Sarah Records alum Even As We Speak from Sydney, Australia announce the new album Adelphi arriving this summer from Shelflife Records with a first look at the video for “Someone”. A journey beyond the television tube looking glass mixes performance pop, through the lens of effects and blended visual montages to fit the song’s introspective mind-streaming style. A song that sings out statements and strides toward the perceived big time, international main stages and glittering prizes — Mary Wyer, Julian Knowles and company echo a song of hope and wisdom from a group that has traversed lofty histories of 80s/90s underground lore (across countless imprints, i.e. Phantom Records, Voyeur Records, Big Home Productions, et al).

Even As We Speak’s “Someone” works in maudlin tones that measures the perceptions of success with glances on the roads traveled and eyes fixed on the mystery of the highways ahead. The band is seen playing across an array of televisions from various eras of various styles, setups, sizes and the like. Retaining their original style of earnest and open book expressions set to DIY pop balladry; "Someone" channel surfs a barrage of memories to stations that depict the mundane day-to-day whilst sincerely pondering the future. Even As We Speak entertain the inevitable inertia of aging along with metaphors that liken the elusive allure of life's alleged career opportunities with games of chance. Retaining their own heartfelt melancholy brand of song; EAWS further embraces their own evolution where the addition of subdued electronic percussion gently meets squalls of guitars, like the nuances in the way a wandering wave crashes upon rocks.

Even as We Speak’s own Mary Wyer and Julian Knowles shared the expansive and exclusive following reflections on the group’s history to now:

As an Australian band growing up in Australia, what many people might not realize is just how cut off Australia was from the rest of the world in those early days. We had very little contact with scenes in other countries. If you were a dedicated underground music follower, you had to rely on three month old sea freight copies of NME or Melody Maker which were sometimes carried by our import record stores — a small handful of record stores which imported independent records and non mainstream material at vastly inflated prices. So you had to save up for this stuff to see what was going on. No international radio, no nothing. You traveled and you soaked up as much as you could. Maybe that’s why Australian bands from our era were so idiosyncratic and distinctive. Not a lot of chance to copy if you tried.

This same network of stores was also the hub for the indie label scene. Shops were labels as well. They operated an efficient local distribution network around Australia but very little of it left the country. We had some good radio for underground/DIY music. In Sydney it was Triple J (called 2-JJJ back then) and they played import records. You’d often make a trip to them to drop off your latest record. You got to know the DJs and they came to your shows. You knew you were doing well if they turned up and knew your name. Julian remembers having a little radio/cassette machine permanently on pause/record so he could tape anything interesting, making a decision in the first few bars whether it was a good track to try to hunt down later on the chance you got a back announce and the name of the band as a clue. Cassettes were how things traveled person to person. They were very personal. You made mix tapes for your love interests as a courting gesture.

Bands also supplied free labor to the labels. The covers for Small Fish in a Big Machine were done by hand painting them and applying letraset in Mary’s lounge room. We also had to glue the covers together for the Phantom releases because it was cheaper — a messy affair with hot glue guns. Blue Suburban Skies had hand printed covers and was sold on consignment at these same record stores. The shops also gave paid casual jobs working behind the counter to the most fanatical record buyers who were often also in the bands on the label. They would recommend releases on the basis of what you were flicking through. It was a great scene to grow up in, despite being so cut off.

Recording back then was a major effort. It was super expensive and you could not afford any real time to do it unless you had lots of money from a record company. We never did. Julian was a self-producing musician who had assembled a modest studio under his house with an 8 track tape machine and an early computer based setup for keyboards. For Feral Pop Frenzy we used what little money we had for a very small number of commercial studio bookings — about 5 sessions? — and then we did everything else in this little damp bunker. The recording of “Anybody Anyway” in Anita’s kitchen was a decision we made based on the fact that we had no money to hire a studio by that stage and we thought it would be a cool idea to try. Having nothing makes you very inventive.

In this situation, John Peel finding our Phantom Records release was nothing short of a minor miracle. We still have no idea how he got “Goes So Slow”. We didn’t send it to him. But that led to Sarah Records contacting us and our entree into the UK indie scene in the early 90s. As all Australian bands did back then, we just up and moved and immersed ourselves in a new indie scene, which actually became more home to us over time than the Australian scene.

When in England, the scene around Sarah was quite close to what we had known in Australia, only everyone was very English and there was an English-ness to it that seemed exotic to us. Australia by that time had become increasingly US influenced by Detroit rock (which bounced back to Seattle in the early 90s via the Sydney scene) but we did not relate to US-style rock at all and we had already become fish out of water at home. We were now in the homelands of many of the bands we had been tracking down via this DIY/indie underground network, but the scene was moving very overground by those years.

Sarah gave us a great platform into the UK scene, although it had to be said that Matt and Clare had strong socialist ideals and so this new thing of CD was approached with caution, due to its expense. Little did we all know back then that this vinyl focus would be part of its enduring charm in history. We found an entirely new audience in the UK and it was an amazing time, but once again, being DIY without money made aspects of it very hard. So we wore ourselves out. The DIY-ish ness of it all was good and bad at the same time. DIY is great if you can afford it! We would have been far less exhausted had we not had to pedal the generator at the same time as making the music. So we came home and we didn’t have much to do with the indie scene for a long time.

So we were relaunched into the noughties indie scene following the book and doco projects on Sarah and our rekindling of our friendship with Stew Anderson at Emotional Response. Stew encouraged us to get back on the bike and we did, for the Black Forest. We now had more financial means and access to good studios, but far less time because of real jobs and kids. That’s ok as our audience is the same! 

Time is the currency of all good music making. So the situation is different for us, let alone the DIY or indie scene. The feel of the scene is pretty much the same, but the difference is the volume of material that is released which is massive and the fact that nothing is invisible these days or hard to find. That’s a huge change culturally but also in the way the industry of indie labels operates. The gates are open to almost anyone to release, but the difficulty now is getting anyone to notice! Physical record stores have almost disappeared and so that world we grew up in has disappeared to a large extent. The digital world has replaced it, even if people are still selling vinyl in decent quantities. We don’t need to tape from the radio any more.

For our forthcoming album Adelphi (which we love by the way!), we are working with Shelflife Records in the US and vinyl is also being done by Discos de Kirlian in Spain. Mary has known Ed from Shelflife for some years and he even played some guitar for her when she performed some EAWS songs at SF Popfest some years back. He also released a single that Mary and Anita did under the name The Singing Bush.  So there’s still plenty of personal connection going on in the scene and there are lasting friendships around the world from our participation in it for many years. It’s kind of like some loving but slightly dysfunctional family.

Even As We Speak’s new album Adelphi arrives July 24 from Shelflife Records.