 compilation release on the Bristol-based label Blaster. Seconds Away collects High Risk Group’s complete discography, which almost entirely originated on Harriet Records.
“Their guitarist Sue Metro still had the .mp3 files for everything,” says Alborn. “The original tapes were kind of shot, so Michael actually mastered it using the vinyl, which is a painstaking process. The sound is exactly as rich as you might expect from doing that.”
Building on the hypnotic sound of their debut EP, the rest of High Risk Group’s discography is distinguished by its smart use of tension dissonance, exemplified by the creaking textures on “Pulsed” and the heaving strings that accent “Dull Stare.”
Various Artists
Wild Gift: Music by Robert Christie and Friends, 1984-1996
Compact Disc (CD)
Alborn grew up in Oregon, where he attended Astoria High School with Robert Christie, best known as a founding member of K Records signees Some Velvet Sidewalk. For much of his young adulthood, Christie was the rhythmic glue that held the Eugene, Oregon music scene together, playing drums in many of the city’s punk bands (as well as a couple in San Francisco). Harriet’s Wild Gift compilation, released in 2023, documents his work from 1984 until 1996, when his last band broke up. Christie died in a tragic car accident in 2001, leaving behind a legacy that Alborn was determined to honor.
“I knew about half of the people who had been in the bands with him, but I hadn’t talked to any of them for 20 years,” he says. “It felt like writing a history of the Eugene, Oregon scene in the 90s. What I like about this new incarnation of the label is getting back in touch with people who are doing amazing things, and revisit a uniquely vibrant period in American music.”
Wild Gifts gives an overview of the sheer variety of Christie’s musical interests, including Young Death’s politically-charged hardcore, Snakepit’s twangy college rock, and the droning noise rock of Some Velvet Sidewalk.
The Ekphrastics
Special Delivery
Compact Disc (CD)
Singer-songwriter Frank Boscoe frequently appeared in the Harriet catalog’s original run, originally becoming pen pals with Alborn through his Cubist Pop Manifesto fanzine before releasing debut albums as the frontman of Wimp Factor 14 and Vehicle Flips through the label. Though he has explored different sounds through his various projects, Boscoe’s lyrical style is instantly recognizable, scrutinizing mundane subjects like homework assignments, college football, and diner food through a satirical, often academic lens. Returning to Harriet 30 years later, it’s fitting that he’d name his band after a form of poetry that zeroes in on describing a single object or work of art. The Ekphrastics’s Special Delivery resumes the Boscoe tradition, containing nine breezy jangle pop songs about Bitcoin fanatics, track and field athletes, and apple-shaped icicles.
“I’ve known Frank since ‘87 or ‘88,” says Alborn. “We hit it off right away. He has a PhD in geography; I have a PhD in history. Before we released his first Wimp Factor 14 album, I had written an article about being in love for my fanzine, and he wrote a song about that with Karl Hendricks for me as a wedding present.”
The Coronets
Veld: 20th: Anniversary Edition
Compact Disc (CD)
In 2004, Alborn stumbled upon The Coronets’s Veld while browsing CDs at Rough Trade and quickly became obsessed with the album, though he could not find much information about the British band for years. Twelve years later, he uploaded a few tracks from the record to his YouTube channel, which caught the attention of the band’s singer, Phil Buckley. When Alborn expressed interest in reissuing the project, Buckley sent over a collection of unreleased songs to include as bonus tracks and even reformed the band to record two new ones. Though Veld was written years after the start of Harriet’s hiatus, it’s not far removed from the label’s artistic vision, favoring strummy indie pop instrumentation and clever, tongue-in-cheek lyrics about power lines and plane crashes.
Hulaboy
As Tight As an Owl with the Hulaboy
Compact Disc (CD)
Hulaboy was an unlikely foreign exchange between Eric Stoess, guitarist in Louisville, Kentucky indie pop band Hula Hoop, and Boyracer’s Stewart Anderson, then based in Leeds. The history between the two bands dates back to the early ‘90s, when Boyracer and Hula Hoop released a pair of split records, leading to the formation of Hulaboy as an outlet for more explicitly collaborative efforts. The duo put out a handful of singles on various European labels before recording their first full-length album, As Tight As an Owl with the Hulaboy; Harriet handled its CD release, while Anderson’s own 555 Recordings pressed the LPs.
In contrast to the noisy guitar pop that each member had written with their previous band, Hulaboy’s work is clean and cozy, mostly made with acoustic guitar and tinny synths in short spurts. The result feels like a cross between the robotic minimalism of Depeche Mode’s Speak and Spell and the manic experimentation of Guided by Voices, though Hulaboy’s pop instincts are often more polished than either comparison suggests. “River of Honey & Mud” approaches bedroom pop perfection with its conversational vocals and cutesy lead synth, while “My Lowdown” channels the twee pop misanthropy of Another Sunny Day when Stoess sweetly sings “I hate them all” over adorable bleeps and bloops.
Wimp Factor 14
Ankle Deep
Wimp Factor 14’s 1993 Ankle Deep album was the first CD issued by Harriet Records, packaged in a manila envelope. Fronted by Frank Boscoe, the band supplemented their traditional lo-fi indie rock with unconventional instruments like ukulele and zither to create quirky, chaotic tunes like “Ankle of Repose” and “The Heart Of My Stupefaction.” At times, the band resembles a twee pop precursor to The Brave Little Abacus, dumping as many quaint, homespun sounds into their recordings as possible. As usual, Boscoe’s writing is the record’s selling point, this time examining office supplies, iced tea, and companies that aren’t as charitable as they seem.
