Jangling on the Other Side

As I noted in the last weekend dispatch, this starts a series of explainer pieces here at The Rinse. The goal of these pieces is not to discuss every single element of these topics. If I were to do that, they would be so very, very long and mired in so many small details that it would become tedious for you to read and boring for me to write. Instead, to use a college metaphor, this is a survey course. We’ll touch on major players, take a couple fun asides to keep things interesting, and leave. Those who are already knowledgeable will get a refresher, and those who were unfamiliar will have some places to start looking if this catches their fancy. And, if neither of these apply to you, at least you learned something.

So as the title makes pretty clear, this is going to be a survey of one of the most ramshackle and charming of indie genres: indie pop music, particularly in Australia and New Zealand. Before heading to that area, let's consider the genre of indie pop itself.

While the starting point is unclear, indie pop takes the DIY approach made popular by the punk and post-punk movements of the 1970s and mixes it with the sincerity of 60s and 70s pop acts. Some early acts of note include Orange Juice and Television Personalities. If you are to listen to these bands, your confusion about the term would probably continue. Orange Juice maintains some of the angularity of post-punk while Edwyn Collins sings sincere lyrics in a croon. The overall sound is jangly, with the guitars being reminiscent of the Byrds. If you listen to “Falling and Laughing,” you can easily hear how a band like The Smiths came into existence.

While pulling from the same general base of music—The Velvet Underground, The Byrds—Television Personalities ended up in a very different location. The gentle sway is replaced with repetition akin to The Fall. The melodic crooning of Edwyn Collins is replaced with the flat singing of Dan Treacy. Treacy replaces Collins’s sincerity with acid wit and social commentary. The song that they are best known for, “Part Time Punks,” is a rather scathing critique of the punk movement in London. When they are not droning, Television Personalities’ songs tended to take a psychedelic turn. You can hear this more psychedelic sound on tracks such as “La Grande Illusion” and “The Boy in the Paisley Shirt.” Both of these songs sound like they easily could have come out in the 1960s, but they are from decades later.

While their sounds are radically different, both of these acts had a massive influence on the underground. Orange Jucie and Television Personalities inspired many bands and can be counted as major influences on the C86 movement and indie/college rock and pop more generally. But, as I noted earlier, indie pop does not have a clear aesthetic at this point. The aesthetic of indie pop did not really develop until the rise of two separate strains of music coming from Australia and New Zealand.

The strain from Australia is led by The Go-Betweens. Fronted by songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, the band starts to lay out the true foundations of what would become the indie pop sound. While they started out a bit rough and ready, with simple, catchy songs like “Lee Remick” (Yes, about the actress and with the lyrics “She was in The Omen with Gregory Peck/ She got killed, what the heck?”) and “Karen,” a song about a librarian. As they grew as a band, both their lyrics and instrumentation became more complex. One of the highlights of this early period of music is “Cattle and Cane.”

A wistful song of memory, “Cattle and Cane” displays excellent songwriting from Grant McLennan with beautiful musicianship. The guitars engage in a hypnotic interplay as the the bass and drums provide a solid anchor. The guitar sound has that nostalgic tone of remembering an idealized version of something or someone. It has its own romance and drive. This and the rest of the album it came from, 1983’s Before Hollywood, start to make the indie pop aesthetic clear.

As you move through the discography of The Go-Betweens from Before Hollywood to 16 Lovers Lane, you can start to hear some common elements. To start, the guitars jangle while maintaining a sharp edge; you can still very much hear the influence of The Velvet Underground. Because Forster and McLennan sharing songwriting duties, Go-Betweens songs can alternate between sincerity and heartfelt emotion (e.g., “Bachelor Kisses”) and abstract, elliptical writing (e.g., “Before Hollywood”). Because of their musicianship and the intimacy of their lyrics, The Go-Betweens were able to create an affecting archive of music throughout the 1980s that had an overwhelming influence on the music of both their home country of Australia as well as the underground.

The other axis that helped to define what would become indie pop revolved around a small label located in Christchurch, New Zealand: Flying Nun Records. The label released a number of bands such as The Clean, The Bats, The Chills, and Look Blue Go Purple that shared similar sonic aesthetics. All of these bands take the minimalism of the Velvet Underground and merge it with their own spins on psychedelic music and 60s pop. Although they all have the same referents, The Clean are a bit rougher around the edges, maintaining a bit more of a post-punk leaning than the other bands. You can hear what I mean on tracks like “At The Bottom” and “Beatnik,” songs where that 60s feeling is there but it is more garage rock and less psychedelic.

The Bats, The Chills, and Look Blue Go Purple lean far more into the psychedelic, Byrds-style pop. All three acts write songs with jangling guitars that overlap and drone. As well, their songs tend to take on a more refined presentation. While there are many strong songs from these bands—Look Blue Go Purple’s “Circumspect Penelope,” for example—a true highlight of this particular vein of Flying Nun is “Pink Frost” by The Chills.

Although it is a haunting song about death, the guitars are interlocked, floating through the space of the track. The simple drums and bass punctuate the ominous space of the song. Martin Phillips’s heavily reverbed vocals add the necessary element of macabre to the track. It is a truly miraculous song, even though it is one of the darker songs in The Chills’s catalog.

With the help of college radio, fanzines, and newsletters, the music that these bands made spread around the world. While it did not necessarily make them rich, it did influence many, many other artists going forward such as Beat Happening and many of the bands that would release music through K Records in the 1990s. With the creation of Beat Happening, the sound aesthetic of indie pop that had been developing in Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand for the past decade crystallized: it was a collection of bands that wrote music that featured jangling guitars merged with artistic lyrics and left-of-center presentation (e.g., off-key singing). The music tempo could range from fast and noisy to slow and gentle. As well, the artists tended to display some form of emotionality, whether directly or obliquely. It didn’t sound like the mainstream, but it certainly had its own charms that made it stand out from the rest of the pack. Many of the indie bands that we listen to now—Pavement or Real Estate, to just name a couple offhand—will track their sound back to either K Records, UK indie pop bands (e.g., Felt), or Flying Nun and The Go-Betweens.

Unlike some other music scenes—like no wave, for example—indie pop did not die when the 80s bands hung it up. More musicians continued to appear in both Australia and New Zealand, although, suffice it to say, the output did slow down in the 1990s. The particular highlight of this lull is The Cat’s Miaow, a trio based in Melbourne. The band wrote indie pop that blended melancholy lyrics with fuzzy, almost-shoegaze-like guitar arrangements. Although they came and went with next to no acknowledgement, they made some amazing music. One particular standout is the jangly 90-second gem “Third Floor Fire Escape View.”

As time moved along and the next generation found their parents’ records, a new wave of Australian indie pop surfaced. This new wave took clear inspiration from the aforementioned bands: The Go-Betweens, The Clean, The Chills. They also took the lo-fi, four-track aesthetic as well. Called dolewave—an inside joke among the bands themselves and a name they came to loath—this new wave of bands brought relevance back to the Aussie pop scene and also inspired a new generation of jangle pop bands.

The two bands that led this wave were Twerps and Dick Diver. While these are somewhat comical names, the music is rock solid. To start with Twerps, they take the drive of The Clean and add the melodic sensibilities and sincerity of The Go-Betweens and The Chills. Although one could say that they are not the most inventive band in the world because of the obvious sonic references, there is something to be said for taking obvious touch points and turning them into something that is very distinctly your own. Over the course of their discography, Twerps do exactly that, developing their own approach to songwriting that references the past and integrates it with the anxiety of living in modern Australia. You can hear this confluence in “I Don’t Mind,” a five-minute ballad from their second album Range Anxiety.

Over the course of the runtime, you hear the clear influence of Flying Nun’s sincerity on their lyrical approach as well as the jangling, reverb-heavy guitar work. The overlapping guitars bring in The Bats and Go-Betweens. While there are all of these references to the past, the protagonist’s desire for affirmation feels very much of our current times.

Dick Diver, the other band at the forefront of the Australian jangle pop revival, uses many similar moves as Twerps, but their more clear referent is The Go-Betweens. When you listen to something like the title track from their second album, Calendar Days, the comparison is easy to make.

They take on the poetic lyrics, guitar interplay, and harmonies of The Go-Betweens. The song is rock solid, taking the listener on a full, slightly melancholy journey in the space of only three minutes. It is a song that could have fit on The Go-Betweens’ Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express.

While both of these bands put out excellent work, both of them have not put out new music in quite a while. For Twerps, it is because they broke up in 2017. The reason is unclear for Dick Diver, as i can't find any notes about them breaking up or going on hiatus. This might lead you to ask the question of who is keeping the jangle pop flame alive in Australia and New Zealand. The answer is, honestly, quite a few bands. Some of them—Quivers, RVG—I have mentioned in this newsletter previously. There are some who have really only been active on the continent like Totally Mild and The Stroppies. Two bands that have exported the sound are Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and Good Morning. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and Good Morning were able to net contracts with American indie stalwarts Sub Pop and Polyvinyl, respectively.

To start with Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, yes, their name is bad. There’s not really any way around that. That said, their music is excellent. Punctuated by a three-guitar attack, the band writes tricky songs with poetic lyrics and intricate guitar work that recalls the Go-Betweens and the Flying Nun bands. Across their three albums and two EPs, the band has found a way to make this evergreen source of influences into its own particular style. This can be heard on one of the earliest tracks from the band, “Clean Slate” from their Talk Tight EP.

The influence of the Clean and the Go-Betweens is audible, but the band has put a more insistent drive to the sound. It isn’t ramshackling; it is tight. The guitar work is precise. Given that it is three guitars, it is an accomplishment that they do not get in each other’s way and each line provides a distinct element to the song. Furthermore, the song has a nice pace, which is something that makes it standout from many of the other bands pulling from this well of music. They took their fandom of that older sound and did the most important thing: they updated it to fit their modern needs, allowing it to speak their reality as people and as Australians. The result is an archive of work that respects the past while providing a path forward.

Good Morning is much closer to that ramshackle of the 80s Flying Nun bands. Their lyrics have the sincerity and their presentation is a bit scruffier than that of Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. However, Good Morning is about as tight as Rolling Blackouts are, but in a less obvious manner. Consider “Country,” a single from their 2021 release Barnyard.

While the lyrical style definitely shares a lot with various 80s and 90s indie acts, listen to the ways that the music links together in the song. The disparate elements merge smoothly into each other, creating a fascinating dynamic. Furthermore, the song slowly builds into a neat crescendo. It’s done with such a level of finesse that it is easy to overlook. Take the chirpy synth line that is very prominent at the beginning of the song. As the rhythm of the song kicks in, that element not only fades into the track, it complements the guitar line nicely. It is something that seems very simple, but a number of bands would have never have thought about it. This sort of exacting songwriting craft is present throughout their archive, including on their 2024 album Good Morning Seven, a fantastic album that is certainly worthy of your time.

With Good Morning, we have reached the end of this journey through the indie pop world of Australia and New Zealand. There is certainly more to be said about the music coming from this part of the world, but again, I didn’t want to overwhelm either myself or you, fair reader, with a dive into various narrow corners of an already narrow genre. If you would like to learn more, get in touch with me and I’ll tell you about some of the more obscure work coming out of the continent.

As promised, next week, I am going to delve into the work of The Mekons, a band that has existed since the late 1970s and has just cruised through a variety of musical genres. I somehow missed the fact that they released a reggae-influenced album in 1988, So Good It Hurts. It’s not as cringe as you think it would be either. That will be a good time for everyone.

Until the next set of The Spins, take care of yourself and be kind to others. As well, tell someone you know about this newsletter. They will definitely find it to be worthwhile. I'm not just saying that because I write it. I will leave you with one last song: “North by North" by The Bats, one of the other purveyors of the Flying Nun sound.