Even As We Speak: an Australian pop band

We got together in Sydney in 1986 with the vague intention of starting a cow-punk band...We released a four track 7 inch record which was a punk thing t do, although we weren't sure that we qualified as punks.

Even As We Speak family tree, 1987:

Insert to second single, I Won't Have To Think About You: "EAWS have recorded another single, a double a side of Blue Suburban Skies and Bizarre Love Triangle. This single will be available soon but not under the name Even As We Speak. So keep your ears open for the new single and the new name.

Even As We Speak don't change their name:

They look like this in 1987:

John Peel plays Goes So Slow at least 3 times in late 1989. Another Sunny Day's You Should All Be Murdered gets played on the same show one night. Reader, I thought they were both better than Snuff and Mudhoney. This single is on Phantom so is on coloured vinyl. That's what Phantom did. See also: The Hummingbirds

A year later, Sarah reissue the Blue Suburban Skies and Goes So Slow singles on one 7". In the meantime, there's one last, amazing, record for Phantom:

Even As We Speak move to the UK. They record 3 Peel sessions and one other BBC Radio One session. They play some brilliant gigs. Really, they were so much better live than most of their peers.

They have enough of a penurious life on the road, overcrowded vans, bad food and dirty floors in student houses. They go back to Australia at the end of 1993. There's a sort-of comeback single in 2000:

There's a reunion gig in Sydney in 2012. My bank manager laughs at the suggestion I attend. I plead my case strongly. I'm escorted from the premises. What a band.

Home Cinema by Emma Kupa

Home Cinema is closest to Standard Fare out of all of Emma Kupa's projects since that band ended. It picks up where Standard Fare's swansong album Out Of Sight, Out Of Town's increasingly autobiographical lyrics left off and digs deeper.

This is a record that's realised life gets harder as you get older and tries to work out how that happened. It's an intensely vulnerable - brave, even - exploration of family, failure and love that can be heartbreakingly desperate and pleading ("no amount of hoping will bring you back").

It can also be especially poignant: the Be My Baby drumbeat is prolonged for extra atmos on the uncompromisingly tender Katie NYC. The countrified swing - yes, that is a banjo solo - and backwoods swagger is most pronounced on Half Sister, which crowns this collection of poetry, alt-country, bleakness and subtly powerful songs. Yeah, file Home Cinema next to the Silver Jews.

There's a launch gig on 19 March. You should come if you're anywhere near London. And you should buy Home Cinema wherever you live.

Milton Wright: original Friends and Buddies

Friends and Buddies is one of those albums every 70s soul fan has; if the original folk-funk version had been released in 1975 then you suspect it would be one of those albums most music fans either knew or had.

As Milton - now a retired judge in Boston - says: "If I had stuck with the first version of the album I might have been more successful." The issue of the first version is lot more Terry Callier than Stevie Wonder; stripped of keyboards its subtlety makes it more powerful and direct.

The release of original Friends and Buddies most likely won't put Milton Wright in the hall of fame, but if I were president then I'd announce a national holiday in celebration.

My music is the product of my Miami experience; the Caribbean and Latino influence; my midwestern sojourn; the Boston grooming and Gospel roots.

Foam On The Daydream: Chloe's Lung

Because you want to hear The Cure in 1981 swap the goth undertone for krautrock propulsion.

Because it's Bentley and Dee from Help Stamp Out Loneliness, the 2 essential members from one of the best, and regrettably short-lived, bands of the last 5 years.

You'd remember HSOL if you saw them. You wouldn't forget them. Dee was the singer who sang with Nico's cool detachment and a snarl that called to mind Danny Baker's bon mot about Johnny Rotten looking like he's seen more sex than a policeman's torch. Bentley was the main songwriter and guitarist who despite preparing for a gig by drinking relentlessly for at least 10 hours, hit every note and sweet spot. God, I miss them.

If this were a new HSOL song and you didn't like it, I'd have you removed from the building and taken care of by security. Even so, this side dish from 2 of HSOL is better than the main courses served by many bands. You'll love it.

Bruising: Can't You Feel

This has got it all:

A rhythm like a hundred feet stamping joyously on the dancefloor.

Noise. Lots of it.

A tipsy guitar solo that threatens to keel over.

A false ending at 2 minutes because they need a breather.

Can't You Feel has the energy and drama of Ride's Like A Daydream. If you think it leans a little too close to The Pixies' Debaser, then remember that genius steals. If this is the future then everything's going to be ok.

American Wrestlers

EDIT: pay no attention to the 'facts' in this post. They're probably not facts. Rest assured, I've sacked my entire research team. They're now adding 'citation needed' to every wiki post mentioning World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) as penance.

They had me at 'ex-Outdoor Miners', because that Canadian band made 2 perfect EPs 5/6 years ago that nodded at Bug and Crooked Rain before leaving a note in rock's back pages marked 'youthful slacker folly' and moving on.

The Miners' (as no one called them) Mac DeMarco has since released a couple of albums on Captured Tracks (as well as a shit-ton of 7"s) but American Wrestlers will appeal more to Pavement and Dinosaur Jr fans. There's an album out on Fat Possum in April.



Since we've got this far, you're going to ask about the other Outdoor Miners alumnus, Peter Sagar. You'll no doubt remember Sans AIDS fondly - if anyone wants to reissue Little Brown Girl (50 copies sold out at the release show 6 years ago) then you've got a buyer right here. For some reason - can't think why - Sagar was persuaded the band name should be changed.

So now it's Homeshake, and Sagar has gone from garage rock to slo-mo jams and slacker rock to west coast hip hop.

One Man Bannister: Birds & Bees

Matthew Bannister was the Sneaky Feeling who wrote the Byrds-influenced songs. This tape of 20(!) home recordings from the early 1990s to 2014 evokes, naturally, Byrdsian jangle, experimental psych and no-nonsense pop.

Anyone who's enjoyed Robert Scott's recent archival tapes would love this, you'd think. But then Bannister or Sneaky Feelings could never be categorised as easily as other Flying Nun bands. They had Martin Durrant's Al Green influence, David Pine's countrified leanings and Matthew Bannister's 60s pop. Did someone say Orange Juice? Or 80s British indie?

According to the press release to Sneaky Feelings' final album, 1988’s Hard Love Stories, they:

Found themselves somewhat outside of what one of the band called “a cosy little scene” in Dunedin, which had built up around the success of New Zealand’s leading post-punk godfather-types The Clean. Why Sneaky Feelings fell outside the prevailing scene might have something to do with their immediate record collection; as Bucketful of Brains said, Sneaky Feelings ‘drew on The Beatles, The Byrds, Neil Young and Fairport Convention among others, by-passing punk completely’.

There are many songs on Birds & Bees with that essence.



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