Record Reviews
The Waterfront Years, 1991 – 1993
By René Schaefer
Divorced from its grunge-rock context, Aztec’s two-disc Tumbleweed retrospective sounds remarkably fresh, writes RENÉ SCHAEFER.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Aztec Music’s tagline is, “Preserving Australia’s rich musical heritage.” For those of us who still vividly remember the grunge era, it’s funny to think of the early 1990s as part of such a legacy. It seems like it was just yesterday that flannel shirts, dirty jeans and overdriven riff rock ruled our stages and airwaves. But then you suddenly realise that Mudhoney first toured here 21 years ago and that Tumbleweed were the contemporaries of Nirvana, not their disciples.
Born in 1987 as The Proton Energy Pills, Wollongong’s Tumbleweed became part of the first flowering of grunge, but their influences were a lot further reaching than Sabbath and The Stooges. The band had already absorbed and worked through the post-Radio Birdman sound associated with Waterfront Records and bands such as The Hard-Ons and The Hellmenn, as well as classic ’60s garage rock and pop (The Easybeats, etc.), before they became aware of Mudhoney and Dinosaur Jr.
The confluence of these inspirations informed their sound even on early stunners like the B-side to their first 7” single, ‘Space Friends’. There was a strong melodicism evident that marked “The Weed” as more than long-haired stoners in love with their distortion pedals, and located them closer to classic Australian power pop bands like The Sunnyboys. Still, this wasn’t a band of clean-cut, polite songsmiths – the industrial grit of their working class home town could be heard in every fuzzed-out note. The band embraced a bohemian drop-out aesthetic straight out of Rick Griffin or Gilbert Shelton’s drug-fried underground comix. It was a pre-digested, yet still potent counterculture image, easy for fans to latch onto and it fit the zeitgeist of the early ’90s perfectly.
Despite a convoluted transitional period before emerging as Tumbleweed, the band wrote an impressive number of songs in their initial burst of creativity. Having already made connections with their overseas compatriots – Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis and Mudhoney’s Mark Arm had worked with them on early material – Tumbleweed soon attracted the attention of American record label Seed. However, in the post-Nirvana signing frenzy, they never achieved the profile overseas that their label had hoped for. By 1994 the band had parted ways with Seed and made the transition from Waterfront to Polydor, which signaled the beginning of another era in their career.
Collected on this double CD is a representative cross-section of Tumbleweed’s much sought-after early singles, B-sides, EPs, garage rock covers, as well as the self-titled debut album. Maybe not surprisingly, these sound even better now than when they were first released, divorced from the cultural context of the grunge era. Production wise, these recordings lack the exaggerated guitar crunch and plodding drum sound of much of the American grunge output, as well as the much-maligned imitation Butch Vig sheen and compression that so badly dates many recordings from this era.
“This wasn’t a band of clean-cut, polite songsmiths – the industrial grit of their working class home town could be heard in every fuzzed-out note.”
Musically too, it’s like a breath of fresh air. In his accompanying overview of the band’s recordings, Ian McFarlane quotes guitarist Lenny Curley: “What we do is get this rhythm and blues style that swings. Then we make it as heavy as possible.” This perfectly sums up their modus operandi – rather than bludgeoning listeners, Tumbleweed always had an acute sense of dynamics and ability to think beyond the riff. This explains the number of outstanding single tracks they recorded: ‘Stoned’, ‘Carousel’, ‘Sundial’, ‘Daddy Long Legs’. Each one was a distinct entity that cut through the assembly line grunge slop that polluted the atmosphere for much of the decade.
As well as being the product of sharp musical minds, this freshness probably had a lot to do with the band’s background in Wollongong; a place that was unlikely to inspire conceitedness in its local band scene, as fellow Wollongong native Kate Hennessy lovingly documents in her lengthy interview with the band. This history forms the centerpiece of the CD’s thick booklet, alongside Lenny Curley’s distinctive graphics and many archival photos.
As a package, it not only satisfies long-term fans, whose vinyl records are probably scratched to buggery and gummed up by ancient bongwater spills, but also serves as a fine introduction to new-comers primed by Tumbleweed’s recent reformation shows and festival appearances.
+