A Series of Brief Obsessions #8 - Bedroom Walls

California's Bedroom Walls traded between 2001-2007, releasing an EP and two albums, only the first of which, 2003's 'I Saw You Coming Back to Me', sits in my collection. It's another of the many CDs that we acquired around that time from stacks of cardboard boxes buried at the back of grimy, dimly lit and now sadly long gone New York record shops. What fun we had, venturing forth from my cousin's apartment in the morning carrying empty backpacks and arriving home many hours later with filthy hands from scrabbling around in the dust, backpacks bursting at the seams with CDs, all purchased for a few cents each. Admittedly we picked up a fair amount of old tosh on the way that didn't even make it back across the pond after a quick listen on my cousin's stereo, but conversely there were other discoveries that ultimately became popular favourites in our house.  

Bedroom Walls described their music as 'romanticore' - it's wistful, melancholy pop, but with occasional sprinklings of humour, as evidenced in song titles like 'I've Been Thinking A Lot About The Dots On The Wall', 'Do The Buildings And Cops Make You Smile?' and 'Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels!'.

Bedroom Walls - Winter, That's All

Bedroom Walls - More "Real Cats"

A Series of Brief Obsessions #7 - Nad Navillus

Chicago born Dan Sullivan's solo project Nad Navillus (Dan's name mirrored) released a self produced and self-titled instrumental CDr in 1999, a largely acoustic album, 'Show Your Face', in 2001 and and another with a full band, 'Iron Night', in 2002. Other than a couple of compilation tracks and a brief resurrection of the moniker for a split 7" single in 2014 (itself actually recorded ten years earlier), that's unfortunately the extent of the catalogue.

Sullivan spent some time playing with Songs:Ohia in the early noughties and at times his voice bares an uncanny similarity to that of his late friend Jason Molina. 'Your Good Side' from 'Show Your Face' was my introduction to the music of Nad Navillus, when I stumbled upon the song online, nearly 20 years ago. 

Nad Navillus - Your Good Side

A Series of Brief Obsessions #6 - Roman Evening

I'm pretty sure that it was Mrs S who introduced me to the music of Roman Evening fairly early on in our relationship, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that I'd been left custody of their 'Tiny Ladies' CD after she departed. The 2003 album is a soundtrack to the novel of the same name, written by band leader Adam Klein. There's a distinctly melancholic feel running through it, grist to my mill, as illustrated by the Lennonesque 'Casework'. 

Roman Evening - Casework

A Series of Brief Obsessions #5 - Vertical Montanas

The previous instalment in this series detailed my 18 month obsession with Jonquil and this single sits neatly alongside that obsession. Vertical Montanas were a ten-piece amalgam of the aforementioned Jonquil and fellow Oxford combo Youthmovies who, after originally making plans to guest on each other's recordings, ultimately decided to form a whole new band together. These two songs, recorded in 2007 and released on a pink vinyl 7" single the following year, comprise their entire output. Both of these unconventional tunes featured heavily on my CDr compilations at the time.

Vertical Montanas - Thick Mugs

Vertical Montanas - Of Scramblers; Rotting Birds And Gullies... The Trawlers, Crabs, The Caterpillar Tracks

A Series of Brief Obsessions #4 - Jonquil

Sandwiched between the lo-fi sonic experimentation of  2006's 'Sunny Casinos' and the mutant disco of  2012's 'Point of Go' came 'Lions', the endearingly oddball folktronic sophomore album by Oxford combo, Jonquil. Throughout 2007/8 Mrs S and I fell hard for these guys. The cover mounted CDs issued with The Wire magazine provided all sorts of interesting avenues to pursue in those days and so it was with No.17, which featured A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Fridge, Husky Rescue and Kammerflimmer Kollektief  - all favourites at Swede Towers at the time, as well as introducing us to the music of the aforementioned Jonquil.

For 18 months Jonquil's name seemed on everyone's lips, but for some reason it never quite happened for them. During this period they recorded entertaining alfresco performances for the la Blogothèque Take Away Show series (available on YouTube in two parts here and here), plus had the distinction of becoming the band I've had to travel the least distance from my house to see, when they rolled up at the pub at the bottom of my road in July of 2007. 

As I mentioned at the top, Jonquil continued their journey in a different musical direction before apparently petering out, but lead singer Hugo Manuel eventually found acclaim under his synth-pop alias of Chad Valley, with whom he released four albums between 2011 and 2018.  

Jonquil - Sudden Sun

Jonquil - Whistle Low

A Series of Brief Obsessions #3 - Brightblack Morning Light

You know those hot, clammy days that we sometimes get in the Summer? Days when it's a genuine effort to move from A to B, when sweat sticks the clothes to your skin and cool fresh air seems a distant memory? The music of Brightblack Morning Light is the aural equivalent of one of those days. It oozes and slithers from the speakers, as if weighed down by extreme humidity. It feels positively oppressive - in a good way, natch.

I was walking through Mrs S's studio one day in 2007 when I heard a Brightblack Morning Light tune coming from her laptop. They were a new name to me and I was instantly hooked by the dense, sultry, airless sound. I quickly hoovered up both the available long-players, 'Ala. Cali. Tucky' and the self-titled follow-up. The band's third and final album, 'Motion to Rejoin', arrived in 2008. 

My obsession with Brightblack Morning Light was brief, only by virtue of their catalogue being so slim. Their second and third albums in particular can be picked up relatively inexpensively and come highly recommended. Here's a track from each of them.

Brightblack Morning Light - Hologram Buffalo

Brightblack Morning Light - Everybody Daylight

A Series of Brief Obsessions #2 - Dillon Fence

Dillon Fence came my way as so many bands did back then, via the new release folder of a visiting record company rep. For an hour or so each month we'd glug coffee as he or she tried to convince me that everything in that folder was the next big thing and that I really needed to have it in my racks. Actually, to be fair, most of the reps knew my limits as well as I did. A tiny shop in a quiet seaside town was never going to be responsible for breaking an act nationwide, although in one or two cases over the years we certainly did our bit to help in terms of sales - I'm looking at you Sheryl Crow. But I digress. Many of those reps became friends, growing to know the direction my own personal tastes moved in and recommending accordingly - hence Dillon Fence. Sonically hovering somewhere between Teenage Fanclub and 'Grave Dancer's Union' era Soul Asylum, 1993's 'Outside In' was and is my favourite of their three albums. Here are two cuts from it to give you a flavour.

Dillon Fence - Collapsis

Dillon Fence - Safety Net

A Series of Brief Obsessions #1 - Lions and Tigers

The good news regarding the recent tech-trauma of my crashed hard-drive is that the local computer guy was able to salvage around 85% of the contents - photos, tunes and documents. A great result, by any standards. The 85% was his estimate by the way. Thus far I've yet to not find anything that I've gone and searched for, though no doubt that will happen at some point. Either way, I'm pretty ecstatic with what I've got, considering what the alternative could've been.

While biting my nails down to the quick as I awaited updates from the computer guy, I found myself playing even more physical product than usual. Digging particularly deep into the CD archives, I unearthed a bunch of compilation CDrs put together by myself and Mrs S during our earliest days together, nearly 20 years ago. We'd play these comps around the house continually for a week or two at a time, until moving onto the next one - like turning the page of an audio diary. Hearing some of those tunes again after so long was tantamount to reconnecting with very old friends. While playing one of the CDrs last week, I was struck by how much of my musical journey over the years could legitimately be described as a series of brief obsessions - some briefer than others. Every now and then, hearing just one track may lead to a long term commitment to an artist, or at least to picking up an album or two by them, but sometimes, for whatever reason, that one song might be all I'll ever have. 

In this occasional series I'm going to share a few of the one-offs, left-behinds and obscure forgotten favourites from my back pages. Take for example Lions and Tigers. Sometime in the mid-noughties I picked up their 5 track CD EP 'Pure & Applied'. Don't ask me where I got it, when exactly it was that I stumbled upon it, or what persuaded me to shell out for it - as my old Nan was wont to say, I can't remember, I've been asleep since then. All I can say for sure is that I liked the music I heard and still do, in particular the soundtrack-for-an-unmade-film vibe of the instrumental closer, 'Toca Su Guitarra'. According to Discogs, aside from one other track on a split single in 2006, 'Pure & Applied' was the sum total of the band's output. I can tell you no more.

Lions and Tigers - Toca Su Guitarra