I’ve discovered a bunch of new songs and releases the past few days. Why not share them with you?
Red Sleeping Beauty: our friends from Sweden have recorded the unofficial Swedish World Cup song “Dressed in Yellow and Blue” and it will be included in the Official Matinée World Cup EP. A World Cup EP! That is really exciting! Who else will be participating in it? Also, when will this EP be released? I can’t wait. I love indiepop, I love football. There’s no better combination. And to be honest, there aren’t that many footie songs that I can’t think of! This song, if you remember was originally released by The Charade back in the day for 2006 World Cup.
Tulip: thanks to a recommendation by Iván from Juniper Moon/Linda Guilala I ended up on Tulip’s Bandcamp and listening to their self-titled debut EP. There is very little information about the band, so can’t say much. But they do hail from Vigo, in Galicia, Spain, and this EP has 5 terrific pop songs!! Songs that are dreamy, lo-fi, jangly, and so fragile that it is impossible not to love them. The 5 songs on the EP are “On The Sidelines”, “Wax & Wine”, “Cous-Cous”, “Arrecife” and “Nada Nuevo”. It is truly interesting to see a band that can make great songs both in Spanish and English. I hope these songs get a proper physical release.
Distant Shore: the new project by Ben Sidall is Distant Shore. And he has uploaded three lovely songs, three jangly classics: “Moving Up North”, “Former Life” and “A Quick Goodbye”. He hasn’t shared much information about these songs, so I can’t say much about them, only that I really enjoy them and I hope they get a release. Or maybe I can also ask that Distant Shore be booked at Indietracks? Or another good indiepop festival?
Saturday Night: this one came through the indiepop-list. Saturday Night is a band from Washington D.C. formed by Cash Langdon who used to be in the very fine Catholic Easter Colors, Luke Reddick, Jesse Sattler and Nora Button. The self-titled album will have ten songs and so far only one of the songs is available to stream, “Fish in the Pond”. It sounds great, especially when female backing vocals kick in. That works so so well! the album will be released on August 17th as a limited edition tape.
The Catherines: a new tune by Heiko Schneider and Sandra Ost. Actually a digital single, with an A side and a B side. If you like jangly, if you like good indiepop, look no further. Check out “Every time You Say Its Okay I Know Its Okay” and “Yes You’re Beautiful To Look At But So Ugly Inside” and fall in love with them.
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Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a giant planet with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, but two-and-a-half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants; the other two giant planets, Uranus and Neptune are ice giants. Jupiter has been known to astronomers since antiquity. The Romans named it after their god Jupiter. When viewed from Earth, Jupiter can reach an apparent magnitude of −2.94, bright enough for its reflected light to cast shadows, and making it on average the third-brightest object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus.
Just ordered the “Leave the Ground” 7″ by the Sydney, Australia, band Jupiter. I thought I had some of their releases in my collection but I noticed I didn’t. So now I’m missing two other records, a 12″ maxi single and an album. All of them released on Summershine Records, the Australian indiepop label par excellence. Time to find out more about them then.
On Discogs it says that the band was short-lived. It may be true, their releases span two years, 1991 and 1992. They were a trio formed by Simon McLean on bass and vocals, Chris Stephens on guitar and Alison Galloway on drums. And as I said before, they put out 3 records.
The first of these records was a 12″ single called “‘3′” (Shine 011t) that was released by Summershine in 1991. As mentioned before on the blog, many times actually, Summershine was a Melbourne based label that was founded in 1989 by Jason Reynolds, a label that would release many classic records, from the Rainyard to The Earthmen, and who would later move to America. Maybe the only indiepop label that has moved to a different country and continued releasing records. The “‘3′” 12″ had four songs, two on each side. The A side had “Sense” and “Glow” while the B side had “New” and “Day1”.
The second 7″ is the one I bought just now. The “Leave the Ground” 7″ (Shine 015) was released in 1992 and had the title song on the A side and “T” on the B side. I start to notice a trend in their song titles. They are simple, very simple. They don’t tell much at all. This 7″ was limited to 500 copies.
Lastly the band was going to release their debut album that same year, 1992. “Arum” (ShineCD003) is a fantastic dreampop/shoegaze album, and that was a very good year indeed to release it. I was to read on the Wilfuly Obscure blog some comments from the vocalist of the band, Chris, were he mentions that they were big fans of Ride and that shows in the songs. He also says that they supported Ride once and that it was the pinnacle of his music career. That now he is a web developer.
Interesting. I wonder what does Arum means. It seems it is a genus of flowering plants in the family Araceae, native to Europe, northern Africa, and western and central Asia, with the highest species diversity in the Mediterranean region. Frequently called “arum lilies”, they are not closely related to the true lilies Lilium. Plants in closely related Zantedeschia are also called “arum lilies”. Was that the reason of the album name?
The CD had 11 songs. The 6 songs released on the singles are included. So 5 songs were brand new for the album, though two of them titled “@” are just instrumentals. The tracklist was as follows: “Leave the Ground”, “T”, “Carefully”, “Lost”, “@”, “Sense”, “Glow”, “New”, “Day 1”, “@” and “Meltdown”. Some of the songs (1-5 and 10-11) were recorded at Troy Horse Studios in Sydney. The rest were recorded “somewhere else”. It was engineered and produced by Michael Levis (tracks 1 to 4) and Steve Wilson (tracks 6 to 9). Song 11 is credited to have been included thanks to the courtesy of Half a Cow label. Wilson had been part of the band Sneeze that released on the Half a Cow label. Lastly the photography for hte album is credited to Jason Fisher.
There are four compilation appearances listed on Discogs. In 1991 they contributed the song “Meltdown” to the 7″ comp “Slice: A Half a Cow Compilation” (MOO-03) released by Half a Cow of course. There were four songs on the record, two on each side. The A side had Swirl and Smude, while the B side had Jupiter’s “Meltdown” and a track by Studley Lush and his Teenyboppers from Hell.
The second appearance was once again on a Half a Cow compilation. I start to wonder why didn’t they release a record on this label. The compilation “Slice Two: A Half a Cow Compilation” (HAC CD09) included again the song “Meltdown”. Actually it includes the 4 songs that had appeared before in the 7″ comp.
Next for them was the 1994 compilation “Tomorrow’s Hits Today”, released by Summershine on CD both in Australia and in the US. I believe it was 1994 when Jason Reynolds moved to the US. The band appears on this compilation with the song “T”. This compilation is a very good entry point, a sampler, for the music and artists on this label. You’ll find the Tender Engines, Autohaze, The Sugargliders and more.
Lastly on the classic compilation “Just a Taste” (Slumberland 008) that Slumberland Records released in 1995 celebrating the Summershine label they have 2 songs, “Lost” and “Leave the Ground”
There is an old website by the band with very little information but very nice goodies! Firstly all songs are uploaded and you can stream them. That is a treat for any music lover. You can even download them. But even better there are live video clips! 3 of them. The first one is of them playing the song “Ride” when they supported Ride in Sydney 1992. There is also another one of “T” at the same gig. And once again, at the same gig, them playing “Sense” and “Leave the Ground”. I suppose now that this website was created before Youtube?
I keep looking, and see that last year Fensepost dedicated a post to the band’s “Leave the Ground” 7″. Seems they haven’t been truly forgotten.
Are they listed as having played in other bands? Alison seems to have been involved in a few actually, 51 Monday, Carton, Godstar, Seventeen and Smudge. Quite a CV. But there’s not much for Simon or Chris. I did notice though that Simon’s photography was used on the Bughouse self-titled album art and Chris had worked as engineer and editor in records by Kaktus Mantras, Edrenalin, The Catholics and The Necks.
Then I find a very curious article on the Washington City Paper written by Leonard Roberge who I interviewed in the past about his band Bella Vista. He mentions that Simon McLean grew up to be a cowboy with the band January. Here he reviews the album “I Heard Myself In You”. Here he joined forces with ex-Seefeel vocalist Sarah Peacock and alongside Jon Wood and Jonny Mathers the band released two albums and four singles in the early 2000s. This means then that Simon moved to the UK at some point in the 90s, right?
Then there’s a Sydney Morning Herald page dating from May 17, 1991 available but it asks for my credit card so I could see it. That sucks.
Aside from all of this, there’s not much more on the web. The band disappeared. I wonder if they had more songs. Someone on the Wilfuly Obscure blog asks for a song called “What a Blast”. This one doesn’t appear in any of their releases. Was it recorded? Was it released somewhere? Why was the band short-lived? Why didn’t they continue making music? Had they been involved in any other bands? Why did Simon move to the UK? What are they up to these days? Would be great to find out!
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Listen
Jupiter – Leave the Ground
