Feeling terrible with spring allergies but had prepared this post some days ago. Don’t have many updates sadly but there are more indiepop findings of course all around the web.

Some Gorgeous Accident: Dale Marquez (from Cloudberry friends Apple Orchard) has a new EP coming out soon on the fine Greek label Melotron Recordings. One of the songs that is to appear on the “Heaven Days” EP will be called “Evergreen Days” and it is available now to stream on Youtube. It sounds, needless to say, gorgeous.

Les Autres: the classic French band has a Bandcamp. On it they have been uploading songs from back in the 90s, songs I suppose weren’t properly released. There’s a new EP of 6 songs available that was recorded in Rennes, in 1991. It is called “I’ve Lost Everything I Held” and it is the fifth of these Ovvk Recordings archive, I suppose the band’s own digital label. Would be interesting to do an interview with them later on, right?

Mortalcombat: lovely sounding electro-pop by this duo formed by Sarah Riguelle and César Laloux. The 6 songs of their EP “Vacances en France” are now available digitally and on CD thanks to the Brussels based label Dear Deer Records. The band too is from the capital city of Belgium and if you want to see how they look, well there is a video too for the song “Beau et décadent“.

The Death of Pop: the London band is not unknown to the blog, I’ve recommended their music many times before. So I’ll do it again now because they have a new cassette EP titled “Heads West” with 5 brand new songs: “Marbles”, “700 Spas”, “Ready for Us”, “Cash for Gold” and “8:10”. This tape is being released by Leisure Records and you can expect their trademark jangly popsongs one more time!

Skytone: the Ottawa, Ontario, band that releases stuff on my friend Wally’s label The Beautiful Music have a  new live EP “This is Gonna Get Real!”. It is up on Bandcamp and it is jangly and catchy. Recorded at a basement gig in Ottawa, on November 2017, the band formed by Darius, Rodney, Tristan and Logan, shows us that live they must sound great!

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As you might have noticed I’m trying to vary the country of origin of the bands I feature on the blog. Indiepop is a global thing. So today I’m heading to Australia, check out a superb band, one that I’m still looking for a good copy of their 12″ record: The -Ists.

I have to start the post saying that I know absolutely nothing about them. Actually I’ve only heard one of their songs, “There Is A Light That Shines”, and nothing else. It is a superb song, brilliant. But there are 5 more songs on the record that I haven’t heard. I hope I do so in the near future.

The -Ists, that’s quite a name. They are not the vanguardists, nor the cubists, or the leftists nor the modernists. They probably were mocking all these terms or maybe they didn’t fit in one. I wonder.

They released their “Rose” (GPR 136) mini-album in 1987, on the Australian label Greasy Pop Records. This label was based in Adelaide, and was established by Doug Thomas, who had been involved with bands like The Dagoes, The Assassins or The Spikes. I’m looking at the discography of the label and I see some bands I’m familiar with, The Mad Turks, Dust Collection or The Garden Path.

The record songs were on the A side: “There Is A Light That Shines”, “Rose” and “The Train”. The B side had “Reason or Rhyme”, “Bliss” and “Nobody Likes My Kind”.

There are etchings on the runout grooves. On the A side: “The Ists Light Shines”; and on the B side: “Inwards Every Time”.

The back cover has some more information. We know that the songs were written by Allan Robbins who also sang and played guitar. Rees Hughes Jnr. played bass and Craig Rodda the drums.

That’s all. There aren’t even compilation appearances.

I do know though that Rees and Craig were part of the band The Screaming Believers who also released on Greasy Pop Records. This confirms that the band hailed from Adelaide, same as their label.

I find a hit on Google at last after lots of searching. The State Library of South Australia has some information about them. More like a small bio. It says: “Short lived trio around from 1986-1987. The Ists released one album Rose in 1987. The trio consisted of Allan Robins from The Units, and Rees Hughes and Craig Rodda from The Screaming Believers. The Ists were described in The Advertiser June 1987 as having ‘won a great deal of critical acclaim for its driving original rock from discerning city audiences’.” For the curious, there are also 30 second snippets of all songs of the record.

Lastly, there seems to be a documentary called “Rock in a Hard Place” were many bands from Adelaide seem to have been featured, among them The -Ists. I haven’t seen it, but noticed in its Facebook page that the DVD of the documentary is available for $25 Australia. Is it worth it? Do they talk about guitar pop bands or mostly rock bands? How many minutes do we get of The -Ists. I’m curious. Anyone seen it?

I hope my Australian friends can help shed some light about this obscure band. One record and then later they disappeared. Would love to listen to the rest of their songs. Find out if they have unreleased tracks. And in which other bands they were involved with!

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Listen
The -Ists – There is a Light That Shines