Starting the week very early as things are changing at work. I’m so sleepy. There are not many news on my side, though I hope very soon, maybe next week, I’ll be announcing our next release. So keep an eye on that. Now, what you came for, new music!

Dream, Ivory: some beautiful guitar pop, gorgeous actually, by this band from Lake Elsinore in California. Their self-titled EP is a winner. I wonder how come it took me years to discover it. It dates from 2016. The band is formed by two brothers I believe, Christian Baello on guitar, drums, synths and Louie Baello on vocals and bass. I wonder how this has been in anyone’s radar. I have never heard of them before and they sound superbly good. The EP has 8 songs and there is actually another song available to stream on Bandcamp called “Welcome and Goodbye” which is a digital single. Whatever happened to them?

Your Favourite Colour: Two completed demos by this obscure British band, that’s what their Bandcamp offers us. There is no information at all. Doesn’t say which city they are based in or who are the band members. Just two songs, “Former Life” and “A Quick Goodbye”. The thing is that both songs are really good. Proper indiepop. So I had to recommend them. That’s all!

Jetstream Pony: I love this band. Their few releases are already in my collection. So I can’t understand how their last song on Bandcamp went unnoticed to me. Probably all of you have heard “Charms Around Your Wrist” already, but I hadn’t. It was released on Christmas day last year. I was abroad. That may explain why I missed it. It actually is a cover version of The Softies. And it sounds lovely.

Por No.: Interesting to find an Ecuadorian band. This might be the first one ever for me. Here on their “Horribles” EP they cover some songs, like JAMC or Aventuras de Kirlián. I’m mostly curious to know if they are the only indiepop band in the whole of Ecuador? Or at least in Quito? They are formed by Pablo, Gabu, Dávalos and Alejo. Their previous stuff is not really my taste, but this EP is good! I look forward to any new songs the band!

Red Red Eyes: I recommended the single “Untold” time ago on the blog. Now the news is that Red Red Eyes is releasing an album, on CD and vinyl, on WIAWYA on May 18th. The 9 song album is called “Horology” and includes “Untold”. Right now the label’s Bandcamp has that song and another one, “Empty Land”, to stream. The duo formed by Laura McMaho and Xavier Watkins is a very interesting band, their sound is hard to pinpoint, but they do craft some beautiful songs.

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Dudley  is a large town in the West Midlands of England, 9.7 km south-east of Wolverhampton and 16.9 km north-west of Birmingham. The town is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley and in 2011 had a population of 79,379. The Metropolitan Borough, which includes the towns of Stourbridge and Halesowen, had a population of 312,900. Dudley is sometimes called the capital of the Black Country. Originally a market town, Dudley was one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution and grew into an industrial centre in the 19th century with its iron, coal, and limestone industries before their decline and the relocation of its commercial centre to the nearby Merry Hill Shopping Centre in the 1980s. Tourist attractions include Dudley Zoo and Castle, the 12th century priory ruins, and the Black Country Living Museum.

Yes, today a band from Dudley. First time a band from that town will be featured on the blog. Dudley has been mentioned once on the blog though, when I interviewed Russ Hunt from The Libertines he mentioned that they played a venue called JB’s in Dudley. So let’s see what I can find about this obscure band with a very strange name, the Mercenary Tree Freaks.

Discogs doesn’t offer me much information. No proper releases, no band members names. Just compilation appearances. One of them I know, that’s the one that introduced me to their music: “La Línea del Arco” 7″ released by Elefant (ER-102) in 1992. On this 7″ the band appeared on the A side, as the first song of the record with a song called “Michelin Man”. This 7″ came with a fanzine. The zine had the same name, “La Línea del Arco” and the one accompanying this 7″ was the 3rd volume. Sadly when I bought the 7″ it didn’t come with the fanzine. Not sure then if there is any information about the band on it. The other bands on the 7″ were Usura, La Sintesis and The Lovelies.

This same song, “Michelin Man”, appears on “Foreign Intervention” (DANNY 7), a tape compilation that was released by Fluff Records. I actually interviewed DMLC from the label ages ago. It is interesting to see that both Usura and La Sintesis are also on this tape. Other well known bands on it are Tramway, Boyracer or Antiseptic Beauty.

In 1991 the band contributed the song “Mr. Twilight” to the compilation “123456 Road Runner” that was released by Glidge Records (Glidge 001). I have never listened to this compilation in full. I know a few songs on it, and a few bands on it, but there are many obscure bands in there like The Chamberlains, Couch Potatoes or Nuclear Sheep among others. Are they all indiepop?

Elefant Records had also featured them a year before the release of the 7″. In 1991 the Spanish label had put out a tape called “La Línea del Arco – La Banda Sonora 3” (ER-1) to accompany another of their fanzines I suppose. This was the first ever Elefant release I think, at least it has the first number of their catalog. Here, on the A side, the Mercenary Tree Freaks have two songs: “Bitter End”m and “Shot Down Big Sky”. This is a top tape, there are brilliant bands that I’ve interviewed in the past like Home and Abroad, Bulldozer Crash, Marmite Sisters or Hardy Boys.

Elefant Records must have been the label that most believed in them. They had them on yet one more cassette compilation in 1992. Their song “One For the Disco Kids” appear on the “Around the World Again” (ER-020) tape. Same tape I mentioned in my previous post, the one about The Marigolds. Small world.  Now, how come Elefant didn’t offer them a release? Or perhaps they did? I find it odd the band never put out a proper record.

I start looking for them on the web, see if I can find anything else about them. Happily I immediately stumble upon a Youtube account with a bunch of live videos of the Mercenary Tree Freaks. The account owner is named Geoff Scott. Was he in the band? It seems he was, he says for this video of them playing the song “Cynicism“: I was 18 and full of dreams of making it in the music bizz, we recorded this for a Japanese music TV show- Me and Matt were so drunk we couldnt stand up!

Now we know there was a Matt in the band too. Little by little we are starting to put the pieces together. Interesting that there was interest in them in Japan. How come no release in Japan either. Or even compilation appearances on the many Japanese labels from the time?

There’s another video from that Japanese show that was called “Bandbreakers”. On this video the band plays the song “Beautifully Absurd“. It is very short, just 1 minute or so. The idea it seems was that the band had to play a minute-long version of a song to get through the qualifying stage.

I start to suspect Geoff was the drummer. Now I’m watching videos of the band playing the venue I mentioned earlier, small world, JB’s. Here they are playing the song “Shot Down Big Sky” and according to the description of the video it must have been around 1989. There are few more videos from JB’s. First there is one from October 1991 where the band is playing the song “Colonel Lutz” plus a small intro. Then from the same gig, there’s “Cynicism” and “Bitter End“. Lastly it seems the whole gig from Oct. 1991 has been uploaded in its entirety, almost 37 minutes of footage. Check it out here.

A website?? Well, it looks like it! One were I can play 4 of their songs: “Beautifully Absurd”, “Michelin Man”, “Colonel Clutz” and “Silly Stupid Eyes”. It seems they are part of an EP called “The Cogwinder”. These studio versions of the songs I was listening on live gigs on Youtube sound brilliant! Now, can I download them somehow? There is no information other than the songs on the site, though I do notice the names of the band members at last! Matt Rothwell, Martin Fardon, Steve Powers and Geoff Scott. Who played which instruments? With some answers we get new questions.

Actually there’s a link for Matt Rothwell that takes me to Amazon. Yes, Amazon. he is an author! He has published two books: “Drunk in Charge of a Foreign Language: The Diary of a Spanish Misadventure” and “The Electric Guitar Daydream Quest“. There is a small bio where it says that he was born in Birmingham in 1966 and grew up on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. Then on a Stourbridge News article I learn he had been involved in a band called Wincee Spider. How did that band sound like?

What about Geoff Scott? Well it seems he is still making music, now with a Birmingham-based band called Agents of Evolution. On another article of Stourbridge News it mentions that the Mercenary Tree Freaks had supported Blur back in the day.

There’s not much more written about them on the web. It is quite a shame. A shame too that there are no records. Listening to the songs on the website, those 4 songs, I can tell they had quality tunes. If the songs were uploaded chronologically I could see some sort of departure of their poppier songs on “Silly Stupid Eyes”, or perhaps their songs were quite varied. I wonder. It seems they recorded at least two demo tapes according to a comment I read on a blog on the web. How many songs were recorded is a mystery to me.

I wonder what happened to them. If they continue making music afterwards? If they had been involved in other bands before or after? What are they up to today? And honestly, how come they didn’t put a 7″ or something back in the day?! Anyone remembers them?

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Listen
Mercenary Tree Freaks – Michelin Man