As eighties pop got more and more synthetic, certain bands started bucking the trend to embrace an archaically organic aesthetic. Some of these artists took the retro move even further than Paisley Underground groups like The Three O’Clock and The Dream Syndicate, who borrowed sounds from the sixties without pretending to actually hail from the trippiest decade. The Damned and XTC both devised faux persona as Naz Nomad and the Nightmares and Dukes of Stratosphear, respectively, to fool record collectors into believing they were long-lost psych bands of two decades earlier.
Perhaps Australia’s Tyrnaround didn’t go quite that far, but
they certainly left no detail of their music and persona un-colored by their
favorite era. They dressed and wore their hair like The Byrds. Like Syd
Barrett’s Pink Floyd, they played loopy fuzz rock and layered on the backward
tapes while celebrating eccentric individuals and the joys of tripping. Like
both of those bands, Tyrnaround was very groovy.
Now Guerssen Records is placing that grooviness back in the
grooves with an expanded vinyl reissue of Tyrnaround’s 1986 E.P. Colour Your Mind. The “Expanded Mind
Edition” of that disc jumbles its original four tracks with five bonus tracks that
include both sides of their “Want a Rhyme” b/w “Hello or Goodbye” and “Uncle
Sydney” b/w “Uncle Jack” singles, as well as the magnificent compilation track
“Paragon-Smythe” (complete with a warped advert for a Who Sell Out-esque coda). Audio and packaging are both superb. A
download card affords an additional half-dozen bonuses of demos and live tracks.
These include covers of “Pictures of Matchstick Men”, “Astronomy Domine”, and “Theme
from Dr. Who”, placing as bold a line under Tyrnaround’s modus operandi as that
photo of them posing with Beatles, Monkees, and Cream discs on the back cover
of Colour Your Mind: Expanded Mind Edition.
