Day 595.
Nobody’s Flowers: from Portland, Oregon and they clearly like The Smiths. Their self-titled album will be out on November 19! It will be released on double 12″ vinyl and will include 9 songs. The one song we can preview is ace, with terrific jangly guitars. Check it out, it is called “Mountains out of Broken Men” and it chimes and chimes!
Seventeen Years: now we check a digital single by this Toronto project. The song is called “Long Story” and from the text on Bandcamp it doesn’t seem clear what the intention is with this song, if to include it in a singles compilation or be part of a new album. Well, I guess we’ll have to wait. Nice, mellow indiepop.
Radium Jaw: I watched a few months ago a movie where thanks to radium girls in a clock factory started to lose their jaws or parts of it. Real story. Maybe they took the name after this? “Faded Out” is the name of the Atlanta five-piece new album. It has 6 songs of female-fronted dreampop and it is only available digitally.
Parasouls: I recommended their song “Sunny Beach” in the past. Good news! Here are two more, “Let’s Pretend” and “Can We, Can We”! They will be part of a 6 song EP titled “Drifters, Dream Makers” that Lilystars Records is releasing. The Manila band sounds ace. I really hope there’s a physical version for this release!
Castlebeat: the California band has been recommended time and time again on the blog. The solo project of a guy named Josh knows how to make some great guitar pop. His latest single “We Can Make This Right” is no exception!
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Here is another band I tried to interview with no luck even though I did interview one of their members at some point about the band that he was in afterwards, Rebecca Fishpond.
The members that I interviewed and were in The Kildares were Zack Yusof and Dan Rowlands. When I asked them about The Kildares they told me:
Before the Fishponds, I formed The Kildares with a few pals whilst studying in the UK – in Oswestry, Shropshire, out in the sticks. We were a school band that played all originals, mainly written by me with my repertoire of bad poetry and five or six open guitar chords, really basic stuff. I was inspired to form a band by The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy and the C-86 scene that was happening at the time. I was also heavily into David Bowie, The Smiths and Postcard bands like Aztec Camera and Orange Juice but they seemed like musical gods to me, virtuosos that were way out of reach for mere mortals like myself. I had missed out on punk and was slightly too young to get into the post-punk scene so when the C-86 thing came along, it was as if a light turned on in my head. I felt that it was something that I could get myself involved in and I wanted a piece of the action so bad. To travel around making cheap records, playing gigs, drinking beer and meeting girls, that seemed infinitely more preferable than going to college, university or worst, full-time employment. None of us could play our instruments worth a damn but technical expertise didn’t seem to matter that much with bands like The Pastels and The Shop Assistants, or so we thought back then. They sounded as raw and untutored as we did which gave us a real boost, like, if they can make records with stand-up drums and gnarly, out of tune sounding guitars and get on John Peel, so can we. The folly of youth eh?
The Kildares broke up when I left school up in Oswestry and headed down to London to embark on a new musical adventure. My plan was to get a serious band together and really go for it or end up in rehab trying. To that end, I began studying the musician wanted ads in the Melody Maker every week until I eventually met John Sheehy, who looked drop dead cool in a sixties, Velvet Underground kind of way and who had a really nice, gentle way about him. The fact that he could sing, write great lyrics and was thoroughly committed to the cause was a bonus. To make up the rest of the band, I drafted in my old Kildares brothers Dan Rowlands and Andrew Richardson who, to my utter amazement and delight, were just as keen to put higher education on hold indefinitely in order to chase that rock dream of ours. Every band needs a drummer, especially one with a big red van, and when John brought his pal Lar to beat the skins aggressively and drive us around, the Fishponds line up was complete.
The other member, the third member in The Kildares was Andrew Richardson.
Another thing they mentioned to me was that The Kildares tried their luck with Sarah Records, but a rejection letter was all they got.
One thing that caught my attention is that they were from Oswestry. I have never heard of this place so I looked:
Oswestry (Welsh: Croesoswallt) is a market town, civil parish and historic railway town in Shropshire, England, close to the Welsh border. It is at the junction of the A5, A483 and A495 roads.
The town was the administrative headquarters of the Borough of Oswestry until that was abolished under local government reorganisation with effect from 1 April 2009. Oswestry is the third-largest town in Shropshire, following Telford and Shrewsbury. The 2011 Census recorded the population of the civil parish as 17,105 (up almost 10% from 15,613 in 2001) and the urban area as 16,660. The town is five miles (8 km) from the Welsh border and has a mixed English and Welsh heritage.
Oswestry is the largest settlement within the Oswestry Uplands, a designated natural area and national character area.
The way I discovered the band was thanks to a Soundcloud account by Dan Rowlands. He had uploaded two recordings by the band. One is the song “In All Honesty” and the other is a whole gig at The Timebox on December 17, 1987. This last recording was actually from the band’s second appearance at the Timebox which for you that remember was held at the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town, London. The songs on this set are “We Haven’t Got Forever (Take 2)”, “Happy with her Handbag”, “Not Even for You”, “Why Are You So Different?”, “The Feeling’s Gone”, “Never Understand”, “Shimmer”, “Everything’s Different Now”, “A Million Miles”, “Walking in the Sun” and “We Haven’t Got Forever (Take 1)”. I wonder which other bands were on the bill each time they played this classic venue…
Thanks to this account I found another account but someone nicknamed “beautness”. In this account I find many more recordings by the band. I suppose they came from demo tapes the band recorded during their time (what was their time? 80 something to 80 something?).
Among these songs we find: “In All Honesty (normal Speed)“. Some others are tagged as been recorded on a 4-track cassette between 1986 and 1988 like “We Haven’t Got Forever“, “Happy with Her Handbag“, “Happy with Her Handbag (no overdubs) 2“, ‘The Feeling’s Gone“, “The Feeling’s Gone (instrumental)“,”Why Are You So Different?“, “Why Are You So Different? (instrumental) take 1“, “Why Are You So Different? (instrumental) take 2“, “Walking in the Sun“, “Walking in the Sun (pan right)“, “A Million Miles (original)“, “A Million Miles (instrumental)“, “In all Honesty (helium version)“, “I Held the Summer“, “Not Happy Alone (no overdubs) take 2“, “Look Like It’s Going to Rain Forever“, “Not Even For You“, “Never Understand“, “Everything’s Different Now“, “Hypercritical“, “Joyce“, “Stone Cold Stella” and “Shimmer“.
Wow! Quite a trove of recordings indeed.
There’s nothing else about them on the web, hence why I wanted to interview them. But at least this way I can share with you all these recordings and maybe you can find a new favourite song! Anyone remember them?
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