Tangled Shoelaces

The equally experimental and poppy post-punk sounds of the Australian band Tangled Shoelaces weren't heard by many people during their short career, which spanned the first half of the 1980s. The teenaged group recorded many songs that mixed the anything-goes artiness of bands like the <a href="spotify:artist:1FGzeqDPTLZwfbfxpmPAZn">Swell Maps</a> with the tuneful weirdness of <a href="spotify:artist:4MlLVFHiA4e7BU7vQ4r5Lh">the Television Personalities</a>, but only a handful were ever released at the time. <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Chapter+Music%22">Chapter Music</a> remedied that injustice when they issued the band's complete catalog in 2021 under the title Turn My Dial: M Squared Recordings & More, 1981-1984.

Formed in the Capalaba, a small suburb of Brisbane, the band was influenced by a wide range of music, notably the punk and post-punk sounds they heard on their local community radio station 4ZZZ. When they took up their instruments -- which they were still learning how to play -- the kids decided to forgo the cover route in favor of writing their own songs. At 14, Stephen Mackerras was the guitarist and chief songwriter, his ten-year-old brother Martin took up the bass, his sister Lucy, 11, handled keys and vocals (and later contributed to the songwriting), while family friend Leigh Nelson played drums. Once they had a couple songs worked out, they headed to a studio and recorded "Turn My Dial" and "Fred's Cave," a couple of very off-kilter art pop songs built around the innocent vocals, ramshackle playing, and surprising bits like Baroque synth solos. One of their teachers got wind of the project and decided to help them do some recording. They cut four songs at their school, using the teacher's recording gear. Both sessions took place in 1981 and the band was happy enough with the results to send a demo tape to the Sydney post-punk label <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22M+Squared%22">M Squared</a>. Soon after hearing the tape, the bosses at the label offered them a chance to record, and they ended up making numerous bus trips to Sydney between 1982 and 1984, reveling in the experience and honing their skills each time. The first session resulted in the track "World," that earned the group some favorable press when it landed in the 12th volume of the popular Fast Forward tape magazine. Other songs reflected their burgeoning interests in more traditional synth pop, cut-up dance music à la My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and psychedelic pop. <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22M+Squared%22">M Squared</a> readied a five-song EP, Falling Objects, for release in 1983, but thanks to the label's imminent demise, they self-released it instead. The EP earned them some positive press coverage and even crept onto the independent charts for a short time. They had been playing live all along when they could, but around this time they earned a memorable opening slot with the <a href="spotify:artist:30U8fYtiNpeA5KH6H87QUV">Dead Kennedys</a>.

Back home in Brisbane they became more enmeshed in the local music scene. They released a tape on Cubbyhouse Records titled In the Land of the Lollypop Men which is made up of early recordings, and contributed two songs to a compilation of local bands called What We Did on Our Holidays. The band continued recording in Sydney during 1984, added a live member (Tim O'Shea) on tape machines, and played numerous shows around Brisbane. That same year, the band fell apart as Stephen began making music with friends under the name Wonderous Fair, while Lucy turned her focus to schooling. Martin joined the lineup of Wonderous Fair and Nelson played drums with the band Pale before forming the swing band Jimmy Styles & Easy Company. The Tangled Shoelaces recordings languished as a fond memory of the handful who heard them at the time until <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Chapter+Music%22">Chapter Music</a> reissued their entire output in 2021. Titled Turn My Dial: M Squared Recordings & More, 1981-1984, the collection is a glimpse of a band who were firmly in the center of the experimental pop of their era, while also sounding decades ahead of their time. ~ Tim Sendra, Rovi