Day 544
The Vegetablets: nice! Koichi and Miki from Nagoya, our friends that run Tulip House Records and have been in different sweet and lovely bands including Chain Letter, are releasing a new 9 song album titled “The Vegetablets 4”. This is proper DIY bedroom pop, with terrific songs like “SKKY” or “A Waste of Time”.
David Lance Callahan: the leader of The Wolfhounds and Moonshake is back with a solo record titled “English Primitive”. It will be available on October 29 on vinyl and CD but pre-orders are available on his Bandcamp. It is a short record, 7 songs, but they are very good songs! Some of them not strictily indiepop, but I think they are totally enjoyable.
Miracle Legion: the legendary New Haven band has just put together “GLADDER” on Bandcamp. These recordings, 10 songs, come from a gig at The Ritz Ballroom in New York City, November 7, 1987. Four of these songs had been released previously in an EP titled “GLAD” but the band thinks, and I agree with them, why not release all the songs from that gig! That is exactly what “GLADDER” is.
Lavender Blush: the dreampop band from San Francisco will be back with “You are My Moonlight” on January 27. This new album will be released on vinyl by Blue Aurora Audio and on tape by Shelflife Records. The album will include 8 songs and we can preview one of them so far, “You are My Moonlight”, and it is pretty good!
Maida Rose: a few Dutch dreampop bands have been in my radar as of late. Maida Rose from The Hague is one of them. “Within” is the band’s new digital single and it is quite lovely. The band says this is the only song they’ve written about love. Previously the band had released two digital singles, “Where do We Go” and “Harmony of Heartache”, all in 2021.
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I urge everyone to get the Sound as Ever compilations. They cover the Australian indie between 1990 and 1999 and it includes many indiepop gems. There is some indierock too, which surely it’s not my favourite, but I totally understand the approach of the compilations. And yes, I have discovered some great bands that I had no clue about. Raw Nerves is one of them, and I want to share with you my excitement.
Raw Nerves appear on the second volume of these compilations which is titled “Stuck in the 90s” (SAE:02). This comp came out late 2020 and was compiled by Scott Thurling of the fine Popboomerang Records. Yeah, it is him who is behind these compilations. Makes sense!
On this second volume the band appear alongside some bands that probably you know like Blindside, Autohaze or The Glory Box. And there are others worth discovering. Raw Nerves contributes the song “Dead Sinister”.
On the liner notes there is actually some info about this song:
Dead Sinister was an early composition recorded in May 1990 as part of the sessions for Raw Nerves’ sole release, the double A-side single, Life On The Run/Rosebud. While it was built around a 2-string guitar riff, Jean Claude’s bass provides much of the colour and shape. As with many other Raw Nerves songs, the lyrics are driven by contemporary demons and dramas. The recording was completed at Studio 52 in Collingwood and was self-produced.
The song was produced and performed by the band. The band being Jean-Claude Le Bret on bass, Matt Palmer on guitar, Brian Retallick on guitar, Phil Turnour on vocals and Ian Williams on drums.
As mentioned the band put out a 7″ single. That happened in 1990 on Roar Records (52715). This 7″ had a simple sleeve, a die-cut sleeve with the band’s name logo on the top left corner. Two songs were on this record, “Life on the Run” on the A side and “Rosebud” on the B side.
I’ve found both songs online. They are ok. Not as good as “Dead Sinister”. Not indiepop like that one! Of the two I prefer “Life on the Run” which is poppier of course. I wonder why the change of styles? I guess it was the 90s?
Maybe I’m not being fair. But I got hooked to “Dead Sinister”. I think it is a terrific pop song. I wonder if there are more songs recorded at that same recording session. Would be amazing, no? Maybe they are as good as this one!
Thanks to Discogs I find that Brian Retallick played on a band called Global Mantra afterwards. Ian Williams was in Rail and Sleeper as well as in The Wick Effect. Sadly Ian died in 1999.
The Melbourne band seems to have been around until 1993. A short-lived band.
I keep looking for info and find that Phil Turnour was making music under the name FILL. Not sure what years this project was active, I can say sometime around 2011 according to a page on Triple J Unearthed.
And then a Youtube channel by Phil Turnour too. Here there are some more songs by the band. And he writes about each song!
“Memorise” (1989 rehearsal boombox recording) – This recording is from very early in the band’s history. I’d probably been with it for a couple of months (In was the last to join). I was probably reciting lyrics from the tons of notes and poems I’d take to rehearsal – we’d work up riffs etc then I’d extemporize until I hit something I liked and take that away for further writing at home. I suspect we’d already played this a couple of times and we were getting closer. I’m not sure this song survived all the way through our time together but I think we enjoyed playing it. The reference to “a walk in the Black Forest” was, I suspect, derived from a re-run of the Goodies episode where they ran a pirate radio station that had only one record – A Walk in the Black Forest by the Bert Kampfert Orchestra(?). I’d try to write profound lyrics exploring the outer reaches of language but I’d chuck in cheap and absurd pop culture references. 1989 was a very bad time for popular culture but it was the darkness before the light of a number of revolutions that seemed to come after the Soviet Bloc revolutions (Nirvana; The Simpsons; Seinfeld; Goodfellas etc) that continue to influence and keep us sane today. My lyrics were my reaction to that darkness. The organ’s a Farfisa – one of those red desk-looking types from the 60s. Brian had cool gear (Rickenbacker 360; Vox AC30).
“Clear Confusion” (1989 rehearsal boombox recording) – A very early rehearsal. This song was written before I joined the band although I think I re-wrote a couple of lines of lyrics. It’s faster than I remember but we were young!
“Red Death” (1989 rehearsal boombox recording) – This is one I wrote before I joined the band. We did it for a while but it was clear we were writing good stuff together so we gradually replaced songs like this with group efforts. I changed some the lyrics in later years and it’s now one of my favourite old songs of mine. I wrote it in about 1987 after a night amongst the skinheads at the Prince of Wales in StKilda. Our guitar player Brian is singing the bridge and I think I’m playing the harmonica – neither of us are enhancing the song at that point!
“Sky Sweats” (excerpt – rehearsal boombox recording) – I wrote this prior to joining the band. We stopped doing it once we had enough material we’d written together. What amazes me about this and Red Death is that the band had become proficient at playing them so quickly – this would be within about 1 or 2 months of me joining the band. I wrote this on a bus from Melbourne to Shep when I was about 21. It was about 40 degrees and the bus air con wasn’t working. Can’t remember why I was on a bus and not a train.
I think the last three are good. Especially “Clear Confusion”. I think these early recordings are indiepop enough for me. And I enjoy them! Good find. Now, are there more? Would be great to find out!
Who remembers the Raw Nerves from Melbourne? Especially their early days?! :O
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Listen
Raw Nerves – Dead Sinister
