SLOWDIVE: Lost Classics & Curios

Slowdive - Hide Yer Eyes [1993]

These first three tunes are absolute Slowdive bangers from the Souvlaki sessions that ridiculously never got released. I mean it's unbelievable that after being cut from Souvlaki these songs didn't end up on an EP or a single in their own right or at as least b-sides to other singles, mental.

Guitarist Christian Saville wanted Hide Yer Eyes on Souvlaki and the fact that one of these bootleg versions was mixed by Ed Buller means it was in contention for inclusion. Neil Halstead ixnayed the track though on the grounds of it being too poppy and the quota of poppy pop tunes for the album had already been filled...

This stands alongside Alison and Machine Gun as one of their best pop moments. 

Slowdive - I Saw The Sun [1993]

Another Ed Buller mix which means this was almost included on the final track-listing of Souvlaki but the band pulled it on the basis of it being to much like The Cocteau Twins which is funny because... well have you heard the records they made before Souvlaki? Anyway this is pure Slowdive to me. The group at their best.

Beautiful pastoral psychedelia that floats off in a hazy breeze. 

Dreamy.

Slowdive - Silver Screen [1992]

We live in a crazy world where one of the greatest songs of the 90s never saw the light of day, only getting leaked onto the internet in the 00s. Fucking absurd. 

Starts out with buoyant fluctuating guitars that morph into fantastic eternally swirling waves of elation combined with irresistible nostalgic vocals hooks. Pure bliss.

Slowdive - Joy [1992]

Ok these next three are definitely oddities probably only of interest for diehard fans. They are interesting though and display what music Slowdive were big fans of. 

  

Joy is post-punk with a drum machine somewhere between Chameleons and New Order. I mean its called Joy for fuck's sake. This is pretty surprising if you've never heard it before. After brutal press coverage and ruthless record company rejections Slowdive lost their nerve and went back to their roots and musical influences looking for a an inspirational way out of the crisis they perceived they were in.

Slowdive - Stars That Shine [1992?]

I always thought Mercury Rev's psychedelic space rock freak-outs were influenced by Slowdive's more overwhelming blissed guitar journeys but here you've gotta think Neil had probably given Yerself Is Steam a bit of a listen and liked what he heard. I probably would have ixnayed this one for being too much of a homage as consummate as it may be.

Slowdive - Bleed [1991?]

They never hid the fact that they loved The Cure and this one is an incredible tribute to their musical heroes. Still it's unmistakably Slowdive but that bass line might have perhaps attracted some attention from litigation lawyers for being a bit too close to The Cure's Fascination Street. While it may have been too derivative to put on any type of official record it's a whole lotta fun.

Slowdive

[2014]

How is it that when Slowdive reformed back in 2014 they were better than ever? I was gonna go through all my old Slowdive favourites, doing some posts on the early studio recordings of the first three EPs and debut album but these live videos are hard to go past. 

[2014]

The Coda Slowdive add on to their cover of Syd's Golden Hair became epic and was the highlight of their set. The waves and waves of swirling guitars gets to unbearably ecstatic levels then there's a lull and little ebb and flow then it builds up to bursting euphoria all over again.

[2017]

This 2017 gig is the best I've found so far. The 2014 to 2017 shows seem to be the best perhaps peaking on the 2017 tour. Whoever is doing the sound on this is a genius. Many have stated that this show should be the basis for a live album... I guess it could be a double live LP really. 

Slowdive will capture and envelop you with their all encompassing vaguely orchestral cinematic sound. They are on fire during this set and it's all highlights. Here's some highlights of the highlights: Catch The Breeze has never sounded better here. God I even like the Pygmalion tracks. This version of She Calls is astounding sky-scraping dark psychedelia. The searing melancholia of Golden Hair is even more epic than the above two versions if that's possible. The magnificent new and improved rendition of Slowdive will surprise you... I mean all songs are like 25 to 50 percent better. It's unfathomable.

Eternal - Sleep

Eternal - Sleep [1990]

Eternal did just the one single, the Breathe EP released by Sarah Records. On one side was the above tune and on the other side was Breathe and another less significant tune Take Me Down. 

Slowdive would take the Sleep blueprint and run with it. The singer and guitarist here is none other than future Slowdive member Christian Savill. For historic interest the Sarah seven inch was released six months before Slowdive's self-titled debut EP. 

Slowdive - Sleep [1992?]

For some reason Rachel wrote some new lyrics for Sleep during the demo sessions for Souvlaki so they had a crack at a remake. Despite Creation's rejection this is an incredibly successful new and improved version. Starts out in a low key fog but wait for the second half when it becomes epic with a soaring avalanche of bliss.

Careless Hands - Looking For A Secret

[1982]

Dreamy drumless Durutti damaged psych pop with a secluded windswept feel.

A fascinating one and done single that pre-empts a lot of what was to to come in British music like things on the fringes of dream pop/shoegaze, lost generation UK post-rock, hauntology etc. Looking For A Secret puts me in mind of Vini Reilly, Papa Sprain and maybe even Postion Normal. 

A pretty cool lost classic with a hint of the old Syd Barrett, John Martyn etc. and the ramshackle freedom of The Homosexuals.  

Here's a quote from Careless Hands' Brian Keaney taken from bandcamp:

What we were really interested in was musical exploration. Jim built a studio in his back garden, bought some multi-track recording equipment, and began experimenting. We wanted to produce something that was just for ourselves. We were undoubtedly very naïve but naivety and innocence were hallmarks of that time.

In my childhood, I'd been fascinated with the story of Aladdin. Now that fascination began to be reflected in the music we were making. Here was a story about a boy who transforms his world and enters the magical realm. That seemed to be exactly what was happening to me. For all sorts of reasons, I hadn't particularly enjoyed my childhood but now I had managed to step out of the everyday reality, to find a place where I belonged and where I had a kind of power.

The name we used for the band came from a song recorded in 1949 by a singer called Mel Torme. There's a line in that song that goes, "Careless Hands don't care when dreams slip through." That seemed appropriate since dreams were part of the territory we were exploring.

I had got married immediately after leaving college and by now I had a daughter who was afraid to go to sleep at night. She wanted me to be present in her dreams with her. That became the inspiration for a period during which Jim and I tried to recreate the shifting landscape of the night-time imagination.

Time Thief · Pale Saints

Time Thief - Pale Saints [1990]

The first Pale Saints song I heard. I managed to tape the video off Rage in 1990. I liked that they were peculiar compared to the other upstart shoegazers Ride and Lush. The impeccable arrangement of Time Thief  had alluring hints of menace deployed amongst the exhilarating tension and release dynamics and then those choirboy vocals added more spice to the unnerving vibe. 

 

Time Thief - Pale Saints [1990]

This was the video that interspersed clips from the creepy 1961 psychological horror film The Innocents with live footage of the band... er, the sound's a bit dodgy but well worth a look though, as it's an extravaganza of sound and vision synchronicity.

One of the best things about The Pale Saints debut LP was the finale one two punch of Sight Of You and Time Thief. The two songs run into each other and need to be heard together as the drama builds at the end of Sight Of You leading up to the exciting Time Thief intro. In the great tradition of other tunes that are connected with no gap and run into each other (which I wrote about here) like I'm Your Boogie Man/Keep It Comin' Love from KC & The Sunshine Band, Donna Summer's I Need You/Working The Midnight Shift, INXS' Face The Change/Burn For You and Palace Of Brine/Letter From Memphis by The Pixies. I'm sure there's many more examples...  Anyway I can't find a clip of Sight Of You and Time Thief together so...

Sight Of You - Pale Saints [1990]

Dreamy pop noise goes ecstatic! Anthem for the teenage shoegazers I was.

Sight Of You - Ride [1990]

Speaking of Ride they did a cover of Sight Of You for a John Peel session. It's passable but I kinda wish they didn't do the fade out because that racket they were whipping up at the end was the most interesting bit...

The Charlottes

The Charlottes - Beautify [1991]

This frantic pop tune smothered in squalling psychedelic noise is quite the exhilarating racket. A slice of prime shoegazery.

Classic noise pop/shoegaze that you might not know because they weren't on Creation or 4AD and didn't have s high profile publicity machine at their disposal. The Charlottes were top tier though, perhaps not as beloved these days because they had a towering dense heavy sound and weren't as ethereal as the other groups. Their second LP Things Come Apart released in early 1991 is a minor masterpiece as the five tunes on this post attest.  

The Charlottes - Prayer Song [1991]

They get into a classic kaleidoscopic pummelling groove here. Loud layers of ceaselessly swirling fuzzed out guitar bliss. Pretty awesome.

The Charlottes - Love In The Emptiness [1990] 

Ferocious and dense shoegaze that heads towards the gloomy but the band's bracing energy doesn't let that get you down. Pouting in the face of the abyss on this tranced-out mantra-rock classic. 

The insane and great drumming on all these tunes is provided by Simon Scott who would go on to shoegaze fame and fortune as the man behind the kit for Slowdive.

The Charlottes - Liar [1990]

The sensational clamorous pop thrills of Liar was like The Hummingbirds covering Dreams Burn Down. This was their glorious pop moment and chance at shoegaze stardom, that was not to be, a few months later they had broken up and become a footnote in shoegaze history.

The Charlottes - See Me Feel [1990]

They get into a frenzy on this frenetic fuzz and wah-wah monster. A barnstorming noise-pop triumph.

The Nightblooms - Crystal Eyes

[1990]

This is still pretty fuckin' cool.

Before they started calling it shoegaze it was just indie pop that was a bit noisy sometimes known as noise-pop. Here we have a fine example from Holland. Crystal Eyes is in an aesthetic sweet spot somewhere between the You Made Me Realise EP and You're Living All Over Me. A blistering lil tune that leaves you in a whirl and wanting more. 

Silver (Fairy Threaded) · lovesliescrushing

Silver (Fairy Threaded)  [1996]

There's a ghost of a song hidden within the pure dream-gaze of Silver - Fairy Threaded's psychedelic ambient haze.

Loveliescrushing's 1996 cd Xuvityn sounds like if you took the music of Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, Seefeel etc. then stripped out the melodic song elements and entire rhythm section just leaving shoegaze's sonic detritus: the ethereal ambience, dreamy atmosphere and static textures of the blown out guitar amps.  

Blooded And Blossom-Blown [1996]

Hard not to be enraptured by these impeccable waves of ambience and atmosphere. The pure empyreal tones of ascending to heaven.   

Apart from Melissa Arpin's vaporous vocals this holy symphony of sound is all exclusively created by Scott Cortez and his guitar.

A tribute to the world's greatest dog Cooper James (2013-2025). RIP.

Alan Hawkshaw - Underworld

[1984]

Future music for today from yesterday. Outer-space music for the deep sea disco fish who hang out in the darkest depths of the oceans.  

loveless - my bloody valentine

*I'm repurposing a post from 2016 for some reason. Probably because I just started reading that David Cavanagh book about Creation Records only 25 years late or because I've been listening to loveliescrushing's second LP Xuvetyn from 1996 which is excellent but is highly indebted to Loveless and would not exist without it. I mean when i was 19 in 1991 and Loveless came out I bought the tape and played it to fucking death. Then a couple of months later I saw My Bloody Valentine play twice at The Prince Of Wales in St Kilda. I was so obsessed I made sure I got my hands on Belinda's set list for both nights. That took pride of place on the door of my bedroom wardrobe in the sharehouse I lived in for a few years. Somewhere along the way I stupidly lost those lists. I think by about March 1992 I'd listened to my Creation cassette of Loveless so much I couldn't possibly listen to it any more. It wasn't until the early 00s that I heard it again when I found a copy on cd in an op shop which was handy as I no longer had anything to play tapes on. Since then I have the occasional listen skipping the way too overplayed Only Shallow and the previously released Soon and To Here Knows When. I mean those two tracks from Glider and Tremelo respectively had been played to death by the time I got my hands on Loveless. For me there's two classic albums in this era really, Glider and Tremelo combined and Loveless sans the two tracks from the EPs...

The deliciously dazed and frenetic bewilderment of Loveless still astounds to this day. 

MY BLOODY VALENTINE - LOVELESS [1991]

Really do I need to spill another word onto a page about the merits of this LP? This recording is one of the most pillaged albums in rock’s history. The Jesus & Mary Chain laid down the blueprint via Phil Spector, The Beach Boys, The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, Dr. Mix & The Remix, Aeroplane Runways and more. Dinosaur Jr., Husker Du and Sonic Youth added the extra flavour and My Bloody Valentine made noise rock at its most beautiful, blurry, melodic, disorientating and come on I have to say it, BLISSED OUT.

Kevin Shields provided his considerably unique guitar talents along with Belinda Butcher. They together did their extraordinary girl/boy vocal thing. The rhythm section was none too shabby either with the aforementioned Deb Googe on her heavy, dubby and sometimes pummelling bass. Colm O'Ciosoig provided the drums as well as occasional sampling/production/engineering duties.

It all began to come together in 1988 with the release of the You Made Me Realise EP and Feed Me With Your Kiss followed by the brilliant LP Isn’t Anything. My Bloody Valentine were on an incredible roll that turned into an avalanche with 1990’s Glider EP & 1991’s Tremolo EP followed by Loveless!

Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation may have taken rock to its furthest reaches but Loveless took it beyond the universe and even into un-rock regions ie. ambient and ultra vague dance-rock. This was future rock’s cherry on top. We thought ongoing sonic exploration of rock was to continue but this was it. Loveless has now become an almost melancholy sonic document, like modernist Russian architecture that’s now in ruins, because it was never bettered. Don’t let that get you down though because this is a hell of a peak for rock’s innovation to go out on.

Here come the cliches. Loveless was hazy sweet languidity with a noisy and chaotic undercurrent played with frenzied yet laconic enthusiasm. Like the band’s name suggested a conundrum was at work here, where apathy and hysteria were used to describe the same song. Deliriously indolent, what about listless exhilaration? One tends to forget this record also fucking rocked as well as swimming in oceans of intoxicating euphoria, sometimes all at once. Oh yeah, Loveless is also pop music at its finest. Ecstatic aural pleasure at its Zenith.

*This review was written for the HC website in maybe 2014(?)

WHEN YOU SLEEP

Words are very unnecessary...      

...but...

When You Sleep is blistering noise pop of the most excessively exuberant kind so astonishing its wooziness will leave you woozy.

TOUCHED

Someone once commented 'Why didn't they do a whole side of the eerie and bizarre sort of stuff like Touched and the in between track hazy ambient gear?'  That would have been cool.

ONLY SHALLOW

Best opening tune to an LP ever? 

 

i ONLY SAID

HOLY SHIT! This still sound incredible in 2025. Still drowning in pools of euphoria and disorientating elastic psychedelia. 

COME IN ALONE

And you go here's another one just like the other one... it's ok... then hang on a fucking minute this might be the greatest My Bloody Valentine tune of all. Waves and waves of guitar elation with equal amounts of gloriously disconcerting undercurrents. Mind melting. 

SOMETIMES

Then you go oh fuck I forgot about the unplugged lo-fi anthem Sometimes! How good is this. Can it get any more cozy than this deceptively low key jam as it infinitely progresses getting higher and higher and more and more hypnotic as it expands heavenwards. 

WHAT YOU WANT

Hang on, hang on I forgot about What You Want... now surely this is the best tune here. There's something melancholy about this one like you're having one last romantic liaison as your summer affair draws to a close. Breathtakingly dizzy like falling in a dream, so bittersweet and aberrant. 

Yes people forget, as the popularity of Loveless has somewhat unexpectedly soared over the last 34 years, that this is pretty fucking weird music. Often off colour and bizarre yet always retaining a potent effervescence if a bit claustrophobic. 

Crescent - Lost

[1993]

Highly unusual, seemingly ramshackle but perhaps highly designed and tightly controlled wah-wah damaged tranced out space rock of the highest order. It's pretty fucking electrifying! This was the most raw and garage-y thing to be included under the banner of UK post-rock. 

For underground noisey rock 7" singles from the 90s it doesn't get any better.

Sandro Brugnolini - Megattera

[1970]

Pretty cool.

A hypnotic funky psych-groove jam with some neat twangy surf guitars, lead guitar lines put through a wah wah for added trippy effect while a space age synth adds further out there flavour.

*This goes right back to the dawn of the CardrossManiac2 blog. This great tune Megattera was included on the fabulous all killer no filler compilation Flipper Psychout: Original Italian Library Music From The Vault Of Flipper which was in the top 5 best archival compilations of 2011 list. 

Alessandro Alessandroni - White Sands

[1971]

Doesn't get any better than this. Like an idyllic postcard in sound with a Mediterranean sea breeze as the sun glistens on the water.  

Franco Bonfanti & Giancarlo Barigozzi - Vele Sul Mare

I think this is my favourite album cover ever. I like boats and boat art. Paintings should only be of boats. It's the only worthy art. 

I know I have an mp3 of this somewhere or maybe it's long gone with my computer from 2010. I do recall this being one of the best library records I encoutered back in 2007-2012, the heyday of the file sharing blog era... whenever it was when they invented mediafire. The idyllic seaside cover is a bit misleading as only a couple of tracks have a charming scenic beauty, mostly the coastal tranquility sours and a bustling nervous energy darkens the tone as it all turns a bit ominous. Obviously the music would have been perfectly suited to a documentary featuring creatures living under the sea whose doom is always looming. 

Porto Di Lavagna [1977]

Mostly blissful serenity with interludes of foreboding clouds.

Catamarano Baloo [1977]

Sea breezy cheese. Copacetic pleasantness with occasional swells into elated zones. A cinemascope soundscape worthy of a post-coital scene in a 70s Italian blue movie. 

Nice.

Vela 6 [1977]

I honestly can't think of another piece of music like this. An impeccable sound design of layered synths and assorted keyboards. Those thickly textured serene synths combined with with those uneasy fidgety organ runs, thin melodic keyboard lines, fluttery pianos and the swirling dark aquatic synthetic bass tones bubbling away create a strange world of sound. 

Circolo Vizioso [1977]

More of a suspenseful horror synth soundtrack vibe from the get go. Hypnotic and haunted.

Soling SOS [1977]

Cataclysmic thick synthetic textures and sporadic sinister percussion. Echoing keyboards of gloom and a triangle of impending doom.

[1907]

Speaking of boat art here's a great boat painting: The most perfect painting of a boat. Thanks Odilon Redon.

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 wide vistas, 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. 

Animotion - Obsession

[1985]

80s 80s 80s

Blue light disco!

Check out this video. Look at these guys. Absolute creepy dorks but overly confident creepy dorks who think they are such spunks, so 80s. The 80s where everyone was hot, all you had to do was believe. These psychos are obviously from 80s LA and surely Bret Easton Ellis based a few characters on them.

Then again maybe they were just being hilariously ironic and maybe they were just fucking cool... I mean they aren't that cool but those absurd bass lines are so funny they have got to be a little in-joke right.

Whether it's cool, daggy or swathed in layers of irony is kinda beside the point though as Obsession is just a whole lotta undeniable fun. So much so that it's just fun.

Who do you want me to be

to make you sleep with me

The actual tune Obsession is like Giorgio Moroder on crack. Insane in your fucking face dance rock that sadly didn't make it to Number one in Canadia only reaching number seven and reaching number twelve here in Australia.

Eyes Without A Face · Billy Idol

[1983]

80s 80s 80s

Could you get anymore 80s.

Epic.

This covers so much sonic 80s ground it's astonishing that it works! 

Its new wave atmospheric synth pop with all these other elements like hard rock, sophisto-pop, mor ballad, there's a bit of jangling, talk-singing that's almost rap, a dubby bassline, ethereal female backing vocals all captured in one big dreamy soundworld. With all that going on it is a testament to Idol and co. that it gets a chance to send chills down your spine with a pretty touching delivery. 

*Perri Lister of Hot Gossip fame is the woman doing the proto-dream pop backing vocals here and she really makes the song. 

Strawberry Switchblade - By The Sea

[1984]

The roots of Lynchian dream pop. A bit of bossa with the ba ba ba ba. Sorta proto-00s too with a hypnagogic/indie surf vibe...

Pretty cool... so cool in fact that it only ever appeared on a b-side to their smash hit hit single, the more commercial new wave synthy-dance-pop tune Since Yesterday. 

Child Molesters - (I'm the) Hillside Strangler

[1978]

Scuzzy lo-fi punk perfection!

Rudimentary my dear Watson!

Sandie Shaw : Run

[1966]

Groovy baby.

A jaunty, spooky and utterly paranoid lil' tune.

 

I guess this horrifying scenario could be the continuation of the story from her previous single Nothing Comes Easy where she follows a guy around, he falls for her then she gets bored of him but then he starts following her around. All a good bit of stalking fun with cool 60s arrangements.

Nothing Comes Easy - Sandie Shaw [1966]

There are some things that people need
Someone so badly they will creep
All I wanted was someone
I have him now, it is done
Nothing comes easy
Nothing comes easy
I had a hard time getting him
And I'm regretting it now

Each place he'd go, there I'd be
I made each move so carefully
And all my scheming did work well
In the end, for me he fell
Nothing comes easy
Nothing comes easy
I had a hard time getting him
And I'm regretting it now

He was just as I expected
Nothing lasts too much
He gave me everything that I asked for
At the start, everything was fine
I was filled with every touch
Then one day when I was with him
I realised that I didn't want him any more

Now he won't leave me alone
He follows me each place I go
He says he don't want anyone new
There must be something I can do
Nothing comes easy
Nothing comes easy
I had a hard time getting him
And I'm regretting it now

Alien Porno Midgets ‎– High Altitude Over Our Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua

[2000]

Outstanding wobbly psychedelic sonic recontextualisation. 

Leyland Kirby and some other bloke do exotica plunderphonics Hawaiian style. If you love your Residents, Christian Marclay, Tom Recchion or whoever else this is right up your alley. However Mr Caretaker himself somehow injects his own viewpoint onto these sound manipulations and surprise surprise some of it is eerie and uncanny as well as also being woozy, jaunty & fun. 

EUROPEANS - Europeans

[1978]

Top obscure British new wave single. Some insane twisted keyboard action amongst the high energy power pop riffage and awesomely daft catchy chorus. Euro-peans! Out of Bristol on Heartbeat Records. 

Victrola – A Game Of Despair

[1983]

A glorious array of intertwining icy synth-waves, gloomy guitar-waves and a bleak crispy drum machine. It's cold yet kinda comforting and cozy. A haunting hypnotic trip to the coldest depths of loneliness so infectious you don't want it to end. Dejection has never sounded so alluring and majestic.

A triumph of evocative 80s synth production that remains outstanding to this day.

The Embarrassment

Elizabeth Montgomery's Face [1981]

One of those "lost bands", "unknown legends" or "best band you never heard" bands. I mean when that comp cd came out in the 90s they really were unknown and I guess are still to some extent. Can you be forgotten if you weren't known in the first place... 

This tune is new wave of the quirky, dark and jangly kind. 

60s American telly is iconic and emblazoned on my mind. Get Smart, I Dream Of Jeanie, Gilligan's Island, Bewitched etc. Get your knobs out boys. 

Elizabeth Montgomery's Fa-a-ace!

Shoulda gone to number one in Canadia at least!

Patio Set [1980]

Punky post-punk, punky new wave, new wave-y post-punk etc etc etc. This was the debut single from Wichita Kansas' finest The Embarrassment. Dark, sorta menacing, weird and a whole lotta fun!

I'm A Don Juan [1981]

Double your guitar pleasure with supreme, tight, high octane riff-age and supreme surreal riff-age on this one. Frantic rhythm section plus another dual vocal with hooks galore. Surprisingly unique. Totally cookin' manic pop thrills! 

Celebrity Art Party [1981]

This one might be their best pop moment. They jangled, they angular-ed, they menaced, they dual vocal-ed, they toe-tapped, they rocked, they popped! Infectious tight blistering pop.

Drive Me To The Park [1983]

A crackin' tune from their second ep Death Travels West. Nails the whole dark indie jangly thing while simultaneously still sounding punk. Still sounds incredibly fresh to this day. If this had been on a major label or big indie imprint it would have surely been a smash but it was released by a little independent  Fresh Sounds who were based in the small town of Lawrence Kansas.

Two Cars [198?]

Alright one more... A brief angular song. Very cool dual vocal with talk-singing, the sorta stylistic choice taken on ten years later by (early) Pavement. These guys really nailed a distinct indie sound all of their own in the nascent days of college rock. That this tune was never released at the time, only ever coming out in 1995 on the archival cd Heyday 1979-1983, is absolutely crazy to me.  

НИИ Косметики — Счастлив как никогда

[1986]

Brilliant and absolutely astonishing that this is not Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti circa 1999/2000.

 

When this turned up on that Fact Mix by Ariel Pink in 2010 there was no info to be found about this tune on the world wide web information superhighway. I'm sure we all speculated that it was actually just Ariel pretending to be a faux 80s Soviet new wave pop star but look it turned up 4 years later on the youtubes. Cool.

Spider Vomit

[2007]

Here's a rough and ready video of Spider Vomit I've never seen until today. Scuzzy tripped out raunch'n'roll baby!

You know what's funny I saw Spider Vomit live once and had their cd. Back in the late 00s I had the first cds by St Helens, Beaches and Scott & Charlene's Wedding but I did not realise the dude from Spider Vomit was the same dude in S&CW and the chick in St Helens was the singer in Spider Vomit and the main dude in St Helens played bass on the first Scott & Charlene's Wedding album. That's all news to me today. All I knew was that the bird who played guitar in Spider Vomit was also in Beaches and that she was awesome.

I was once accused of being a hipster for owning the Widows Walk cd.

[2006]

Here's an even rougher videeo. Spider Vomit doing Widows Walk live in someone's lounge room a year earlier. Tribal psychedelic grunge Royal Trux stylee. So the singers here are Hannah Brooks who went on to sing in St Helens and Craig Darmody who went on to form Scott & Charlene's Wedding. 

St Helens - Pharaohs Tomb [2009]

At the time I thought St Helens leaned way too much into their Royal Trux and Television influences but I gotta say there are some pretty cool tunes on their one and only cd Heavy Profession. It's all dual guitar interplay and intertwining girl/boy vocals. 

St Helens - One In Seventeen [2009]

Now that we're in this constant state of decline culturally and otherwise, I really appreciate these guys giving it a good crack. The Rolling Stones heavily influenced Television and The Rolling Sones heavily influenced Royal Trux and The Rolling Stones, Television and Royal Trux heavily influenced St Helens. That's a triple layer of Stones which is just the right amount. There's a bit Neil and bit of J to add into the pastiche mix on this tune too. I'm starting to think that this tune is so good it might just be undeniable... or has my naff-detector broken now that I'm old... 

Scott & Charlene's Wedding - Footscray Station [2010]

So the singer here is Craig Darmody who had been in Spider Vomit. Here though he's in more of an 80s indie jangle mode à la The Clean, The Bats and The Go-Betweens so I never put 2 and 2 together. Who cares anyway. Para Vista Social Club was an instant hit in my mind which now I see is kinda funny because it is just as much indebted to its influences as the St Helens album. These cds while having charismatic creators were record collection rock following well worn paths with nary innovation. Why do we allow certain things and not others? Taste: It's a mystery. 

Scott & Charlene's Wedding - Every Detail [2010]

Every Detail's got all the intense strums, jangles and noisy repetition swirling into a maelstrom echoing legendary pioneers The Velvets, The Feelies, The Clean et al. Nobody really expected a popular revival of this kind of music, we thought it had been done to death by the end of the 80s although it had continued in its own little alcove during the 90s & 00s where the diehards were keeping the faith. These Melbourne kids weren't even around when REM, The Clean, The Verlaines, The Bats and The Chills were getting originally aired on community radio and played on all night music video show Rage so I guess it was a trendy fresh and retro thing to them.

The downbeat sounds of both St Helens and Scott & Charlene's Wedding were retroactively chucked into the fake genre dubbed dolewave. This was a joke invented as a pejorative term for pissweak jangly indie bands in Melbourne in 2012 like Dick Diver and Twerps. A scene is not a genre but somehow a few years later midwit writers took it seriously and now its got a wikipedia page all of its own. I really don't get that St Helens get included as they don't have a "wannabe Dunedin 2.0" bone in their body, Scott & Charlene's Wedding however...

Beaches - Hoedown [2008]

I guess this was the first Beaches tune we all heard. So Gillian Tucker plays bass here and made the video. Beaches were a strange sorta Melbourne underground supergroup with the most guitarists. Hoedown is an upbeat driving surf guitar jam. Pretty cool.

Beaches - Halve [2010]

More guitars is better! A swarm of sparkling, driving and spaced out guitars go into swirling overdrive for your dreamy listening pleasure. The cosmic-psych-gaze is real.