So, it’s taken me a while. I can quote Julian Cope’s solo era discography with some force to non believers but the Teardrops have always eluded my eardrums. Why? I just never really dug what they did, beyond that greatest hit.
It’s not as if their music or the era from where they came didn’t interest me. On paper, they’re my perfect influence. In my teens and early twenties I was massively into other artists from the ‘alt 80s’ stable. But for some reason the Teardrops never did it for me. It sounded like they were an Associates knockoff to my philistine ears. When I began my major Cope trip a few years ago I just didn’t understand the band to be what Cope and others purported them to be. I couldn’t hear the psychedelia. Just 80s synth and I was kind of out of that 80s mindset and was past that. As well as pouring over Cope-influenced stuff like the Krautrock and black metal, I was deep down into post-punk and ‘slap-dash-for-no-cash’ DIY all-female records and the like. You might as well have filed Kilimanjaro with Rio or any of the Spandau Ballet back catalogue. I thought they lacked the avante garde weirdness. And in pictures at the time, arguably Cope looks like the only one who looked like a bone a fide rock star.
Never before am I happier to be proved wrong. The pure, thumping awesomeness that is Ha Ha I’m Drowning stirs me. And what follows is amazing. The unadulterated musicality of the Teardrops’ debut is very special indeed - once their thick veneer is scratched off.
What did it? The Cope’s Notes release. Listening to the dub mix of Bouncing Babies made me realise there was far more to it than I ever previously dared think. Wow. Since then I can never go back.
And the Kilimanjaro-era b-sides - just wow!! Strange House in the Snow is bloody brilliance.
Not quite got Wilder yet but there’s some good times ahead
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