sound of the suburbs

Not the most handsome looking of bands were they? Though they were capable of making some fine guitar led pop rock that did the indie ghetto proud in the early 90's though for some inexplicable reason failed to trouble the main stream. My introduction to them came rather belatedly as I managed to miss out on the initial interest that was caused by their name checking debut single, 'Tom Verlaine' from 1989, I had definitely read about it but maybe because I had only recently left the UK I was a little bit out of touch. Some three years later and I was getting cutting edge records sent to me every week from the UK for my radio show, I can remember receiving a white label 12" single one week with the word steamroller felt tipped onto the label and nothing else not even a press release. Steamroller, was it the name of the band or the song? I must say this was a good way to get you to listen to the record and I wasted no time in dropping the stylus onto the run in groove. For the seven minutes of the song I was captivated by the song's thumping beat, scratchy guitar lines and lazy killer melody. The song stared getting some serious airtime from me and a favorable response from my audience. It wasn't before the following week that the name of the band was revealed to me and I could confirm that 'Steamroller' was the title. The Family Cat came from Yeovil and had also caught the ear of local girl made good PJ Harvey who was to provide backing vocals on their follow up 45t 'River Of Diamonds' both songs feature on the 'Furthest From The Sun' LP. Despite good press and being admired by their peers they failed to sell enough to dent the charts. The same fate was waiting for the 1995 follow up 'Magic Happens' and disillusioned the band called it a day. More information on the band can be found here.