Review: Tyrnaround's 'Colour Your Mind: Expanded Mind Edition'

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.

Review: 'The Hidden World Revealed ' by The Three O'Clock

When MTV hit in the early eighties, and all you needed was a single digit to finger a Casio-keyboard and an industrial-sized can of Aquanet to become a superstar, a small sect of L.A. bands rejected the latest styles to worship at the pointy boots of The Beatles, The Byrds, and Syd Barrett. Michael Quercio gave this movement a name: the Paisely Underground. His band, The Three O’Clock, helped define the sound with other groups such as The Rain Parade, The Dream Syndicate, and the most successful one of the lot, The Bangles.

What set these bands apart from the pseudo-psychedelics of groups such as The Dukes of Stratosphear (aka: XTC in disguise) and Naz Nomad and the Nightmares (aka: The Damned in disguise) is that they didn’t strive for utter authenticity. Their embracing of synthesizers and up-to-the-minute production values resulted in a sound that can be instantly placed in the eighties even as it pays reverent tribute to the sixties. That totally groovy sound is represented among the tracks familiar and otherwise on The Hidden World Revealed, Omnivore Recordings’ new Three O’Clock anthology.

Newbies will get turned on by infectious bubblegum classics such as “With a Cantaloupe Girlfriend,” “Jet Fighter,” and “All in Good Time,” with its tinkling, early-Rick Wright-style piano fills. The faithful will dig into the oddities, such as a B-side version of the Latin hymn “Regina Cæli” that begins like a meditative Pet Sounds homage before exploding into a Hurdy Gurdy Man wall of sound. A demo of “Jennifer Only,” cut when The Three O’Clock were still called The Salvation Army, sounds like a bit of raging pre-punk noise piped in from Liverpool’s Cavern Club circa 1962. Despite some overtly eighties-synthesizer arches, “A Day in Erotica,” presented in an alternate version, is the purest psychedelia in the collection, with its warped mid-section sound collage. As a starting point into the strange world of The Three O’Clock—where everything always sounds slightly sped-up and romantic partnerships with fresh fruit are not out of the question— The Hidden World Revealed does a fine job. The demos, alternate versions, and rare single sides make it valuable to those who’ve already ventured down into the Paisley Underground.