Sunday 15 April 2012

Globes - The Girl With The Smiling Hair 7" Cordial Factory 13073, 1981

Accidents will happen. The powerpop/Oz rock crossovers we've featured before, Inserts and The Word, were almost certainly aware of classic punk-pop. That is, they've come from the punk/powerpop side of the equation and added Oz rock: the Inserts via an appreciation for hard rock (particularly Judas Priest); The Word probably via semi-major label production.

Today we head to Newcastle for another entry in this stylistic cross over genre. The Globes lasted for an eventful two years from 1980 to 1982 and recorded just this one 7". While a pretty damn good powerpop song, this record feels like it's more firmly rooted in Oz rock. A cursory look at the band's history sees them simply thrilled to have been associated with Oz rock royalty, and nary a mention of anything punk, punk-pop or powerpop. Hence the neat melodicism of the A side of their single, very distantly reminiscent of Noise Annoys by the Buzzcocks, has to be deemed an accident.

Having said that there's a bunch of tricks from the powerpop songwriters' handbook on show: a nice riff, soaring backing vocals, propulsive rhythm section, a textbook truck driver's gear change at the end and the aforementioned melody. So, we're prepared to be told we're wrong but if forced to take the stand we'll present the video below as first piece of evidence - more classic Oz rock signifiers than you can poke a stick at, football jerseys and chicken head neck movements foremost among them.

The Girl With The Smiling Hair [Download]


2 comments:

bristolboy said...

powerpop / pop rock - whatever!! to these ears it's a pretty damn fine tune - so thanks for the chance to hear it!

Grant said...

Hi Wallaby,

Is there any chance we could get a re-post of this song, please? :)

Kind regards,
Grant from a fellow blog (top100singles)