For the purpose of this compilation, “The Moles” refers to two distinct but related projects. The first is a Sydney-based band fronted by Richard Davies that was active for a short time in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The second is the solo project Davies launched shortly after that band broke up. The first Moles brought a uniquely fraught and cinematic sensibility to the Oceanian indie pop tradition honed by bands like the Bats and the Chills. The second Moles built psychedelic chamber-pop collages whose rich arrangements seemed perpetually at odds with the inescapable sense of isolation and bareness they evoked. This comprehensive reissue collects the complete works of both Moles, reserving one LP for each incarnation’s sole album-length release and appending the rest of the first Moles’ output on CD.
Notably, this is the first time that the original sequence of the Moles’ first mini-album Untune the Sky has been preserved for a US release. (The original CD reissue on Flydaddy offered a well-sequenced hodgepodge of album and non-album tracks.) Restored to its intended sequence, Untune the Sky feels like an almost uncanny portent of the great American “lo-fi” bands that would come to prominence in the years after its release. Opener “Wires” kicks off with a persistent bagpipe drone and just-out-of-tune guitar part that would be right at home on Guided by Voices’ Alien Lanes, and its just-pre-chorus build feels like the spiritual cousin of Pavement’s classic album opener “Summer Babe”. “Bury Me Happy,” which was wisely tapped to open the prior US reissue, could be an early Clean single right down to its near-cartoonish organ tone.
The greatest differentiator between the work of the Moles and that of their contemporaries, though, is Davies himself. As a presence, there is something deeply and beguilingly inscrutable about him, a purposeful blankness that betrays an enormous amount of weight and depth behind it, and oozes both vulnerability and vitriol when it breaks and cracks. Davies’ voice rings out plainly at what sounds like the top of his comfortable range, straining over the noise of his bandmates in a kind of frustrated half-triumph that suits these songs perfectly. “This Is a Happy Garden” and “Lonely Hearts Get What They Deserve”, two wrenching standouts from the Tendrils and Paracetamol EP, find the band learning to move with the nuances of Davies’ voice, making ample room for its most stark and unnerving moments, and elevating its subtle rises and swells.
The crown jewel of the first Moles’ catalog, and of this collection generally, may very well be the title track from the band’s final EP. “What’s The New Mary Jane” is ostensibly an attempt to write the lost Beatles song of the same name, and its roundness and rumble feel like a glorious, exaggerated misremembering of that band’s sonics. Its chorus is an almost overwhelmingly indulgent crescendo of layered vocal harmonies and swelling guitar chords. A top-notch remastering job is particularly appreciated here, but it’s frustrating that so many of the Moles’ most well-produced songs were not included on the vinyl in such a comprehensive set.
In the wake of recording their very best material, the first Moles traveled to the UK, recorded a Peel session, and broke up soon after learning that their manager had run off with the 900 pound fee. Davies moved to New York and, with his former bandmates’ blessing, kept the Moles name for a solo project accompanied by a small cast of supporting players. But the most immediately striking change between projects is found in the one of the few things they share: Davies’ voice The rawness and barely-contained urgency that Davies brought to the first Moles is noticeably absent from Instinct, replaced by a clenched and hyper-controlled style that Davies would continue to explore throughout his career. In Davies’ own words, Instinct was meant to be “a Polaroid of being far away from home,” and it is an almost uncomfortably dry and claustrophobic record. At times, Davies wraps himself up so tightly that it’s hard to take much away from these songs. But on more spacious tracks like “Cars for King's Cross”, which sounds exactly like a solitary walk through the snow, Davies successfully telegraphs a very particular and exquisite type of loneliness.
In many ways, Instinct is best understood as a gestational version of the magnificent orchestral pop that Davies would go on to make with singer/songwriter/arranger Eric Matthews as Cardinal. Matthews, as with the first Moles at their best, was able to turn Davies’ hints into full-on flourishes, rendered on Cardinal’s beloved eponymous LP in glorious technicolor hi-fi. But the Moles—both Moles—were decidedly weirder projects, harder to put in any one aesthetic bucket. It is this very specificity that makes these records so profoundly meaningful to those who have been won over by their distinct but related charms.
