Day 497
Pier Lights: the latest song by Rich May from The King of Mirrors and Jonathan Troy of The Hi-Life Companion is called “Lovely Thing”. This might be my favourite song of theirs so far. Two very talented indiepop-masters joining forces, that makes total sense. Let’s see if they will release something in the near future!
Mad Honey: we head to Oklahoma City to listen a new digital single by the band formed by Tiff Sutcliffe, Austin Valdez and Branden Palesano. “I Won’t Go Easy” is a classic indiepop/dreampop song, influenced by bands like The Sundays, The Heart Throbs, The Darling Buds, etc. You know that sounds good.
H!: Shiny Happy Records brings us the latest hits from Indonesia. H!’s new single is not an exception. It is a terrific lo-fi poppy track titled “Stay at Home”. I don’t know much about this band but we know they hail from the capital, Jakarta. And that the song title is dead on.
Seafoam: “Songs For You (demo)” is the debut of the duo formed by Adam Stafford and Belinda Cai from LA. This demo has two songs obviously, “Big T-Shirts” and “Time Warp”. They are lovely bedroom pop pieces, lo-fi and with that amateurish joy we love.
Stomp Talk Modstone: the Japanese band has signed to Box Bedroom Rebels to release a limited 7″! This record has 5 terrific songs, of gorgeous dreampop. Two of the songs had been released previously, but three of them, “Quiet”, “To Be” and “What We Want” are exclusive to this record!
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I heard the song “Sugar Mouse” by Yellow Bird on that great Youtube channel that is stoneeyedkiller. I still don’t know who is behind that channel but the work there to unearth so many gems is quite incredible. The person behind it must go over every single Soundcloud, Bandcamp and blogs to stumble upon these. That seems like a 8 hour a day job!
So I thank for letting me discover some of the bands. Then it is my job afterwards to find out more. And whatever I find I always try to share with my good friends, meaning the readers of the blog. How many are they? I don’t know! I should check the counter one day.
Yellow Bird seems to have been a short-lived project. There are no releases by the band and we only know that it was a duo. Susana Iglesias was on vocals and Tim Groves was on drums, bass and guitar.
I have found a Soundcloud by Tim Groves. Here he has many recordings of many projects he has been involved with like The Ultra Parents, The Gemms, Big Humming Noise, The Direction, Scuz, Pencils, Godfish and Spinning Belinda (I would like to write about this band too, great songs). For Yellow Bird we find two songs, “Sugar Mouse” and “Snowing”.
There is little info about the band here as well. But we know that “Snowing” was recorded in 1988 at Roundel Studios in Horton Kirby. This song was actually written the day before they went to the studio. The credits for writing it is for both band members. Tim adds a little detail here mentioned that this was the first time he ever played a bass guitar. The guitars on this recording were a Sigma DM4-12 and a Rickenbacker 340/6. Clearly Tim liked his guitars.
For “Snowing” there’s less info. Probably in the same session. Were there more songs recorded by them? Or was it just this two? Would be nice to find out.
Did they try anything with these songs? Send them to labels?
On Soundcloud Tim locates himself in London. The songs had been uploaded 8 years ago. Was Yellow Bird a band from London? Could be. Horton Kirby is not that far.
One interesting detail I did found was a 2013 post on a forum called Steve Hoffman Music Forums. What it says here is that Tim and Susana were boyfriend and girlfriend then. That they recorded this while together. Now they are exes. He shares the two songs and mentions that he was 20 and she was 18 at the time.
And then what? You won’t believe it. I don’t believe it either. I find more information, on this blog! On the Cloudberry blog! I should have a better memory but having done so many interviews and being recommended so many bands by many musicians it is always difficult. I should try to write these band names down for further research. Anyhow… a long time ago I interviewed The Chalk Garden. They told me this:
One other band of note was Yellow Bird. They were the band of another room mate, Tim Groves and mainly consisted of Tim & his crazy talented girlfriend. I played bass for them for about a month and Tim played drums in the CG’s for a similarly short period. I don’t think Yellow Bird played more than 2 or 3 gigs before Suzie (the singer) went off to art school and was never seen again. Tim has posted some songs on SoundCloud which are definitely worth a listen.
How did I miss it! So many many years! And I should have known about this band. Ah! It is my fault. But now I know. Fantastic. They were from London then. And Steve Jenkins from The Chalk Garden was in Spinning Belinda. Okay, now I know I have to get in touch again and ask to do an interview about Spinning Belinda.
The mystery is less of a mystery now. But we still don’t know much about Yellow Bird and what happened to Susana. I hope we find out soon!
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Listen
Yellow Bird – Snowing
