The Spliffs You Know What They’ll Say EP reissue
Australia in the ’80s was a hotbed of garage rock and power pop, and North Queensland’s SPLIFFS occupied a minor space in that scene, opening up for such heavy-hitters as the SAINTS and HOODOO GURUS. They released their debut single in 1986 (reissued here for the first time by Sweden’s One Way Ticket Records), and by 1988, they were done. There’s nothing as immediately transcendent as “I Want You Back” on this record, but the three songs here are perfectly adequate examples of mid-tempo ’60s-as-filtered-through-the-’80s power pop. Sprightly and upbeat, with genre-typical adenoidal vocals and the kind of unpolished production that always makes this style of music more appealing to me anyway. I won’t deny this has a certain charm, but it’s not something I can see myself returning to often.