Day 453
The Umbrellas: the fine San Francisco band will be releasing their self-titled album on August 5! This is great! Their brand of jangly indiepop, classic-sounding, influenced by The Fairways, #Poundsign#, and the UK bands from the 80s, they are one band to follow. Their album will be out on vinyl and CD and you can preview now a cracking track called “She Buys Herself Flowers”.
Watoo Watoo: a new re-release by the French band is available now on Bandcamp. Their classic “Picture of a Lost Friend” EP is reissued now on a 3″ CD. This is a lovely thing if you missed the original release. The EP has 6 songs of elegant and sometimes jazzy feel. Lovely.
Riel: this duo from Argentina formed by Mora and Germán sounds pretty good. Dreamy, punchy, melodic and throw in some sweet vocals. That’s how I would describe their music in a nutshell. Their latest digital single is called “Blanco & Negro” and it is worth checking out.
Pastel Coast: On July 21 Shelflife Records is releasing the album “Sun” by these French popsters! This is the band’s second album and will be available on CD and vinyl. All 10 songs are available to check out and I urge you to do so. Their happy-go-lucky music, infused with surf melodies, works great.
Señor Kino: not too long ago I recommended this wonderful Mexican band when they released their single “Aurora Boreal”. Now the band is releasing an album also titled “Aurora Boreal” that contains 10 songs. This is a really good effort and hopefully they get a bit of a buzz with it. It is really refreshing to see many good Mexican bands appearing in the pop panorama. The album is only available digitally.
—————————————————————–
The Irish name Muineachán derives from a diminutive plural form of the Irish word muine meaning “brake” (a thickly overgrown area) or sometimes “hillock”. Patrick Weston Joyce interpreted this as “a place full of little hills or brakes”] Monaghan County Council’s preferred interpretation is “land of the little hills”, a reference to the numerous drumlins in the area.
Yup, today we are heading to Monaghan town in Ireland to find out details about the band The Storm who released a 7″ and appeared on a couple of compilations in the late 80s!
One thing that is worth mentioning since the start of the post is that there was another band called The Storm in Ireland at the same time. They were from Dublin and appeared on a compilation called “Swimming Out of the Pool”. That’s not the same band we’ll be talking about today according to Irishrock.org. Discogs has it as the same band.
Irishrock.org, that great resource for bands from Ireland tells us some more details about the band. To start they give us the year they were formed, 1987. We know the band members too, Anthony “Swifty” Swift (vocals), Marty Smith (drums), Tony Fanthorpe (guitar, backing vocals) and Keith Corbett (bass and keyboards). The band members had previously been in a band called The Vision Fades. Marty Smith was actually the last one to join that band, it happened when the lead singer, Shaun, who was his brother, left for London. When Marty joined the band thought it was good time to change their name to The Storm.
I wonder if in the internet days they would think The Storm is a good name. Quite difficult to google!
Anyhow, as mentioned the band released a 7″. That was in 1989 and on the fine label Danceline Records (DLS 004). This 7″ included just two songs, “Raging Soul” on the A side and “Meltdown” on the B side. I don’t know much about this record but I know that Aidan Foley and the band produced both songs. They were recorded in Dublin at Sun Studios. The art was created by David Pollock.
When it comes to compilations they first were featured on the “Nationwide” (DLP 1002) compilation from 1989 where they appear with the song “Twilight Town”.
One thing that is worth noting is that it seems this song was already released on a self-released tape titled “Thee Sacred Rights of Pride” from 1988 that included the tracks “Twilight Town”, “Mother Box” and “Left Me Up to a Higher Ground”. The only other info about this tape is that it was recorded in Dublin.
Then I stumble upon something unexpected. A Facebook page! What info can we find there? That the drum kit Marty Smith used was a Pearl Export? That the guitar combo used by Tony was a Laney LC-30? That the bass combo by Keith was a Carlsbro Cobra 90?
The band played at the Baggot Inn in Dublin back in the day as well at The Venue in Derry.
One thing I discover is that the 7″ was also released on tape. The cassette version even had two extra songs, “Lost on the Highway” and “God-Zone”. Interesting. I had no clue. This is sort of rare, no? Usually there’s 7″ and 12″, but 7″ and cassette?
And that’s it. No much more info. So, we know then in total the band recorded 7 songs. Is that it? Or are there more recordings by them? How come just one 7″? And what did they do after the band split? Who remembers The Storm from Monaghan town?!
Edit: August 5th, 2021, Keith Corbett was in the K2Project, The Flicker Effect and Empire of Hurt.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Listen
The Storm – Twilight Town
