Molasses had two periods. One in Perth, Australia, with Paul Williams, Andrew Britten and Mia Schoen. And one in Melbourne where Andrew was replaced by Chris Gorman. I’m going to try to figure out when this change happened.
Mia is a musician I have always enjoyed. She has been in great bands, among them a favorite of mine, Sleepy Township. She has also been in Above Ground Pool, Driving Past, Huon, Mia Schoen Group, New Estate, Possum Moods, Powerful Owl, The Cannanes, The Enclosures, The Curse and Lucida. Maybe there’s even more. I believe the “Golden Hour” album was her latest as a solo artist, and that’s from 2017.
Andrew was in bands too, mainly Cease and Jaguar is Jaguar. On this last band he was joined by Paul. And of course, Paul had been in a few other bands like Above Ground Pool, Panel of Judges, Sleepy Township and The Fast Bikes.
Lastly Chris was on the great Clag (I need to make a post about them), Doublechin, Jaguar is Jaguar, Mustang!, New Estate and Sleepy Township.
As you can see all of them were in top bands, they had great indiepop pedigree!
As far as I know Molasses is not that well known. At least for me. I don’t happen to own any of their releases, and that’s the reason I’m writing this post, to learn and discover more about this project.
The band two releases were split 7″ EPs. The first one was on Chapter Music (Chapter 11) where they shared the vinyl record with the band Minimum Chips. Molasses appear on the A side with two tracks, “Superpowers Activate” and “Hindsight” while Minimum Chips contributes “Baruberry”, “One That Got Away” and “Grogmonster” to the flipside. The record was released in 1995. The sleeve art is a photography of a house, I would think in Australia, with a huge cloud on top. Bad omens?
That is the original release. But there are some copies that had handmade sleeves with new inserts according to Discogs.
The second split 7″ came out in 1996. This time it was a lathe cut 7″ single, with two songs. The A side had Molasses’ “Hello Rain” and the B side had Sleepy Township’s “Houses”. Both bands as mentioned shared Mia and Paul in their ranks. Interesting enough the art is the same as the Chapter release, the same photographs which I believe Mia took.
It mentions that both songs were recorded in St. James in Western Australia. St. James being a suburb of Perth. At this time we still see Andrew in the band.
There are more songs by the band, perhaps enough to put together a compilation (Chapter, make it happen?). In 1994 they had a song called “Fingers in My Eyes” that was in a cassette compilation called “Too Much Ash” that Chapter released (Chapter 6). Then in 1995 we see the song “Brookton” on the Australian compilation tape “Molopo” released by From the Same Mother (FTSM 19). That same year the song “Moving” appears on the compilation CD called “The Butterfly” that was put together by Stand Against Sexual Assault. All of the songs on this CD were recorded live “under the blazing sun, on the roof of the Grosvenor Hotel, Perth, Western Australia on Sat. Dec. 3rd 1994 from non to midnight”.
In 1996 the band contributes the track “Nervous” to a CD compilation called “Family Album (A Compilation)” released by the American label Shy Boy Records (Shy Boy 01). It was compiled by Chris Henderson and Tami Heaton. Tami’s name I remember a lot from the indiepop-list.
On the 1997 “Live at the Cornflakes (An RTR-FM Compilation of Perth Original Noisesmithery)” CD the band contributes the song “Fingers in My Eye”. It is a live version of the track recorded sometime between 1994 and 1996 at RTR in the smallest room in the radio station at 8:30 am.
In 2002 the song “Finger in My Eyes” would see a new life on the compilation CD “Double Figures” released by Chapter Music (Chapter 44). Later, in 2009, I notice that the song “Optimistic” was released on a reissue of a compilation called “Asparagus Milkshake”. This is a CDR but the original release was a tape from 1994 on Chapter Music (Chapter 4) that accompanied the fanzine “Salty and Delicious”.
Lastly in 2012 Chapter released “20 Big One 1992-2012”, which is. vinyl compilation that had the track “Swaddling”.
I keep googling and find something interesting. In 1995, when all of them were around 21 or 22, that’s when they moved to Melbourne. Another interesting detail is that the band before being called Molasses played their first couple of gigs under the name Jamboree.
And here is a super cool find. Molasses playing live!! I think the song is called “Vroom” and is being played at a benefit gig for the radio programme Drivetime from RTR. The gig happened at the old Myers Warehouse in East Perth. Amazing!!!
Let me know if you have any more details about them!
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Listen
Molasses – Moving
