#blank statements

4/11/26.

Oh, Steph Hughes, you have no idea how much I've missed your music. I've missed those you made music with in both Boomgates and Dick Diver, but there has always been something about your voice.

About 2 months ago I heard Hedge Burners "Fall Out Of The Future" and loved it, but noticed it had no physical release. Just recently, I was perusing the "best-selling" vinyl and lo and behold, there was Hedge Burners. Australian label, Legless Records, has released this (total quantity of 500).

Hedge Burners (Melbourne, Australia) does have that classic Aussie indie pop sound reminiscent of the bands named above. Also don't forget about other bands that Steph graced - Blank Statements, and the early years of The Stroppies. It should also be noted that other members of Hedge Burners have been in bands such as Stiff Richards, Split System and The Green Child - all fantastic in their own right.

From Maximum Rocknroll #410 (July 2017): much-needed reissues of the Performing Ferret Band & Look Blue Go Purple, plus two new cassettes from the Australian underground via the Stroppies & Blank Statements. There’s also an interview that I did with early ‘80s No Wave/post-punk heroines Y Pants in #410, so if you’re looking to pick up an MRR back issue, you could do a lot worse than that one. 

The history of the PERFORMING FERRET BAND should sound pretty familiar to anyone with even a cursory interest in scrappy, flipped-out late ‘70s/early ‘80s DIY in the UK: art-minded school friends acquire a reel-to-reel tape recorder and try their hand at making music inspired by the dryly absurd sensibilities of Monty Python and aided by “a broken tambourine, a mandolin case for a drum, a kazoo, and a pair of plastic sandals.” Some more friends ultimately come into the fold, the band morphs into something more closely resembling a standard post-punk combo (now with guitar, bass, and legitimate drums), and in 1978, they record a cassette that finds its way to John Peel’s radio program (naturally). The first three songs from that EP became a 7” single on the Dead Hippy label in 1980, which has just been reissued by Germany’s Insolito Records with the addition of a fourth track called “Convenience” that had been previously unreleased until Hyped to Death’s PERFORMING FERRETS CD anthology in 2008. There’s that infamous quote from Mark E. Smith that “if it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s the FALL,” and if you were to add some shaky organ and amateurish melodica to that equation, it might as well be the PERFORMING FERRET BAND. Flatly-delivered vocals, seemingly non-sequitur lyrics, clattering drums, trebly guitar lines usually consisting of two or three notes at most, the textbook Messthetics band, really. The group’s impossibly rare LP from 1981 is apparently also getting the reissue treatment soon (courtesy of Spain’s Beat Generation label), so all of you FALL/HOMOSEXUALS/SWELL MAPS freaks out there will have twice the cause for celebration - you need both records, trust me! (Insolito, insolitorecords.bandcamp.com)

Everyone I know who heard those TERRY records from last year was completely taken by them (rightfully so), and if you also count yourself among the TERRY true believers, the new self-titled cassette from fellow Melburnians the STROPPIES should have you similarly smitten. There’s an obvious reverence in these seven songs for many of the same foundational texts studied closely by the current cohort of Australian underground popsmiths that includes the likes of CHOOK RACE, DICK DIVER, and TWERPS - not surprisingly, the STROPPIES have some personnel overlap with the latter two.  The unassuming dual vocal melodies and freewheeling keyboard in “Go Ahead” are descended straight from the bright-eyed jangle of Flying Nun’s “big three” (the CLEAN, the BATS, and the CHILLS), while the comparatively moody “Celebration Day” pays tribute to the shambolic MODERN LOVERS-isms of the GO-BETWEENS’ early singles, and “No Joke” recalls the sort of US indie rock/slacker-pop championed in the early-to-mid ‘90s by fanzine writers and college radio DJs with multiple BUTTERGLORY and PAVEMENT records in their collections. DIY pop perfection, because Australia really does it better.

Half of the STROPPIES are also in BLANK STATEMENTS, who have their own new tape on Melbourne’s Hobbies Galore label as well. Signs Are Rampant largely dispenses with the chiming melodicism of the STROPPIES’ more overt Kiwi influences, instead putting minimalist, super-rhythmic bass lines and wobbly, droning organ at the forefront of their skeletal songs. At their most raucous, BLANK STATEMENTS sound like a lost femme-punk band in the KLEENEX tradition, like on “Accelerate,” which consists of little more than a minute of choppy snare hits, synth squealing in the background, and a delirious, repetitive group chant of “accelerate and break!”. But overall, Signs Are Rampant leans much closer to the homespun, paper-thin aesthetic of the bands that occupied the fringes of the pre-C86 Rough Trade/Cherry Red post-punk milieu - the MARINE GIRLS especially, but with traces of DOLLY MIXTURE and YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS hiding just beneath the surface, and more than a few nods given to the K Records-backed primitive-pop of fellow Aussies the CANNANES. Both cassettes are limited to 100 copies each, and I’d jump on them if you get the chance. (Hobbies Galore, hobbiesgalore.bandcamp.com)