Art Rock Music: August 2005 Archives

Though it works against most of my preconceptions about the nature of music snobbery—that is to say, it is in some respects my very definition of snobbery—there is very little in this great big musical world that I enjoy more than the classically acquired taste.

Here's the thing—for as narrow and critical my pop world view can be sometimes, I feel like I'm generally pretty open to appreciating new sounds and ideas in the music I consume. Because of this—and because for the past year or so I've been buried in mediocre CDs by bands that insist they sound like "If Brian Wilson had a one night stand in a cantina with Edward G. Robinson, and their gay love child then had a child with the corpse of Ennio Morricone's mother, [insert band name here] would be that child's mid-wife" or some bullshit—I am generally one to take records at face value. If I don't like something the first time, I don't force myself to like it, no matter how much it irritates my friends. Learning to like something seems in many ways antithetical to all that which makes pop music so joyful—if it takes a lot of work to have even the slightest inkling of appreciation, than I figure my time would be better spent just to listen to Louder Than Bombs again.

I say this, of course, acknowledging the fact that the vast majority of my favorite musics could have been at one point considered an acquired taste. The difference is that, over the years, I feel as if I've come to understand just which largely indefinable traits in a music that I will someday, if given time, warm up to tremendously. And after about five years of this sort of vague acknowledgment, I can happily say that the Moles are finally one of my favorite bands.

Formed in the late '80s in Australia, the Moles were one of the main proponents of the oft-revived but never really fully embraced Orch/Chamber-pop movement—a scene for which their fabulously bizarre Untune the Sky is one of the primary articles. After releasing a few singles in the very early '90s, the Moles up-rooted to New York as soon as they completed Untune in 1992. The record was a sort of awkward mix of Go-Betweens styled Aussie-rock and Spacemen 3 tripp-age, but do to the talents of head songsmith/law student Richard Davies (no relation) and the band's general fascination with sonic oddities, Untune often outshines both. The band released a couple of additional singles while in New York before uprooting for London. Following the tradition of most misunderstood pop bands of the era, the Moles drew a great deal of critical attention (read: no money) before breaking up in 1993. In 1994, Davies released Instinct—a solo album for which he maintained the Moles moniker. At nine songs in about 23 minutes, Instinct has been less critically heralded over the years than Untune the Sky—it's considerably more bizarre and disjointed than it's predecessor, and in my opinion a great deal more compelling. Heavy on the horns and strange atmospherics, Instinct was my Moles introduction—and though it took a great while, there's little else I'd rather be listening to these days.

Davies' next project was the mega-nerdily-acclaimed orch-pop project Cardinal, with then unknown (and later controversial) Portland instrumentalist Eric Matthews. People love the shit out of the single, self-titled record they mustered in 1994 before they bitterly split ties, but I've yet to really absorb the magic in it—it sort of just seems like Moles-lite. Davies has released three solo records post-Cardinal: two on Flydaddy—who released the Moles' stuff in the states, as well as Cardinal—and one on Kindercore. (The first solo album was apparently toured with the Flaming Lips as his backing band). Both labels are now defunct, and as most of the material is out of print, I've yet to hunt down Davies' proper solo albums. A label called Wishing Tree recently released a two-disc, Davies compiled compilation of band-era Moles material called Out on the Street, featuring a bunch of stuff from Untune and the early singles, as well as a bunch of "rare and weird" supplementary recordings. It's a good comp, but sort of an awkward introduction for a band with such excellent proper albums. Davies apparently now lives in Massachusetts, where he practices law. He was supposedly supposed to release his fourth solo album in 2004, but for whatever reason—perhaps Kindercore's folding—it's yet to come out. But that fine—'cuz the Moles will always be the Greatest Acquired Taste of All Time.