Ah, Twall Dwarfs. A fifty six track compilation, just out on Merge Records from an obscure New Zealand duo who emerged in the early Eighties and quickly found their spiritual home on Flying Nun with The Clean, The Chills, The Verlaines and many other notables.
A record label and a set of bands that proved to have had far more influence and praise than sales. A scene that genuinely deserves the label seminal. The kind of thing that middle aged music obsessives, well actually middle aged male music obsessives, stand and froth at the mouth to in record shops.
The most interesting thing about listening to Unravelled 1981 - 2002, is not really about the influences that led them to make these extraordinary records but how ahead of their time the band themselves were. The first thing that struck me listening to the first few songs was that this was Neutral Milk Hotel before Neutral Milk Hotel.
Neutral Milk Hotel, that extraordinary cult. The band whose acclaimed masterpiece In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is listed as the 15th greatest album ever made on the Best Ever Albums list. That's one place above Nevermind.
I wonder if Jeff Magnum ever listened to Twall Dwarfs. I could research it but there's no real need. Listening to Unravelled I suspect he did. Never mind indeed. I was never as swept away by In The Aeroplane Over The Sea as countless other indie obscurists have been (I confess of course to being one myself), but I am swept away by this.
Only seven tracks in and I'm already bowled over frankly. True outsider music in every respect. Kiwi heirs to the investigative spirit and bravery of Syd Barrett, Roky Eriksson, Marc Bolan and Alan Vega before them. Already my re-release of the year and it's only August.
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