Being a 24 year old Australian, I was too young and too geographically remote to catch the first wave of “shoegazer” bands to come out of the UK in the early 90s (Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Swervedriver etc). What I was around for instead was the antipodean aftershock—the swirly psychedelic indie rock bands that got some airplay and major label attention as part of the mid-90s “alternative” craze. There was never a “scene” as such, just a lot of talented musicians mining similar territory. Sadly, the best of these bands never achieved the success that was their due and disbanded, leaving Australian music the poorer, while the noxious likes of Spiderbait, Grinspoon, and Regurgitator became our summer festival perennials instead.

Possibly my favourite band to tread the effects-pedals was Sidewinder—a band of Canberrans transplanted to Sydney (no doubt due to the incredible lameness of my current hometown). Their first LP Atlantis (1996) was the sound of a young band finding its feet and isn’t as consistent as the follow-up (1998’s Tangerine), but it contains the blazing “Not Coming Home”—a song that expresses exactly why the electric guitar was invented in the first place. Martin Craft’s impassioned vocals are pretty un-shoegazer—although Adam Franklin from Swervedriver has mined similar territory—but the wall of sound that this band produced brings several Oxford bands to mind. Where this band rises above mere imitation is in the unique approach of taking classic Australian pub rock and rubbing it until it glistens.

Another Sydney-based band was Drop City—probably the most psychedelic of the bunch and friends of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, to give you an idea of what to expect. I recall an interview in which the band members stated that they broke up after a live show that involved something like two songs and 45 minutes. When they were at their best, circa This Heavenly Machine (1996), they recorded some of the best music influenced by Floyd and Dinosaur Jr in equal measure—“Living In The Machine Pt. 1” is Exhibit A.

And finally, a band that were a little bit more Britpop sounding at their peak (building on Pulp and the Boo Radleys to great effect on 1996’s Love Walked In LP) but who started off gazing at their shoelaces like the rest—The Earthmen. An early track of theirs, “Momentum” from 1993, is a great place to start. With its mellow, druggy intro building up into a pummelling climax that recalls Ride’s “Decay” more than a little, it’s a song that moves my guts and my heart.

It’s probably unfair to look at these bands in the light of their influences, as if they were nothing more than cultural appropriation—like American remakes of Asian or French films. These songs stand as classics in their own right. But I can’t help feeling that if they are a little bit better than most, it’s because they have been standing on the shoulders of giants.

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