Good morning all. Summer is almost here. Remember I’ll be heading to France and Belgium next month. Let me know if you’d like me to bring any records so you can save on shipping. Just drop me an email!

The Photocopies: three new songs by the Michigan project from Sean Turner. The Londoner that now lives up north in the US presents us here “Holiday Romance”, “(Wishing I Had) Tickets for Saint Etienne” and “Surrender”. It does make you wonder when is Saint Etienne going to play in Michigan? When was the last time?

David Christian: a new 10 song collection by the Comet Gain leader! “Electricity from Other Planets” work as a proper album. Here we find lo-fi songs, acoustic and electric. I always find them interesting, thinking of theme as a part of the creative process of Comet Gain.

Marine Research: finally we can pre-order the John Peel Session, double 7″, on Precious Recordings from London! The four songs Marine Research recorded on May 18 of 1999 were “I Confess”, “Angel in the Snow”, “Bad Dreams” and “Capital L”. This is really cool! For example “Bad Dreams” features David Gedge, and it says that “Capital L” would have been a single if the band hadn’t split up. A must have for sure!

Herr Wade: this is a nice surprise. 6 new songs by the project of Jørn Åleskjær (The Loch Ness Mouse, Monobird, Sapphire & Steel) asked his like minded fellow Sebastian Voss (Nah…, The Fisherman and his Soul, Cinema Engines). Sung in German, and sounding ace, like 90s German pop, think Elegant, Busch, and you know you want one of the very limited edition CD.

David Westlake: the legendary David Westlake from The Servannts is releasing a new album called “My Beautiful England”. 14 songs, 7 of them available to preview, and you know this is also a must-have. An essential record! The album will be available on August 24 on both vinyl and CD.

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Another band that could have been in my so-far failed compilation of Australian 80s and early 90s indiepop would definitely be Adelaide’s Rhymes with Fish. They have a Soundcloud with many of their recordings.

The band seems to be active again or were active recently. They released a digital EP in 2018 called “Fitzroyalty”. On this EP they re-recorded and re-interpreted songs from back in the day. Songs that had been forgotten in lo-fi tapes made during rehearsals. Three songs got this treatment, “Verisimilitude”, “Kitchen Window” and “Can We Make Money Out of It”.

Rhymes with Fish actually had formed in 1986. They were active for 3 years where they gigged the inner city pubs of Adelaide.

The band wrote about 40 songs. I guess only a few got properly recorded. Some of these recordings did get the chance to be played at radio station MMM.

The songs that I am aware that exists that are properly recorded were part of a tape release called “Six Songs for Six Dollars” that came out in 1987. These were “Media Man”, “Talk Talk”, “The Getaway”, “There’s a Hitch”, “My Shirts too Thin”, “Success”, “Have a Holiday” and “Nobody Told Me”. These were recorded by Tony Elliot in the Bartel St. Studios. It was mostly recorded live to tape!

The only other interesting bit about this tape is that Craig Tidswell played the sax on the song “There’s a Hitch”.

We also know the band member names during that first period:
Quentin Gore on guitars, Trevor King on vocals, Ivan Motley on drums and Richard Upton on bass.

The band set up an Instagram back in 2018. There I read that 3 out of the 5 members decided to get the band together after the passing of Trevor King. The remaining 3 members are the ones playing the “Fitzroyalty” EP.

In 2019 the reformed band released more songs. “Arthouse” was released digitally and included 3 tracks, “Festival Day”, “Country Psalm” and “Eugene”. Not sure if these are reworkings of old songs or brand new ones.

This is all the info I could collect. The songs are great, and you wonder how come they didn’t have any proper releases back in the day. Hopefully some of you aussie fans remember them and can fill in the blanks!

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Listen
Rhymes with Fish – Talk Talk