On 28 June 2006 the surviving members of The Triffids – Rob McComb, Alsy MacDonald, Martyn Casey, Jill Birt and Graham Lee intend to make a special visit to London to fix a commemorative plague to the wall of a Warehouse next to a pretty Dickensian office building in the EC1 area of London in recognition of the recording of The Triffid’s quietly monumental release, ‘Born Sandy Devotional’ in August 1986. The gesture is made all the more poignant because it’s the 1000 plus fans that make up the Triffid’s fan club that clubbed together to buy the plague in the first place. Not some industry mogul, not some joyriding politician but the collective respect of the last devotional few.
Why did they bother? Well that’s precisely what I thought. I hadn’t heard the album the first time around and the very name the Triffids, to my memory at least, seemed to have got sucked into the vortex and had gone swirling down the waste pipe of other Australian dreams like The Go Betweens and The Birthday Party. There’s even been those who have dismissed the late Dave McComb as a Nick Cave potboiler, a pale imitation of gothic-chic, but in the same breath they’re just as likely to dismiss the Arctic Monkeys as the last dying breath of the Libertines without first understanding the complex of influences and genetics that gave rise to both. Beyond the well-oiled baritone of McComb’s empathic baritone, who could truly equate the hazy, resounding romance of tracks like ‘The Seabirds’, ‘Estuary Bed’ and ‘Wide Open Road’ with the bitter violence of the Party’s deathrock and Cave’s verbose murder balladry? Needless to say that both bands shared the same geographical coordinates, but that doesn’t mean to say they shared the same route map. The sweeping panorama of McComb’s poetry is totally at odds with the collapsing introspection of Cave. This is happy music, hopeful music, music on the surf of a tide that rolls back into the ocean and carries on rolling to infinitude. A big sound made with big ideas performed on big instruments and accompanied by big drums and big voices. More wave of energy than wall of sound but it certainly nods in Spector’s direction. Joy Division, Associates, The Waterboys, Echo & The Bunnymen, even James and the Blue Aeroplanes perhaps provide a tidier frame of reference; it’s that joyful, it’s that ecstatic. Sure, ‘Life Of Crime’, ‘Lonely Bridge’ and ‘Tarrilup Bridge’ hold a mirror-up to the same tragic folklore and outlaw narratives perfected by Cave’s ‘Murder Ballads’ but it’s also of it’s period. One look at what was on at the flicks will tell you this: ‘The Lost Boys’, ‘Near Dark’, ‘Young Guns’, ‘Bad Boys’, ‘At Close Range’. The only thing between you, the devil and the deep blue sea in 1986 was a smoking Smith & Wesson. And yet the optimism of ‘Born Sandy..’ is explained equally well by the period’s feel-good counter culture; ‘Electric Dreams’, ‘Field Of Dreams’, ‘Footloose’, ‘Some Kind Of Wonderful’ – all produced in the mid to late eighties and all bearing their hearts on the sleeve like McComb. Where ‘Howard The Duck’, ‘Spaceballs’, and ‘My Mom’s a Werewolf’ come into all this is still unclear, however, as they certainly fail to explain the bruised, tender grandiosity of ‘Personal Property’ or the kitchen-sink poetics of ‘Tender Is The Night’. No siree..
Well that’s it. McComb died in 1992 through a combination of heroin addiction, alcoholism, a car crash and a broken heart and although Domino Records are easing the loss by remastering and re-releasing the entire Triffids back-catalogue, there are few moments that are as likely to be as sweet as this. And whilst the additional 9 bonus tracks on this release do little to dispell the accusations of Nick Cave substitutes they certainly provide a clearer insight into the mind of his beautiful, if occasionally lapsed, genius.