The Stems - Heads Up

As suggested by their reunion shows all over the world in 2007, Australia’s own “knights of fuzz” are back. With their “heads up” above most of the moderndaze garage beatsters who still having a thing or two to learn from the likes of The Stems, or other yet to be retired pioneering garage-punk revivalists, such as The Chesterfield Kings or The Cynics. With the main Stem, Dom Mariani, delivering the bulk of the goods, he provides us with the opening punked-up r’n’b fuzz of Leave You Way Behind, followed by an even more freaky beat of She Sees Everything, carried out on the wings of the (British) Birds. Of course, there’s a usual dose of Americanized riff-laden blasts, with the ‘Machine-powered Hellbound Train being as good an example as any.

Making the diversity of Dom’s contribution even wider, there’s the Spencer Davis Group-like blue-eyed soul organ-ization of Get To Know Me, as well as Get So Bad, a piece of powered-up classic mid’60s Merseybeat. As for the rest of The Stems, they seem to be rearing their own heads up pretty high as well, with drummer Dave Shaw delivering the slightlydelic jangle of Surround Me, this time with the American Byrds being the ones to provide the wings.

While Dom’s fellow axeman, Richard Lane (note the cool reference within the brackets, reading R.Lane!), comes up with a pretty cool pair of What’s Your Stand and Only If You Want, with the former sounding like a bunch of garage-punkers, backing the likes of such harmony-laden groups like The Cyrkle or something, while the latter is another power-chord stomper, with the power this time being supplied by ’67 Who.

Hold your mop-topped heads up everyone, ‘cause you don’t wanna miss this!

Ripped from the 2007 CD to FLAC

1.       Leave You Way Behind

2.       She Sees Everything

3.       Surround Me

4.       Undying Love

5.       What's Your Stand

6.       Hellbound Train

7.       Get To Know Me

8.       Only If You Want It

9.       Liar

10.   Get So Bad