URL, interrupted.

Am taking the week off.  Will see you back here for Mystery Monday next week.  Cheers.

Supermarket lights burn in the darkness...

Im spoiling you this week.  This is a two CD set compiling a healthy number of this UK band's b-sides, neglected album tracks, and alternate versions of more renown singles and such.  Have at it. 

**Please do not reveal artist in comments!**

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Victorian Parents - Silence Follows (1981)

I usually save most of my revelatory finds for the end of the year, but what the hell.  And a major label release (Polydor) no less, but unless you snatched up Victorian Parents' Silence Follows as as an assumedly pricy import, this would have flown well below your proverbial radar.  Not only has it not been reissued since it's 1981 release, so far as I can tell this band has yet to be anthologized on any of the myriad of Cherry Red Records post-punk compilations that have cropped up in the last decade or so. Save for a YouTube digitization, Silence Follows hasn't made a showing on any of the usual streaming outlets, nor have any of it's songs made it into the sharity blogosphere.  Whomever saw the need to kill off the memory of this band was a bit too thorough, if you don't mind me venting.

Hailing from Lichfield, England, V/P's modus operandi was very much in league with contemporaries, The Sound, Modern Eon and Comsat Angels, especially the latter.  The quartet boasted both depth and artful tangents, while remaining almost wholly approachable, albeit there weren't many obvious hits or singles here - even for the one track that actually was appointed for 45 status, "All American Hero." At the end of the day, Silence Follows is still unmistakably steeped in post-punk affectations, minus any excessively droney ambience. C.S. Angels comparisons are inevitable on this album's most proficient offerings, "Uncommunique" and "No Response," but again, that band was a contemporary to V/P, so it's not very logical to cite them as a legit "influence," per se. Perhaps not through-and-through brilliant, Silence... is considerably effective, not to mention well above average, and far more deserving of the dim spotlight it enjoyed when the Parents were extant.  Yes, there were surrounding singles, but I'm not in possession of anything else by them.  I am however making this available in both MP3 and FLAC.

01. All American Hero

02. On the Border

03. Self-indulgence

04. Dead Red Grass of Home

05. Uncommunique

06. No Response

07. Wasteland

08. My Advantage

09. Endless Wire

MP3  or  FLAC

An unpredicted ends to a means...

From 2004.  Picking up on morsels of everyone from Nada Surf to Creeper Lagoon and even Mercury Rev. Enjoy

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Medelicious - Miss N 7" (1994, Lucky)

Not as egregiously grungy as many of their counterparts due south in Seattle, Bellingham, WA's Medelicious were still a mightily noisy aggregation wielding copious amounts of angsty amperage and distortion.  This 45's A-side "Miss N" isn't far removed from Up In It-era Afghan Whigs, but I'm more partial to the flip, "Hands," which mines a vaguely more tuneful indie-rock vein. Not Sebadoh or Superchunk mind you, Medelicious nonetheless bore a considerable quotient of potential...and regrettably never got around to issuing a full length. 

A. Miss N

B. Hands

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Autumn Teen Sound - demo (1995)

Just as I was about to drop the "cold case" tag on this Phoenix-area foursome I discovered they have a Facebook page.  Sounding heavily indebted to another band they shared the same area code with (Gin Blossoms), Autumn Teen Sound may not have been the stuff of innovation, but in terms of sheer songcraft they really had something. "My Star" goes down delightfully easy, coincidentally not unlike the tune of the same moniker by Gameface, and the remaining cuts easily slot between the Blossoms and what Michael Penn was dishing out around the same time.  ATS shared bills with the Plimsouls and Joey's Molland's Badfinger before rechristening themselves as Sugar High.

01. My Star

02. 100 Years to Love You

03. Juliana No

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Too many holes in your story, jeans alright.

This week it's four eps spanning three decades.

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The Charlottes - Lovehappy+ (1989/2020, Radiation)

Typically on Record Store Day I share something released on a prior RSD, but I'm quickly run out of "safe" items to post, simply because most titles released on the most agonizing Saturday morning of every April are alternate pressings of records still in print. Either that or a lot of "new" titles subsequently get a proper release outside of RSD.  The Charlottes' Lovehappy saw the light of day in 2020 in a limited pressing of 500 pieces, and I don't believe it's been available since.  

For the longest time my only familiarity with the Petra Roddis-fronted quartet from Cambridgeshire, England was the single "Liar," but oh what an utterly phenomenal tune! The Charlottes stitched the scuzzy distortion of the Jesus and Mary Chain and early Primal Scream together with the immediacy of the Primitives, and increasingly laced their concoction in a woozy dream-pop gauze. They didn't consistently live up to this lofty proposition on their debut mini-ep, the hit or miss Lovehappy, which often resembles shambolic demos, though there are genuine glints of potential on "Keep Me Down" and "See the Danger Shine."  Radiation Record's reissue tacks on two Charlottes' follow-up eps from 1990, the aforementioned Liar and Love in the Emptiness, which finds them leaning into the fainter semblances of shoegaze hinted at on Lovehappy, yielding inspired downer indie-rock in the guise of "Blue" and "Could There Ever Be."  Their spin on Shocking Blue's "Venus" is faithful to the original yet more stimulating than I had imagined. The hype sticker on the sleeve states all of the material presented has been remastered, but the audio here strikes me as a bit muddy, and quite frankly mono, measured up to the original records they're derived from. Who knows.  At any rate, enjoy.  

01. Are You Happy

02. Cold

03. Keep Me Down

04. Stubborn

05. See the Danger Shine

06. Everything to Me

07. In My Hair

08. Love Happy

09. Liar

10. Blue

11. Venus

12. Love in the Emptiness

13. Be My Release

14. Could There Ever Be

Hear

I'm not here if someone calls, unless it's from apartment 3...

From 1998.  I remember being thoroughly immersed and invested in this when it came out.

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That Hope - Beating the Dumb Guy (1987, FOT)

I had high hopes for That Hope, given the impression they left me with on their debut, Eight Dollar Hat, which I shared way back in '11. I recall it garnering a considerable number of downloads as well, so taken all this into consideration I was ready to be dazzled by this Bloomington, IL quartet's follow up.  The first three songs comprising Beating... certainly don't disappoint, exuding tinctures from the likes of artful, post-punk sophisticates Gang of Four to Pylon, with T/H depositing a spot of their indigenous seasoning into the affair.  Things go downhill soon after with the aimlessly, embarrassing throwaway "Big Sex" clogging up the proceedings for a painful seven minutes.  From there's it's a tossed salad with a somewhat sloppy retread of "I Am the Walrus," to the bouncy and redemptive Pylon-goes-pop shtick of "Comfort Never Looked So Big."  Though not listed on the sleeve or record label, there's a useless segue of a 75-second piece falling between "Space Boys and Love" and "Go About Your Business" that I'm not sure if it's supposed to be it's own individual "song" or rather the outro/intro of the aforementioned tracks. 

01. Looking To Get Their Fill

02. Lounge Lagoon

03. Jeff Matt Joey

04. Big Sex

05. I am the Walrus

06. Space Boys in Love

07. untitled

08. Go About Your Business

09. Cow Gang

10. Comfort Never Looked So Big

11. Love, Need, Attention

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