Kendra Smith

Doomy-voiced Opal siren. Now living in the wilds of Northern California knitting pump organs out of lentils, or something like that. Here's two from the Guild of Temporal Adventurers EP and one from Five Ways of Disappearing.

Kendra Smith - Stars Are In Your Eyes
Kendra Smith - She Brings The Rain
Kendra Smith - Valley of the Morning Sun

The Beau Brummels

Up there with the Byrds in my estimation. The first two albums (produced by Sly Stone - yep, that one) found the perfect midpoint between Merseybeat and folk, overlaid with Sal Valentino's beautifully plangent voice. Their later records (Triangle and Bradley's Barn) moved into gently psychedelic orchestral Americana; it makes perfect sense that Ron Elliott later played on Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle. They built up a sizable stack of unreleased tracks over their short lifetime as a band. Here's two from the Magic Hollow box set, along with a rare-ish B-side. 'Galadriel' might test your tolerance for late 60s Tolkien-related whimsy, but stick with it.

The Beau Brummels - She Reigns
The Beau Brummels - Galadriel (demo)
The Beau Brummels - Black Crow

Nivens

Northumberland's finest. You can get the CD here.

Nivens - Summertime
Nivens - Judy Garland
Nivens - I Love Me

Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes

Three from Nixon.

Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes - Heaven and a Higher Place
Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes - Goodbye Misery
Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes - Hold Me Now

Incidentally, the 1000 Violins files should be working again.

The Wolfhounds

Yesterday I listened to all the Wolfhounds albums in quick succession; a pleasingly abrasive (if cumulatively rather dour) experience. You can buy the Lost But Happy compilation (or download the albums, if you don't mind intangibles) here.

The Wolfhounds - Stars in the Tarmac
The Wolfhounds - Me
The Wolfhounds - Rent Act

Claudine Longet

A few years back, I found all Claudine's albums on CD in the bargain basement of Berwick Street Record and Tape Exchange. At the time, I know nothing about her, but I was taken by the cover designs, particularly the Princess-Leia-gone-awry cover of Colours. A little online digging convinced me that I should buy them. Inevitably, they'd all gone by the time I returned.

I've been making up for that oversight ever since. Last week, I finally acquired the CD of her 1970 A&M swansong, Run Wild Run Free. Here's three songs from that, including a novel hoedown-tinged arrangement of 'Everybody's Talkin''; this being Claudine, it's a whispery, dreamy kind of hoedown, of course.

Claudine Longet - Everybody's Talkin'
Claudine Longet - Love Can Never Die
Claudine Longet - Golden Slumbers

Mighty Mighty week! part three

No longer at this year's Christmas Twee, apparently, but it sounds as if they might be playing out next year...

Mighty Mighty - Little Wonder
Mighty Mighty - Lionheart
Mighty Mighty - When You Trusted Me

Mighty Mighty week! part two

Bubblegum from here.

Mighty Mighty - Throwaway
Mighty Mighty - Love So Strong
Mighty Mighty - Is There Anyone Out There?

The Would-Be-Goods

I've been reading The Towers of Trebizond. It made me think of The Would-Be-Goods: a terribly English protagonist in exotic climes. Jessica Griffin has done a fair bit of globe-trotting, lyrically (and in actuality, for all I know). Here's a song about an aspiring traveller, a bonus track from the first CD issue of The Camera Loves Me. And the tale of a different kind of fish out of water, from their new album, Eventyr. You can (and should) buy it here.

The Would-Be-Goods - Bayswater Blues
The Would-Be-Goods - Melusine

Mighty Mighty week! part one

Collectively, the frizziest hair in indiepop. The intro to 'Yours Truly' prefigures 'Babies' by Pulp, perhaps.

Mighty Mighty - Yours Truly
Mighty Mighty - Man or Boy
Mighty Mighty - Let's Call it Love

JoJo

It's Time for Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers came out in 1986. It would probably be among my favourite three or four records by Jonathan if I were nerdy enough to have such a list, which I am, sort of. It has some of the rowdiest guitar on a JR record since the Modern Lovers' debut. It also has the lovely 'Neon Sign', one of his 3rd album Velvets moments.

Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - Let's Take a Trip
Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - Neon Sign
Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - Double Chocolate Malted

Ugly Things

Three Australian garage greats from the sadly out of print Ugly Things CD.

The Black Diamonds - I Want, Need, Love You
Machine Gun Kelly's Rejects - I'm Going Back
The Elois - By My Side

Francoise Hardy

Three songs from her hard-to-find One Nine Seven Zero album. It's largely comprised of English reworkings of her older songs; these are English tracks which were Frenchified for Soleil.

The picture is from Jean Marie Perier's website. There's plenty more pretty stuff there, although sadly he's recently introduced (perhaps inevitably) rather hideous digital watermarks on the pictures.

Francoise Hardy - Song of Winter
Francoise Hardy - Strange Shadows
Francoise Hardy - Magic Horse

The Chesterf!elds

OK, not for Christmas, exactly, but you can't complain about getting a present early. This is an excellent (and somewhat rare) track from their split single with Japanese band Johnny Dee. It really should have been on their recent(ish) best of.

The Chesterfields - Open to Persuasion

Saturn V

Post-Razorcuts, pre-Sportique, underrated.

Saturn V - Machinegun Head

BB

Brigitte Bardot - Contact
Brigitte Bardot - Mister Sun

Medalark 11

A later incarnation of The Bodines, pretty much, with a slightly increased emphasis on choppy ACR-influenced groove. These are my two favourite songs on their debut (and only) album, Shaped Up, Shipped Out; perhaps not coincidentally, they're both reworked Bodines tunes.

Medalark 11 - Coffee
Medalark 11 - I Call Your Name

Sneaky Feelings

Along with the Able Tasmans, perhaps the most consistently underrated Flying Nun band. They don't have the ragged goofball drone of early Clean; in fact, they don't really fit the archetype of the Dunedin Sound at all. It'd be tempting to describe them as power pop, but that implies a degree of muscularity they rarely show. Perhaps 'sixties-tinged popular music bearing faint traces of the Sound of Young Scotland' would be a more apt (if less snappy) tag.

Here's three songs from their three albums, none included on their recent(ish) best of, Positively George Street.

Sneaky Feelings - In the Shape of a Heart
Sneaky Feelings - It's So Easy
Sneaky Feelings - Someone Else's Eyes

Paris Angels

Remembered (if they're remembered at all) for 'Perfume', or for stealing Kingmaker's instruments (reason enough for their canonization), The Paris Angels were a much better band than their 'baggy also-ran' status would suggest. Someone (LTM, maybe) really needs to reissue Sundew.

The Paris Angels - Fade
The Paris Angels - What Goes On
The Paris Angels - Louise

The Sleepers

Nothing to do with Louise Wener and her cohorts, this mob emerged from Mansfield, Ohio in 1966. The perfect combination of fuzztone crunch and jangle, compiled on Teenage Shutdown Vol 9 - Teen Jangler Blowout.

The Sleepers - I Want a Love

Adventures in Stereo

Songs from their first album, pretty record cover logos from here.

Adventures in Stereo - When We Go Back
Adventures in Stereo - Don't You Worry Little One
Adventures in Stereo - Waves On

Girls, Guitars

Three from an Ace Records compilation, Girls With Guitars, which recycles some of the tracks from the Girls in the Garage series (with better sound quality, obviously). It's a fun listen, though far from comprehensive (where are, say, The Luv'd Ones?), and a couple of the choices are a little questionable (the Lonnie Mack and the Charmaines track = male guitarist rocking out with occasional femme backing vocals). I was hoping a second volume would remedy some of the omissions, but it's yet to emerge.

The Girls - My Baby
Denise and Company - Boy, What'll You Do Then
The Daughters of Eve - Help Me Boy

1000 Violins

Big-voiced, vaguely psychedelic pop from Sheffield. Songwriter/guitarist Colin Gregory went on to mine a similar seam - unwieldy titles, gratuitous Summer of Love references, irresistible choruses - in The Dylans, to slightly lesser effect (to my mind, anyway). Here's three songs from Hey Man, That's Beautiful:

1000 Violins - If I Were a Bullet (Then For Sure I'd Find a Way to Your Heart)
1000 Violins - Locked out of the Love In
1000 Violins - Halcyon Days

...and three more from a German EP compilation, Locked out of the Love-In:

1000 Violins - All We Need is Cash
1000 Violins - I Was Depending on You to be My Jesus
1000 Violins - Lost to the World

Butterflies of Love week! part three

Two from The New Patient, one from Famous Problems, both available from Fortuna Pop.

The Butterflies of Love - Dream Driver
The Butterflies of Love - She's an Heiress
The Butterflies of Love - Ghostride

Comet Gain + Velocette

'Hideaway' is unlikely to make it onto Broken Record Prayers, I suppose; there's probably not much love lost between D Feck and the first incarnation of his band. They went on to become Velocette, of course. Here's two by them, including a Paris Angels cover that's on the Japanese version of Fourfold Remedy.

Comet Gain - Hideaway
Velocette - Get Yourself Together
Velocette - Perfume

Butterflies of Love week! part two

Two singers, Jeffrey and Daniel Greene (unrelated). Mark Mulcahy of Miracle Legion contributes the occasional spectral backing ooooh, but not live, sadly. Not in Blighty, anyway.

Jeffrey is the tall, gangly, mumbly-sounding one, prone to lengthy disquisitions between songs ('ladies and gentlemen the supersonic Butterflies are about to perform another smash' etc etc) which drag on to disquieting effect.

Daniel speaks less and is the leader of the band, as Jeffrey frequently reminds us. He's the vaguely tremulous-sounding one, and looks a bit like a young Jack Nicholson.

There are other members of the band, some with hats, some without. Their keyboard player always looks uncertain and starey-eyed, as if recently released from some form of confinement. Perhaps New Haven does that to you.

If their debut album had come out in 1988 (when wry young men with reverb pedals roamed the alluvial plains) rather than 1999, they would have straddled the world of indie like a gangly colossus. As it is, they visit the UK every few years to play for the benefit of various Track and Field bods in murky backrooms. You can buy How to Know the Butterflies of Love on Amazon for a derisory sum, and you certainly should, because it's great.

The Butterflies of Love - Mt. Everest
The Butterflies of Love - Wild
The Butterflies of Love - Amethyst

The Butterflies of Love week! part one

One of my favourite bands, for reasons I'll go on to discuss, or perhaps not. American's Newest Hit Makers was their first album. They didn't advertise its existence for a while, perhaps understandably. There's a lot of what musicologists might term 'arsing about'. There's some good stuff, too. It's kind of surprising to hear Jeffrey Greene singing out so much, if you're familiar with the honeyed mumble he adopted on later records.

The Butterflies of Love - I Try Too Hard
The Butterflies of Love - I Read Her Diary
The Butterflies of Love - Walking the Dog

"We're flattered if you dance, we're not insulted"

The Modern Lovers - 96 Tears

Teen Blast USA! Vol 2

I'm particularly fond of The Gnomes track, the perfect encapsulation of teen loserdom. The husky-voiced singer sounds implausibly cheerful about his miserable existence.

The Gnomes - Something's Going On
The Underground Balloon Corps - (Heart) Made of Soul
The Green Beans - Superstition

Teen Blast USA! Vol 1

A nice garage comp that mixes minor chord melancholia with more stomping stuff. Even if the Jolly Roger and the Poppiteers track sucked, I'd feel compelled to post it here purely because of the band name.

Jack Bedient and the Chessmen - Double Whammy
Jolly Roger and the Poppiteers - Beautiful Lady in the Sky
Six Minus One - Other Side

The Feelies

Line Records. Were they legit? The muffled sound quality of their products suggests not. Regardless, they made a bunch of Feelies, Modern Lovers and dB's albums available at a time when they were otherwise out of print, so we'll spare them a season in purgatory. Their CD of The Good Earth appends a couple of cover versions from the No One Knows EP. Here they are for your delectation, together with one Feelies original. The album proper is due for reissue sometime soon (in an unambiguously legitimate form).

The Feelies - She Said, She Said
The Feelies - Sedan Delivery
The Feelies - Slipping (Into Something)

Luna

I always like finding second-hand Japanese import versions of albums (pretty much the only way I can afford them). Partly because of the inevitable mistranslations in the lyric booklet, but mainly because there are always bonus tracks. Sometimes the tracks end up detracting from the album proper - what should end with a bang peters out with some B-side frippery. In the case of Bewitched, I think the bonus track (otherwise unreleased) forms the perfect conclusion - I much prefer it to the (perhaps appropriately) somnolescent 'Sleeping Pill'.

Luna - Sucking Ice Cubes

Girls At Our Best

Cherry Red have been threatening to reissue Pleasure for a couple of years now. In the meantime, here's 'Go for Gold', the perfect confluence of post-punk, disco and proto-twee.

Girls At Our Best - Go for Gold

American Spring

Now that Pacific Ocean Blue is back in the racks, this is the Beach Boys-related artefact that most needs reissuing. 'Sweet Mountain' might be my favourite 70s Brian Wilson song. I love the girls' airy, mournful / resigned-sounding vocals, the twinkling synthesized backing, the doo wop-inspired chorus, Brian's curious accent ('it rained on de mountain') on the closing vocal tag. Their covers of two Dennis Wilson songs aren't exactly shoddy, either. This version of 'Fallin' in Love', powered by a tick-tocking drum machine, is different to the one on Pet Projects.

American Spring - Sweet Mountain
American Spring - Fallin' in Love
American Spring - Forever

Brilliant Corners week! part five

A History of White Trash was their last album. It tones down the swagger of Hooked somewhat, with the exception of Automatic-era JAMC pastiche 'Electric Slam'. Good stuff throughout, although it never stood a chance in the post-grunge, pre-Britpop days of 93.

The Brilliant Corners - Get It Up
The Brilliant Corners - Around the Bend
The Brilliant Corners - Gushing

Brilliant Corners week! part four

1990's Hooked was their shoegaze moment, according to TweeNet and Allmusic. It's nothing of the sort, of course; if anything, it's unabashedly RAWK...sometimes. If you can cope with something more muscular than The Fat Tulips, it's probably their strongest set of tunes outside of Somebody Up There Likes Me.

The Brilliant Corners - The Pope The Monkey and The Queen
The Brilliant Corners - Sandy Knows
The Brilliant Corners - Heaven Inside Her

Brilliant Corners week! part three

1989's Joy Ride was mainly a mid-paced and pensive affair. I don't find myself returning to it too often. Thankfully, the CD appends the snappily-titled 'Why Do You Have to Go Out With Him When You Could Go Out With Me' and its B-side, 'Shangri-La'. Both feature Amelia Fletcher, in accordance with then-current EEC Directive 86/123 Re: Compulsory Female Backing Vocals in Lovelorn Indiepop Records.

'Anticipation' is from the BBC Sessions album. Sounds a bit Josef K-ish to me.

The Brilliant Corners - Why Do You Have To Go Out With Him When You Could Go Out With Me?
The Brilliant Corners - Shangri-La
The Brilliant Corners - Anticipation

Brilliant Corners week! part two

The Brilliant Corners - Oh!
The Brilliant Corners - Trust Me
The Brilliant Corners - Can't Wait That Long

*NB: the links are fixed, if you were having problems.

Brilliant Corners week! part one

They came from under blackest Avonmouth skies with some faintly ropey rockabilly-tinged singles, suddenly became very good on the Fruit Machine EP, then made a classic album of kitchen sink indie with the best trumpet lines since The Pale Fountains. Here's three songs.

The Brilliant Corners - Trudy is a Squeel
The Brilliant Corners - Delilah Sands
The Brilliant Corners - Friday Saturday Sunday Monday

Love

The other weekend I found two Love albums in a Lomita thrift store: Forever Changes (70s edition, butterfly label) and Reel to Real. The latter has a cover of such sublime ugliness it tips over into coolness. $6 for both. The asian lady behind the counter asked me if they sounded like the Beatles. I said maybe a little, but with more mariachi horns.

So here's three songs about Love, or alluding to Love, or seemingly unrelated to Love beyond the title.

The Anyways were from Oxford. They're The Relationships now. Their song title seems rather prescient, although I think they're singing about his wilderness years.

The Strands were Shack, pretty much, and Shack were Arthur Lee's pick up band in the UK. The castle reference makes me think this is about Arthur. He's sporting a kung fu look in the picture above, or maybe concealing premature baldness.

Hopkirk and Lee were...well, who knows.

The Anyways - The Ghost of Arthur Lee
Michael Head and the Strands - And Luna
Hopkirk and Lee - Free Arthur Lee!

Stephen (David Kilgour)

My laptop was poorly, now its pallid plastic bosom is heaving with vitality. Anyway, onwards.

Stephen was David Kilgour in disguise, pretty much. 'Featuring future members of Chug', as it might say on a cover sticker with very limited marketing potential. David Kilgour was meant to be playing at the Silent Movie Theatre this Thursday. Now he's not, but there's still a film about him.

Stephen - Loved by You
Stephen - Little Audrey
Stephen - Don't Now Why

PF Sloan

Ace Records have just brought out a new PF Sloan comp, gathering together the bulk of his first two albums and some rare single cuts. Sloan wrote a bunch of tracks for bands like The Turtles, Jan and Dean and The Grass Roots - in fact, he pretty much was The Grass Roots on their first single. He could seemingly turn his hand to anything, from harmony pop to the surfin' sounds of The Fantastic Baggys. His first two albums under his own name are mainly in the folk-rock vein, and while some of it hasn't aged well (I've never particularly cared for 'Eve of Destruction'), there are some great songs...particularly the later single sides, two of which are here.

PF Sloan - A Melody for You
Philip Sloan - I Can't Help But Wonder, Elizabeth

Girls Will Be Girls

...is the title of a 1999 girl group compilation put together by Mick Patrick and Malcolm Baumgart (also responsible for a bunch of excellent Ace Records comps). It's one of my favourite girl group discs, running the gamut from purest fromage to the rather soulful. 'Jet Set' by The Jet Set definitely falls into the former category ('discoteque go-go-go', indeed). Jessica James and the Outlaws is Peggy from The Angels in disguise. And Bernadette Castro lays down some promising groundwork for her career as, um, NY's State Commissioner of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

The Jet Set - Jet Set
Jessica James and the Outlaws - Give Her Up (Baby)
Bernadette Castro - A Girl in Love Forgives

The Bachelor Pad

From Tales of Hofmann. It took me a long time to realize they meant Albert, rather than ETA - I figured they were just poor spellers. The Bachelor Pad were from Scotland. They sound as if they're on the verge of falling apart, drifting in and out of synch (and perhaps consciousness) but cohering just enough to establish the hook in your mind. An album's worth is slightly queasiness-inducing, but they made some cracking records.

The Bachelor Pad - Country Pancake
The Bachelor Pad - I Want to Hold Your Head
The Bachelor Pad - Girl of your Dreams

Able Tasmans Week! (part four)

From The Shape of Dolls EP and Store in a Cool Place.

The Able Tasmans - The Shape of Dolls
The Able Tasmans - My Name is Peter Keen
The Able Tasmans - Mary Tyler Moore

Surf Bunny (slight return)

While I'm thinking of gloriously inept female-fronted surf pop, here's Trudy Van and the Realm, from Teen Blast Vol 2; they're from New York, apparently.

Trudy Van and the Realm - Do the Surf

Able Tasmans week! (part three)

Three from Hey Spinner.

The Able Tasmans - Dileen
The Able Tasmans - Wednesday (She's Coming 'Round)
The Able Tasmans - Theory of Continual Disappointment

Girlfrendo

Two songs from the Japanese version of Surprise! Surprise! It's Girlfrendo, including their cover of Ginny Arnell's 'Dumb Head'. And 'First Kiss Feelings...', just because it's a fine pop song.

I saw them play the Garage a while before the album emerged. Could Comet Gain have been supporting? It seems possible. I don't remember much about it. They played 'The Wee Wee Song' (inevitably - Peel had been playing it lots). Golden Boy was very blonde. I bought 'Friday Nite Lovebite', perhaps the last 7" single I bought at a gig.

Girlfrendo - Photosession in a Photobooth
Girlfrendo - Dumb Head
Girlfrendo - First Kiss Feelings vs Everyday Sensations

Able Tasmans week! (part two)

More from A Cuppa Tea and a Lie Down.

The Able Tasmans - Sour Queen
The Able Tasmans - Fa Fa Fa Fa
The Able Tasmans - Virtues Asunder

Surf Bunnies

Two tracks from the girl group comp Surf Bunnies and Hot Rod Honeys. The Westwoods track is an answer record to The Trade Winds' 'New York's a Lonely Town'; it's a Jack Nitzsche arrangement with Gracia Nitzsche on lead vocals and Marilyn Wilson on backing vocals. It sounds a little muffled, but I think this gives it a strangely appealing quality. I know nothing about D.D. Hope, but she sounds splendidly bratty.

The Westwoods - I Miss My Surfer Boy Too
D.D. Hope - California Surfer

Able Tasmans week! (part one)

From A Cuppa Tea and a Lie Down (out of print, like the rest of their stuff). Mystifyingly perceived as a second-tier Flying Nun band when they are, perhaps, the best.

The Able Tasmans - What Was That Thing You Said?
The Able Tasmans - I See Now Where
The Able Tasmans - And We Swam the Magic Bay

The Crayon Fields

...are from Melbourne. You can buy their album here.

The Crayon Fields - Would It Be So Strange?
The Crayon Fields - Living So Well

Debsey Mixture

From the Japanese 'Dreamism!' EP ('girl group from strawberry 80's sweet') and the Spanish version of 'Some Dusty', respectively.

Dolly Mixture - My Rainbow Valley
Birdie - She Can't Lose

We Are Icerink

Golden - Don't Destroy Me
Elizabeth City State - Year of the V-Neck
World of Twist - New Electric Pop and Soul

Moose

Moose - Yves Klein Blue

Hello.

Slapp Happy - Blue Flower