Tangled Shoelaces – “Oceans Away”

Chapter Music dig back into the Aussie archives to issue the works of young upstarts Tangled Shoelaces. The band was all of 10-14 when they recorded the songs on Turn My Dial – The M Squared Recordings and more, 1981-84, and under 18 by the time they broke up, but you’d hardly know it by the sounds of “Oceans Away.” A slightly faded popper that’s floating on restrained jangles and elegiac keys, the song is an ode to emotional loneliness. Over the top of a scotch-tape snap of drums, the song divorces itself from quite a few of the indie-pop camps around at the time, feeling neither as twee as some of its English counterparts, nor as disjointed as many of their Aussie and Kiwi peers. The romanticism of the cut makes it stick, though and the band’s collected works paint a band that was much more multi-dimensional than their one seven-inch release would let on. The collection arrives on April 23rd, and from the sounds already floating out, it feels like an immediate pickup.

Check out the original Super 8 footage of the band shot at the time, filming what the band’s Stephen Mackerras calls, “joyfully spinning about, on a boat, in Moreton Bay, singing about being neglected.”



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