Graham Reid | | 2 min read
Star Sign (live)
It was long ago and, from where we sit, far away: Christchurch in the Eighties to be specific.
There were a lot of bands around at the time and with just the EP My Brand New Wallpaper Coat released on Flying Nun in 1987 it seems almost inevitable that All Fall Down should be one of those here-today-and-gone bands from that era.
But All Fall Down were – as we now know through the discovery of a live concert and the reissue of that little heard EP – more than just none-hit wonders.
AFD were the first band by musician/artist Blair Parkes who has appeared at Elsewhere many times in recent years.
By his own admission they were initially “three chord post punk Christchurch school kids” but they were aspirational, refined their craft over the years and worked hard.
They played 80 gigs in four years, one being a Teacher's College ball at the University of Canterbury Ballroom in '87 in the midst of recording that six-song EP for Flying Nun.
And that gig – 14 songs – was recorded by Rob Mayes of Failsafe Records, the tape digitised by Mayes and edited and mastered by Parkes.
By this time the band of guitarist/singer Parkes, Stephen Macintyre (12 string guitar, vocals), Esther McNaughton (violin, vocals, percussion), bassist/singer Campbell Taylor and drummer/singer Bert Aldridge had developed into a sophisticated unit with all members contributing to the multi-layered vocals.
Both Parkes and Macintyre wrote songs which were melodic, owed a debt to Sixties jangle-pop and were in a similar space as Sneaky Feelings (Best Thing) but with some of the dynamic complexity of the Verlaines (the suicide song Actified Blues).
They could fire off exciting and concise alt.pop (Star Sign, It's a Worry), aim at mainstream radio pop (Holding Tide) and go off on a tangent into experimentalism (Eastern That Eastern Song).
McNaughton's violin brought in not just an exotic element but a drone quality like John Cale's viola in the Velvet Underground.
Certainly there are moments when, in the live setting, the vocals don't quite make the cut, like You Just Can't Tell.
Fortunately that jangle-pop was one of the songs on the studio EP where you can appreciate it better.
The six songs were of course part of that live showing but it's worth also hearing how they were polished when recorded by Ben Stockwell at Audio Access in Christchurch.
You Just Can't Tell (studio version)
You can hear and buy these digital releases at bandcamp (see below) but all of them have been collated onto the Need to Know cassette (with free download code) by Thokei Tapes out of Germany, another in that label's on-going issue of New Zealand artists.
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You can hear and buy the live All Fall Down album at bandcamp here
The remastered EP My Brand New Wallpaper Coat is at bandcamp here
For the Thokei Tapes cassette go to bandcamp here
For more on Thokei Tapes releases reviewed at Elsewhere go here.
For more on Failsafe Records at Elsewhere go here.
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