Pell Mell - Nothing Lies Still Long

Pell Mell - American Eagle [1991]

Well I always think Yawning Man are like the best SST band never to record an album for SST. That's mainly because on their debut album, Rock Formations (2005), they are musically like a cross between Meat Puppets and this group the underrated Pell Mell.

American Eagle opens Flow their second LP for SST. For an instrumental it is incredibly catchy and that sums up the beauty of Pell Mell, despite lacking a vocalist their tunes are incredibly lyrical with hooks galore and a thick atmosphere...

This one's pretty fuckin funky and upbeat with occasional sequences of dark twangy jangles that threaten to engulf the tune but the almost unhinged exuberance cannot be stopped as it destroys everything in its path. This goes off like a frog in a sock and gets to highly ecstatic levels, achieving similar results to that of a top rave tune.

Pell Mell - Nothing Lies Still Long [1995]

It was crazy times and a few years later they were releasing cds on Geffen. Get this straight, a quirky instrumental group that came out of the early 80s post-punk underground were now label mates with Counting Crows, Beck and Nirvana.

Make no mistake, despite the fact that I got this cd for $4 new not long after it was released, Interstate is a lost 90s classic. Its got all the driving psych instrumentals and mysterious atmospheric rock that was adjacent to happening genres of the time like slowcore, American post-rock, indie, math rock and the renewed interest in 70s Krautrock. 

This still sounds remarkably fresh today with its exquisite expansive production. Nothing Lies Still Long is a driving twangy instrumental rock jam that gets pretty mesmerising with its compulsive rhythms and dark dreamy atmosphere. 

Yawning Man - Rock Formations

Yawning Man - Rock Formations [2005]

Speaking of Yawning Man here's a coupla tunes from 20 years ago, yes 20 bloody years... 

This one's a pretty cool tripped out surf rock track. A bit of an eerie psychedelic summer atmosphere perfect for driving down the ocean highway, then through the secluded dessert to your secret destination. Mysterious.

Is it just me or are there are moments during this tune when it sounds like The Shadows covering Boards Of Canada? That's pretty strange when you think about it...

Yawning Man - Buffalo Chips [2005]

They up the ante on Buffalo Chips for some totally rockin' psych-surf action. This dessert dwelling trio cook up an absolute storm here. All three are on fire creating one hell of a smokin' unit. Definitely music for getting in your car at midnight and seeing where the tropical hotdog night takes you.

Crank this sucker up to eleven bitches!

Christof Waltz · GOBLYNS

[2025]

New music alert! For the second time in 2025 I'm bringing you music from the current year. I mean this tune coulda been made in the 80s, maybe even the 70s...  

A pretty cool trippy surf rock jam. Puts me in mind of Pell Mell or maybe Yawning Man. 

Wipers - Different Ways

[1986]

Just so cool.

An outsiders downbeat vision. A really original lo-fi abstract echoing trip out that gets into a haunting yet breezy groove. An uncommon mysterious tone becoming sublime. 

All around a parade of clowns

*The rock-crit consensus goes that this is from the Wipers demise era. We're supposed to believe Wipers started out with three top records then the rest were crap. Only problem is Land Of The Lost (1986), Follow Blind (1987) and Silver Sail (1993) are sterling LPs.

Honor Role - The Pretty Song LP

Honor Role - The Pretty Song LP [1986]

A fairly unknown post-punk group from Richmond Virginia who are a forgotten or perhaps a never even known influence on post-hardcore, indie math rock etc. The likes of Drive Like Jehu, Rocket From The Crypt, Fugazi and Superchunk acknowledge their influence and you gotta think Slint, Don Cabellero, Disco Inferno, Polvo, Unwound maybe even Eddy Current Suppression Ring along with many others benefitted artistically by listening to Honor Role. 

Here's a few tunes from their 1986 LP on Eskimo/No Core Records where guitarist Penn Rollings was beginning his purple patch of progression on the six strings. The Pretty Song is more classic shadowy post-punk merging into lo-fi slacker rock as opposed to Honor Role's 1989 follow up Rictus on Homestead Records which was more on the experimental noisey math-rock tip.

*I get there's some lazy, atemporal and reading history backwards zoomer-like retardedness going on in the snippet reviews below but for just one day only I don't care.

 

Throwing Rocks [1986]

Bringing you all the 90s slacker talk-singing and lo-fi in 1986. 

My Place (1986)

That lost bewildered sound filled with regret and defiance, wait for exciting classic guitar bit at 1:37.

. 

Six [1986]

Layers of gloom like if Rowland S Howard collaborated with Slint.

. 

Present Conditions [1986]

Downbeat 80s eeriness with Galaxie 500 (who didn't even exist yet) levels of reverbed guitar for maximum blissful day-dreaminess. Hard not to think this is a lost classic.

Care Taker [1986]

Desolate 80s. Dilapidated visions. Cold war fear. Enveloping ominousness. Tenebrous tones sonically somewhere between Gordons, Tactics and Wire circa 154.

Goose Bumps · Christie Allen

[1979]

The queen of pop baby!

More disco-rock from down under.

She's kinda of forgotten these days but she ruled the charts for a year or two, having five top 40 hits in a row from 1979 to 1980. Then she promptly disappeared from the industry.

This song takes on a dark tone when you realise she left the music industry after having an abusive relationship.

Mi-Sex - Computer Games

[1979]

80s, 80s, 80s.

So 80s it was still 1979!

You know what was wrong with Kraftwerk and British electro? Not fuckin' bogan enough!

Never fear Antipodean new wave bogans are here to give you dystopian electric dreams from down under. 

I'm so future I work in an office where I nearly died of computer print out, I just finished rugby training, drank a six pack, been smokin' some Winnie Blues and now I've put on my best trendy sleeveless t-shirt, wrist band and some eyeliner.

Thanks fellas!

The Monitors - What Will We Be Singing In The 80s

[1980]

80s, 80s, 80s

What will we be singing in the 80s...

More shonky hits and memories.

Another one I haven't heard since it was on the radio when I was a kid.

I'm assuming this was a cash in on the success of The Buggles Video Killed The Radio Star unless it was just the vibe in the air as the 70s turned into the 80s. We were kids so we didn't care if it was a cynical cash grab or not.

On the surface this tune seems like a quaint bit of lost futurism but dig a little deeper... 

The lyrical theme is a surprisingly angst fuelled existential crisis as the cold bleak future threatens our cozy old world of disco and rock'n'roll.

A futuristic synthetic dance-y pop tune with some use of old school guitars too. There's mucho use of vocoderized vocals and dodgy primitive drum machines. Like a cross between the disco-rock excursions of ELO of the time and the brutally cold electronics of early Human League or Cabaret Voltaire. 

This video is pretty bizarre. An old dude sings nonsensical paranoid lyrics from his bed in a mental asylum. He is then aided in in an escape and is seen being pushed around in a wheelchair by a couple of teenage girls in Kiss make-up. Towards the end he dies, I think, as the girls look around in a state of bewilderment as they continue singing. Pretty strange...

The other surprising thing here is the two teenage chicks in Kiss make-up lip syncing to the catchy chorus. It turns out these two are identical twins Gayle and Gillian Blakeney soon to be stars of Wombat then Neighbours. They would go on to a failed pop career in the 90s as their producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman began their demise. There you go, Thank you.

Total 80s anomaly from down under.

Space Invaders - Player [1]

[1979]

Totally hits and memories... 

Novelty electro-disco baby!

The fourth biggest single in Australia in 1980!

Totally forgot this one. Haven't heard this since I was eight years old and in primary school.

Apparently there's an entire LP by Player [1] based around this computer game theme, niftily titled Game Over (1980).

Not a hit outside of Australia but many would be familiar with the bass-line here because it was sampled on On And On (1984) an early Chicago house classic by Jesse Saunders (which I wrote about here).

[1984]

On And On - Jesse Saunders

Where I wrote: "Some people don't realise that house wasn't always a lame genre so here's some house before house got defined. No piano riff-age or acidic squelches here. On And On is still rudimentary and raw utilising specific disco elements but rearranged for maximum pleasure. Unhinged synth lines, primitive drum machine hand clap breaks galore and loops into the future."

Falco - Der Kommissar

80s 80s 80s

All the hits and memories. 

A Euro trash synth-funk jam where the American ghetto is relocated to some suburb in Austria where the only crime was not cleaning up after your dog because you were too coked out of your brain. Was Falco the first guy to rap in German... is it even rap? It might be the invention of some other form of singing altogether. Wait for the really cool synthwave bit at 2.28, absolutely brilliant. The whole thing is is an undeniably great state of the art 80s synthetic production.