Day 558

Semihelix: I start this week with “Will it Take” by Semihelix. This nice digital single from this band from Austin, Texas, seems to be available only in this format. The band formed by Geannie Friedman on guitar and vocals, Kevin Martin on bass and Valdemar Barrera on drums, has been releasing music on their Bandcamp since 2019. I think this is the first time I’m listening to them. And I’m liking this!

Night Shop: Another new band for me is this project by Justin Sullivan from Los Angeles. He is releasing an album titled “Forever Night” on December 1st on CD and vinyl and we can preview the opening track which is titled as the album, “Forever Night”. It is a fine pop song. I don’t know if the remaining 9 songs that we can’t listen are as good, but this one is nice. So have a listen, maybe it convinces you to get the record?

Astral Brain: “Behind Our House” is the second single from the upcoming album “The Bewildered Mind” that Shelflife is releasing on October 15. Here is a video the band has put together which sounds great. But it also looks great. This is an album I look forward a lot. I am very happy that Shelflife picked the band up. Their sound is quite unique and different to your usual indiepop fare I think! I am also very proud that I worked with them on the last fanzine where I included their previous single… definitely one of the best sounding new bands out there.

Grand Drifter: it is always a surprise to me when I hear a good pop song from Italy. A good indiepop song I mean. It is not very common. But when I do, I have to be fair and square and give it to them. Grand Drifter is the project of Andrea Calvo and his latest song, “Haunted Life”, is a fine slice of pop music. Check it out.

Pale Spectres: And I end today’s review with a favourite song of mine. Comes courtesy our friends from Paris the superb Pale Spectres!! Yes! Remember they put a 7″ on Cloudberry? (It is still available by the way!) It is an oldie but it is released for the first time today, the classic “Supermarket Love”. If you never heard it, on recording or live, well, you are in for a treat.

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Back in June I wrote about The Monk Bought Lunch. There I mentioned that the person behind The Monk Bought Lunch, Andy Hayes, was later in a band called Is She Weird? Today is time to discover this band!

There is a very good post about Is She Weird on the blog “Left and to the Back” dating from October 18, 2009. There’s lots of good info about the band here. You can read it there, but I’ll try to summarize.

• The band was active between 1990 and 1995.
• They were formed by Andy Hayes on guitar and vocals, Misha Ellis on drums, Rod Quinn on lead guitar and Peter Blanchard on bass. At some point a lot of lineup changes started to happen within the band, the only stable members were Andy and Misha.
• The band split up when they were recording a self-financed album.
• Is She Weird? used to cover live the song “Stageshow Days” by Bedazzled.
• Andy Hayes would later work as a a producer, working with Mantaray among others

The band actually released two singles, two 7″ records. The first one was from 1993. It was self-released and had the song “Adorable” on the A side and “The Hardest Change” on the B side. The sleeve has a photo of the band. I was surprised to find a video for the song that was recorded at the Southend college music TV show.

In 1994 the band would release the “Let’s Play God” 7″ on the label Cornersun Records (CSUN 001). Is it safe to assume this was the band’s own label? This time around the sleeve just shows Andy and Misha and the two songs on the record were “Let’s Play God” on the A side and “Burden Me” on the B side.

Something that caught my attention on this record is that Guy DeCruz from the fantastic Men of Westenesse played lead guitar and bass guitar on the record. Wow! I interviewed Guy once. And I’ve been meaning to contact him about another band he was in to do an interview. Would be cool, right?

The record was produced by Charlie Francis at Stoneroom and the photo on the sleeve was taken by Alison Paveling. Oh! Rod Quinn did play lead guitar on “Let’s Play God”.

No compilation appearances are listed by there was a promo video for the song “Let’s Play God”.

I have to say that my favourite song by them is called “Mantelpiece”. That’s how I discovered them. This song was to be included in the 1994 album they were recording. Other songs I know that were to be part of this record were “Radiator Man”, “Deep”, “Old”, “Mood”, “Treasure This”, “Adorable”, “Joke Shop” and “Burden Me”. The album was to be titled “I’m Brian and So’s My Wife”. You can find all of these songs in Andy Hayes Youtube channel!

I know! What a discovery! Other bands uploaded to his channel, so I assume Andy was in these band include Trampoline Situation, Balance (who I wrote about and didn’t know who were behind this band!), The Miles Away Club, The Revolves, Elastic and The Hardys.

Good finds indeed. This was a successful investigation! Who remembers Is She Weird?

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Listen
Is She Weird? – Mantelpiece