Last post for the week! Here are some great new finds!
Pale Lights: “You and I” is the newest song by the Brooklyn band and it sounds amazing! This song will be included in a 7″ that is part of the Slumberland 30 anniversary Singles Series. The other song that will be included is called “Say You’ll be the One”. This is sounding great. I wonder why there hasn’t been a Pale Lights 7″ on Cloudberry!
Odd Hope: another new song Slumberland has unveiled is “All the Things” by this Oakland, California, one-man band. This one will also be part of the singles series and on the flipside we’ll find “What’s Your Part of It?”. As with Pale Lights we can only listen to the A side for now.
The Leave Me Alones: another Oakland band to have in our radar! The band has a new EP out called “Race to the Bottom” which has 5 songs. It seems to be digital only for now though there looks to be art for a cassette. Who’d know! The songs are short and punchy, punky pop with girl vocals. Terrific!
The King in Mirrors: the great Swindon band, the best Swindon band, is back with a 10 song album called “Wasting Precious Time”, The album is available now digitally and if you like jangly indiepop songs, this is definitely for you. Now I hope there is a physical version of this album! Great to see them back!
Turks & Caicos: the Indonesian dreampop band are getting a CD release of their EP “Bad Situation” on Jigsaw Records and that’s good news. Bedroom electronic pop, moody. Chris from Jigsaw describes them as a Nixon covering The Radio Dept. That sounds about right!
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Back in 1995 a tape called “The Taming of the Stew” was released by Does This Work? (DTW 16). It wasn’t the first nor the last tape they put out. They had been putting indiepop compilations for not long though. According to Discogds “Death of an Anorak”, the 2nd tape the label released, also came out in 1995. The 20th one, “Nine Month Summer”, came out in 1995 too. They were on a roll!
Of course I haven’t listened to these tapes. It would be great to do so. I think there are many superb bands in there to discover. Maybe little by little that’ll happen. People will be sharing some of these songs. Thanks to my friend Heinz, I ended up discovering That Man There, who appeared on “The Taming of the Stew” tape. And the one song I heard, “Gorgeous You”, have made me want to listen to more of their songs.
That is not the only song they contributed to this cassette, they had “Smile My Way Again” on the A side. “Gorgeous You” appeared on the B side. And it was not the only Does This Work? compilation they graced with their songs.
On “The DTW? Summer Showcase!” (DTW 05) they had 5 songs on the B side! They were “I Don’t Care”, “Dreaming”, “How Would You Feel?”, “Outside” and “Purity”. On this tape they appear alongside top names like The Rileys, The Haywains or Velodrome 2000. Then, that same year, 1995, they had the song “The Bubble” on the Does This Work? compilation “Go Go Flower Arrangers” (DTW09).
Lastly, their song “The Velvet Room” was included in the Italian compilation tape “A Glittering Christmas” that was released by Shiny Sunset (Shiny Sunset 10). This label was run by Marco Pagano in Creazzo, Italy.
And that’s really all the info available about them. No information about the band members or proper releases. The band name, “That Man There” doesn’t help either. So hopefully someone remembers them and can put me in the right direction, it’d be great to find out (and listen) more!
EDIT 18/8/2024
Kev from the DTW label shared with me a CD titled “The Great Disco Unknown” by That Man There that included the songs “Swinger”, “I Don’t Care” and “(Not So) Cosmic Alison)”. These three tracks were recorded on March 1998 at Angel Studio in Hull. What is interesting is that there is an address for the band in Bradford and more importantly we get to know the band member names, Adam Cockburn on guitars, Anne Crawford on keyboards, Sarah Crawford on vocals, Rich Boldon on bass and Gareth Pugh on drums and additional guitars.
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One Response to “:: That Man There”
Hello – someone sent me a link to this – DTW? was my label back in my Uni days – I can tell you THAT MAN THERE were called WAKE but obviously, that had to change….. most of the above songs were recorded as Wake but they didn’t really push the band that hard I seem to remember. They did do a 3 track CD after that but then they broke up (1997?). I did keep in touch with Gareth Pugh the drummer and main songwriter for a bit afterwards, last I heard from him he had formed a band with 2 of the other guys called Idiot Box. Mark Cawthra from the Cardiacs was recruited for this also.
I will go into the attic and see if I still have any of the tapes, goodness knows if they will even work anymore but I will have a look!
Kev