So happy now that the Dayflower 7″ is out. And now it seems we will be getting the Baby Lemonade CDs next week. Finally. As soon as I have a confirmed date I will all let you know. These might be our two last releases for 2019 but maybe not. Let’s see how things pan out in the next months as we have another retrospective almost ready (just missing the mastering!).
Fir Cone Children: the German label Blackjack Illuminist has just released the album “Fog Surrounds Us” by this band. It is available on CD and tape and comes with 11 songs of creative indiepop. I am listening with joy the songs on Bandcamp, especially the standout track “I’m Free (Taking Over)”.
Slideshow: this three-piece hails from Austin, Texas, and do like to jangle as we can see in their latest work, the “Midnight Language” EP. There are four tracks of classy indiepop here which I highly recommend. Hopefully this will get released in a physical format in the future.
Able: my friends from Uppsala are back now with the album “Holding On/Letting Go”! How cool it is! The band formed now by Johan Gille, Jonas Olsson, Mattias Jonsson and Malkolm Bonander, has been going for a long time producing top songs and records. Here they present us 12 new songs, with a surprise as one of them, “El Tiempo Hablará” is sung in Spanish! Good stuff!
Peredmova: this Kiev, Ukrainian, project is quite interesting. Sure I don’t like all the songs of this quirky band formed by Vlad Zarichniuk, but I can appreciate them. There are some very bright moments too among the 15 songs that make the album “Сезон Переїздів Деяких Людей”, and I suggest you check them out. You’ll be surprised.
Autoescuela: the Asturias band has just put up a new song up on their Bandcamp. And it is called just as the band, “Autoescuela”. It is a fun nice song. Will it be included in a future release? Don’t know much. And if you understand the lyrics David and Santi write, you’ll enjoy this much more.
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Wow! wow! and wow! What a fantastic discovery thanks to the superb Irish blog Fanning Sessions. The two tracks they have shared by Wilderness Years sound truly amazing. Why didn’t this band release anything at all?!
“Don’t Change Your Mind” and “Never Knew How Much I Cared” sound glorious, with superb jangly guitars. These two songs were part of a Fanning Session that was recorded on September 17th of 1985. They weren’t the only songs recorded that day. “Original Sin” and “Growing Up with Winston” were recorded too but I haven’t had the chance to listen to them. I also hope that there are more songs to be listened, not just these two. Maybe a demo tape? There must have been one, if not, how would they have gotten the opportunity for the Fanning Session?
Well Fanning Sessions has another post about them! It is about a demo recorded in 1985. From that demo they have shared the song “Eradication Days” as this song was played by Dave Fanning in 1988. The song was produced by 17 year old Garret Lee (aka. Jacknife Lee) in the Divine Word Missionary studio in Maynooth. A comment mentions that the band broke up in 1986. From the small image shared in this post, which I assume comes from a press clipping, it says that the band was originally formed by Derek Lee on bass, Stephen Tracey on drums and Ray Williams on guitar and vocals.
We know too that the band hailed from Dublin and it eventually changed its lineup to Ray Williams (vocals/guitar), Phil Nea (guitar), Derek Lee (bass) and Darragh Broe (drums). I suppose this change is reflected in the Fanning Session recordings. Something interesting too is that Derek and Darragh were also part of Guernica according to the first post. And I did write about Guernica back in 2011 on the blog. Looking at my post I notice I mention that Derek Lee was in the band, but not Darragh. Maybe he joined at some point? I really don’t know. Sadly since 2011 that my post is online no one has approached me to tell the story of Guernica. I do hope though that I will hear from a member of Wilderness Years sooner than that!
The only other information I could find about them was some gigs listed on Irishrock.org. There it mentions that the band played the Mood Club in Tommy Dunnes Tavern in Dublin a few times, on February 16 (alongside The Commotion), May 4 (The Commotion and The Baby Snakes), May 18 (The Commotion) and June 15 (Loudness of Whispers and The Coalition) of 1985.
Another mention of Irishrock.org is that Derek Lee was also part of a band called Sack. I did mention that too on my Guernica post.
Not much more info on the web about them. Maybe the Fanning Sessions blog gets lucky and gets more tracks and information. If not I am crossing fingers to be the lucky one and can listen to more tracks and find out whatever happened to the band. The three songs I’ve heard sound really terrific!
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One Response to “:: Wilderness Years”
Ray Williams here. Anything you want to know about the band I’m happy to tell you.
Thanks for liking the music. We liked it too!