Fuck Yeah! Choo Choo Train

The late 80s to early 90s indiepop boom in the USA inspired some great fanzines. Fuck Yeah! was one of the best. Issue 2 (just "one clam" at the newsstands) came with celebrity endorsements, eg: "I just like the word FUCK, it makes me happy" - Clare, Sarah Records.

This issue had an interview with Choo Choo Train. Predictably, Ric does most of the talking (if you ever saw him on stage, he hogged the limelight even from behind the drum kit).

Joanna Gruesome and Trust Fund Split 12"

In which 2012's and 2013's most exciting tape debuts come together on one record. You know all about Joanna Gruesome, or you did until you hear their 3 new songs.

Because there's now space inside the sonic assault. Where there was once violence there is now menace. Guitars bicker belligerently and it's still a deliciously filthy noise, but this is better produced, better written and, precisely because Joanna Gruesome sound more confident, just better than they've been before. And you know just how good they were before.

Trust Fund have the kind of magical musical trickery that could make you believe 2 plus 2 equals 5. These songs are pure theatre, balancing Jonathan Richman's tenderness with Beulah's high-wire psychedelic pop and Flaming Lips' stratospheric opuses.

Don't ask me to pick a favourite. That'd be like picking a favourite child. And if I had children then social services would be knocking at the door and I want both these bands to have the freedom to make more brilliant records.

Flowers: Do What You Want To, It's What You Should Do

Those early Flowers songs sounded like a train going through a tunnel. Recorded at home on one track, those blizzards of noise offset by Rachel Kennedy's spectral voice are not just really good pop songs: they suggested that Flowers had much more to give.

Bernard Butler's production on the Do What You Want To, It's What You Should Do album gives Flowers' songs the space to breathe. They're a bit quieter, but far more dramatic. Like the McCarthy singles Frans Hals and Red Sleeping Beauty, the tension builds and builds. The disembodied vocals - an instrument itself - most obviously points to Elizabeth Fraser, but these songs are tougher and more direct than the Cocteau Twins.

There's the vigorous and intense riff on Comfort - a close cousin to The Wedding Present's This Boy Can Wait - and then there's the interpretation of the Be My Baby drumbeat on Anna. Not an entirely original reference point, for sure, but Flowers have the atmosphere and melodrama to put it next to another Be My Baby lift, the Magnetic Fields' When You Were My Baby. Way classier, then, than most other records you'll hear this year.

Cayetana: Nervous Like Me

Listening to this album is like receiving a letter from an old friend: immediately warm and inviting, recalling great times, familiar yet remarkably fresh.

Nervous Like Me is very early 90s - hurricane-force guitars, giant riffs carved in stone, dramatic hooks - but also very 2014. You could file this with the Crutchfield sisters, Burnt Palm and The Courtneys (to name just three) if you want to create a distaff rock scene. More likely, there's something pretty special going on in Philadelphia. Say, Cayetana, do you and Little Big League want to do a package tour of the UK?

You'll probably know their Hot Dad Calendar single. In which case, you'll buy this album today. If you don't, dive straight in:

Bad Family

A couple of years ago I saw a band in Melbourne called Big Tobacco. Given their name I thought they'd sound like Joe Pernice. They didn't. In my - but maybe not their - wildest dreams I wished they'd sounded like Joe Pernice's Big Tobacco.

New Melbourne band Bad Family, though, do sound like the original Big Tobacco - crystal clear guitars, powerpop energy and enough melodic brilliance to recall favourite singles by McCarthy and The Smiths.

There's no cheap way to get this record sent to the UK. And in my experience it'll come packaged very badly.

Smile: Blvd

Countrified slacker rock - like the Silver Jews and Teenage Fanclub, or Lemonheads on the comedown, or Pavement on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, or Luna's bewitching melodies. Really good stuff. You get the idea.





So slack, in fact, there's no stream of it. But if you know last year's Life Choices album, you'd buy it without hearing it, too. Because Life Choices has the brilliant VU-update Still Waiting For My Man, it's got a glassy guitar riff on the wonderfully titled Stoned (Get These Fucking Flies Off My Fucking Face/Shut Up And Make Money) and it's got Sunni Hart.

Sunni Hart is an uncompromising explosion of devotion to one woman. It's in the same league as The Modern Lovers' The New Teller and Buzzcocks' Love You More. It offers more in just 70 seconds than some bands do in a whole career.

Sunni Hart / Born Again by SMILE from MAX TURNER on Vimeo.

The Hummingbirds

Alvvays – writers of the year’s biggest pop song, Archie, Marry Me –have the good taste to cover The Hummingbirds’ 1987 debut Alimony live. I hope they record it and introduce The Hummingbirds to a new audience.




After Alimony, The Hummingbirds released 3 more powerpop singles – every one of them a peach - in 1988 on Sydney’s Phantom label. It’d be very difficult to find fault with any side of these records, so I won’t even try.

Guitarist Simon Holmes said:

I was very big on this whole Smiths or Beatles idea of putting out a new single every three months, putting new stuff out all the time: bang, bang bang. It was an exciting thing to do.

They then signed to rooArt. Their first big-label single Blush has a booklet where the band tell their story:

The legendary Mitch Easter worked on their 1989 Love Buzz album. Unusually, Easter’s Midas touch didn’t work. All 4 of the Phantom songs reworked by Easter sound better with their original sandpaper riffs, cheap hiss, guts and glory.

At the time this looked like a classic case of big money trying to get an indie band to cross over to the charts. It didn’t help that their videos were mostly awful.

But they were still great tunes and the US market, especially, takes to commercial powerpop. Maybe the time and the image wasn’t right. 2 years later when The Hummingbirds released their second album Va Va Voom, grunge had crossed over. Radio and TV were playing 'alternative rock' like never before. The door was open for The Hummingbirds to reach a big audience.

Again produced by Mitch Easter, Va Va Voom is brutally beautiful, tender, tough and hook-laden. It really is one of the great lost albums of the 1990s. The same year, 1991, Matthew Sweet made the US top ten with Girlfriend. It takes no leap of faith to believe that If A Vow could have had similar success.




The time was right for The Hummingbirds. If only their label had kept faith in them, they’d have been massive. But Va Va Voom only got an Australian release. Someone should reissue it. It's a masterpiece.

The Lemonheads scored their biggest hit in 1993 with Into Your Arms, co-written by Hummingbirds bassist Robyn St Clare in her other band the Love Positions.



Disregarding commercial concerns, any time is right for The Hummingbirds. You’ll have no trouble finding Love Buzz cheap in a second-hand shop. And hunt down Va Va Voom. You won’t regret it.