Hell's Belles

Vintage sounds, dusty grooves, and 21st-century freaks.

Melbourne, Australia band Magic Silver White’s cosmic synth sound is a glorious mashup of Broadcast and Stereolab with Silver Apples and Joy Division.

HEART:
Over Under by Magic Silver White

Not much else out there that I can see, but you can buy another track on their bandcamp page for one Aussie dolla.

Palladium by Liz Brady is the embodiment of so many brilliant musical anomalies: French 60s girlpop (yé yé, if you want to put a genre name to it), covers (done in a language other than English: bonus!), and frat rock.  It’s got riffs, fuzz, and Liz’s rapid-fire vocals over a wail of teenybopper crowd hysteria.  How can anyone not adore this?

Liz is often mistakenly credited as a French-Canadian yé yé girl, presumably due to her later success with RCA act Les Scarabées. Her career actually began in France, where despite a string of fantastic EPs and extensive gigs, promotional and TV appearances in France, Belgium and Switzerland, she never really quite took off.  Her record label, Pathé, certainly tried every marketing trick in the book to make her a commercial success (a book that the majors still seem to be following today, meow).  In order to fit her into the French yé yé scene her record label decided that her ancestry was a bit too confusing for  the French audiences and opted to cash in on London Carnaby Street cool instead. Apparently being born in Egypt to a French father and Italian/Greek mother and raised in the then-British colonial outpost Kenya wasn’t quite interesting enough.  Since Liz spoke French with a British accent (acquired from her teenage upbringing in Kenya) her label changed her name from Raymonde Fleurat, fabricated a British background and shaved 6 years off her age (24) for good measure.

Ever the indie girl, Liz chose to cover an obscure track by an obscure Texan garage rock band for her 3rd French EP – Palladium, a reworking of The Hip by Tuesday’s Hells Belles stars, The Sparkles. Palladium was originally released in France in Feb 1966, and is comped on the Swinging Mademoiselles series (both bootleg and legit versions) and on the now OOP Ultra Chicks Series.

Liz often rewrote the lyrics to her covers, but as I don’t speak French, I can’t tell if that’s the case with Palladium.  Here’s both versions.  Maybe one of my French-speaking friends can shed some light?
Liz Brady – Palladium by hells-belles

The Sparkles – The Hip by hells-belles

Liz Brady – Palladium | The Sparkles – The Hip

[Liz Brady - buy]

Thanks to Ready Steady Girls for the extensive Liz Brady bio.

Various house moves and the general stingy sizes of any affordable flats within the M25 have pretty much decimated my vinyl collection, so my quest to replace my favourite tunes on vinyl continues.  This time round I’ve been going for  45s rather than albums.  Not the most economical way to go about it, but a hell of a lot easier to carry.  So rock and roll.

I’ve always loved “The Magic Touch” by The Bobby Fuller Four (him of “I Fought The Law” fame) but this stripped-down cover by Melba Moore just kills it.  I always get that eye-tingling prickle of happy tears when the chorus kicks in.  Then again, I cry when I hear “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys, so make of that what you will.

I just got this 45 this week (reissue) and am looking forward to playing it out next weekend on vinyl for the first time.  It always seems to get some bums shaking on the dancefloor at the end of the early-doors part of the evening, even amongst the “play something we know the words to” types.

Melba Moore – The Magic Touch by hells-belles

The Magic Touch

[buy]

One of my favourite new-bands-that-sound-like-old-bands: