This week has been a bit harder to find new indiepop on the web. Hopefully these are good enough for your demanding taste!
Herlights: this Russian band have been featured on the blog in the past. Last year. Indeed, it has been about a year since they had released new songs. Their latest is a 4-song EP titled “Sometimes” that brings back their trademark post-punk jangly sound!
Olivia’s World: so happy to hear that Lica from Go Violets and Tempura Nights keeps making top popsongs. Now it is a cassette EP called “Olivia’s World EP” on the fine Lost Sound Tapes from Seattle. The EP comes with four songs, two of them (“Blotter” and “Cereal Boxes”) we can preview on Bandcamp. And yes, we can play them again and again.
Bathe: there is just one song on this Bandcamp set up by Atlanta multi-instrumentalist Baily Crone. It is called “The Silence” and it is really pretty. It is a lush song, dreamy. This song will be released next year on the debut album “Last Looks”. So for now we wait.
The Claim: the mighty classic band is back too with a new EP called “Just Too Far”. This is a short EP, 3 songs. Included are the title song, “Hercules (Bleak Industrialists c. 1987 remix)” and “Mrs Jones (Ono dub)”. I must say that I love the opening track, but not very sure with the remixes. But it is ok, “Just Too Far” is just too good to care if the other songs are not too good?
Typsy Panthre: from Mnneapolis comes this new project by Allison LaBonne and John Crozier. If you know who I am talking about, well, Allison was in the lovely The Owls and John in the legendary The Hang Ups. So there’s quality here. The band is releasing an album called “Hell” on November 11 on CD. The album will include 11 tracks, two of them available to preview now, “The Strange Thing” and “Summers End”. Very very recommendable.
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Maybe not exactly indiepop, but as I have them on a list of bands that were intended to be part of The Leamington Spa series, I thought why not check them out. I know very little and the song, even though it is sort of a jazzy twee thing it is very enjoyable.
The song I’m talking about is the one I’ve been able to listen so far. It is the A side of the sole 7″ they put out in 1981. The song is called “Let the Girl Dance”. The B side is “Arrested”.
The 7″ was originally released in 1981, on Silhouette Records (KUS 100). Discogs has this label based in Cleveland, Ohio. But that’s wrong. It must a label with the same name. Something that caught my attention was the KUS in the catalog number, just like our Augsburg friends, Kleine Untergrund Schallplatten. The record also seems to have been released with no sleeve. That is a shame. We do see though some information on the label. We see that “Let the Girl Dance” was written by R. Helman and K. Yallop. That the engineer was L. Burrage and both Helman and Yallop produced thet rack. The executive producer was Douglas Kean.
The 7″ was re-released the year after on Red Bus Records (RBUS 71). I wonder why. The songs are the same on this version of the 7″.
No other releases by the band though they did appear with the song “Let the Girl Dance” on a 12″ compilation “Heart & Stars” that was released in Portugal by the label Red Bus Records (RBLP 1011). Was Red Bus Records based in Portugal? Or was this a release they did exclusively for this Iberian country? Other bands on this comp are Private Line, English Boys or Imagination… I don’t know them!
I do see that a blog called My Life’s a Jigsaw that covers mostly mod and powerpop dedicated a blog post to The Kustom back in 2012. The author is pretty sure the band hailed from London. To confirm this an anonymous person commented that he shared a house with Keith Yallop (the bassist) in South Ealing, London.
Thanks to this info I found a Soundcloud for a Keith Yallop, but I am not 100% sure that it is the same person. There is nothing in there to confirm it is.
Now what is the first name of R. Helman? Maybe I could have a chance to track them down that way. But I can’t seem to find any other information about The Kustom. Maybe someone remembers them? What happened to them after The Kustom split?!
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