sound of the suburbs

I always thought this was a great name for a young band, after all youth is a period of life that is associated with optimism! The band were formed in Dublin as a three piece by the brothers Craig and Keith Walker. By the end of the eighties Keith Cullen had heard their demo and was only too keen to release their first single on his newly formed Setanta record label. The mainland press loved the single, 'A Little Piece Of God' and showered it with glowing reviews, this led to the band becoming very hot property. This in all fairness was also because of the record industries habit of trend following, the late eighties were after all when another Dublin band broke into the big time. The six figure bidding was was won by Polydor who wasted no time in packing their new hopes off to the studios. The resulting album 'Immigrants, Emigrants And Me' was also to be the target of good reviews but by now these were from the worldwide press. The band hit the road to support the release and it was in the early '90's that I caught them opening for the House of Love at a very large venue in Toulouse. They won me over they were fast, energetic, fun and had some great songs and so the next day I purchased the album, this was the way things were back then! One of the tracks that has always stood out in my head is 'Never Been To Texas' (sorry but this ones a CD rip) which is a countyfied slice of pop taking a humourous stab at U2 complete with it's Bono style rap. The album sold well in the UK, France and Japan, and in the words of the band the now four piece were having such a good time that they forgot to write the songs for the follow up, 1992's 'To Hell With Common Sense'. Now this is rather harsh as the album does have it's strong points including the bright single 'There I Go Again'. As was the trend at this period singles would be released in a number of different formats this one I have as a 10" vinyl with the added bonus of cover versions of the VU's 'Pale Blue Eyes' and Prince's 'The Cross'. But things were not going too well with their label and the band were dropped just one week after the album hit the shops. The band were picked up by Lemon Records for whom their next single 'Evil Evol' displayed more mature songwritting along with the loss of innocence and the arrival of more pessimistic lyrics. Plagued with label problems, Lemon were to go broke, the band soldiered on and played a farewell gig in their home town in 1995.
Since then Craig has recorded three albums as guitarist/collaborator with Archive, his brother Keith fronts the Paranoid Saints. If talk on their myspace page is to be believed the band are planning to get back together for two fun gigs one in London and one in Dublin in March 2007, this is almost tempting enough for me to buy a London bound ticket.