9/7/06: The Trilobites: Savage Mood Swing (1989)A few of our favorite blogs recently made note of
this posting on Australian rock bands with lousy names. It’s a detailed piece, so it’s sad to see The Trilobites being ignored in both the article and the comments.
Savage Mood Swing even starts with an introduction explaining
how to pronounce “Trilobites.”Savage Mood Swing is also one of the great lost albums of the ’80s. Certain types probably feel that way about many records on the rooArt label. The company released a quick flurry of Australian artists while PolyGram was distributing the label in America. The Trilobites were rooArt’s token garage act—in a time when Australia had plenty—but the band also had a steely-eyed tone worthy of their narratives.
The songs (credited to the band) are often morality plays where bad people come to worse ends. There’s also a timeless heroine in “The Girl From Mossad.” This might be the only tune in the history of rock to celebrate the sexy babes who keep Israel safe. (If we’re wrong, please contact us with more info.) The lucky narrator meets the titular agent as he’s coming off a Pan Am flight, and learns that he’s become a Chosen One himself:
The girl from Mossad said she was in town for just a day
She liked my looks, so let’s go for a drive
The girl from Mossad waited until we hit the freeway,
Then she told me that I should not really be alive
She said that I carried blueprints for their nuclear reactor
And that the PLO had tailed me since I left Jakarta…
That’s all sung, naturally enough, to some upbeat backing. We later learn that our Girl’s explaining all this while holding an Uzi on our unassuming hero. We’re not sure why the guy is calling an embassy at the end of the song, but it’s probably to find out where to send a letter of commendation.
There were enough Hoodoo Gurus fans left in '89 to get The Trilobites some college-radio play. Nothing happened for the band, though, and frontman Mike Dalton was already looking to get out of the music biz. Despite a later reunion of the original line-up,
Savage Mood Swing was pretty much the end of the Trilobites. rooArt would become a former major-label subsidiary. Everybody was getting into the hot new sound out of Seattle—or, as it’s known today, the Grand Funk Railroad revival.
Make it your own: Say what you will about Kurt Cobain, but his heritage left plenty of
Trilobites for cheap. The CD includes two bonus tracks from an EP that was released earlier—including “I Can’t Wait For Summer To End,” which was probably a real punk-rock statement for a bunch of Aussies. There’s vital early vinyl out there, too, and
a label compilation track called “All Hail The New Right.” Sadly, that one’s kind of sarcastic.
