S/D & C/D : The Wolfhounds (and Moonshake)

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It took me until this year to work my way from Moonshake and the C86 comp back to an actual Wolfhounds record, and by golly Unseen Ripples From A Pebble sounds like a CLASSIC to these ears.

So this is the thread where 80's indie afficionados tell us what's what in the wonderful and frightening world of D Callahan et al...

― Nag! Nag! Nag! (Nag! Nag! Nag!), Saturday, 23 August 2003 22:45 (9 years ago) Permalink

There isn't a bad Wolfhounds record. If you can find them, buy them.

― Andrew Frye (paul cox), Saturday, 23 August 2003 23:08 (9 years ago) Permalink

i think eva luna is my favorite record from the 90s. callahan scares you and margaret turns you on. perfect.

― keith (keithmcl), Sunday, 24 August 2003 04:20 (9 years ago) Permalink

the best Moonshake were their first two singles. wolfhounds were indeed uniformally excellent, "the essential..." being my introduction to their oeuvre

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Sunday, 24 August 2003 04:56 (9 years ago) Permalink

dave callahan is mostly unheralded isn't he? shame really, as he wrote some of the most brilliant and menacing music ever.

― keith (keithmcl), Sunday, 24 August 2003 05:14 (9 years ago) Permalink

what's he doing these days

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Sunday, 24 August 2003 05:17 (9 years ago) Permalink

last i heard he was working for an video import company.
'big good angel' is a brilliant brilliant record.

― joni, Sunday, 24 August 2003 10:20 (9 years ago) Permalink

S: cut the cake (sort of a pumped-up "feeling so strange again"), cruelty, stars on the tarmac, me. then get the compilation

― kieron, Sunday, 24 August 2003 17:06 (9 years ago) Permalink

He now has a club night/music project called the $urp!u$. There's a night this Wednesday for those in London. He's doing a solo acoustic set. His website has info/MP3s. One of the songs sounds very Eva Luna-like.

Both bands are classic.

Search: Moonshake Big Good Angel and The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow; Wolfhounds Essential, Bright & Guilty and Attitude.

Destroy: Moonshake Remixes, which I don't think he had very much to do with anyway.

― Vic Funk, Sunday, 24 August 2003 17:54 (9 years ago) Permalink

he's dropped his no guitars stand then? sound your eyes can follow was th ebeginning of the end, except for the amazing 'shadows of tall buildings'. he was pretty anti-city life.
where the rain smells dirty as exhaust,
where people have media not thoughts,
where the sun throws square shadows,
where too much means nothing to do,
with your artificial prices and fashionable fears,
you bring your city poison round here

excellent.
his voice is funny, people either love it or are immediately turned off by it but funny as it became less difficult as moonshake progressed i became less of a fan.

― keith (keithmcl), Sunday, 24 August 2003 18:18 (9 years ago) Permalink

he's dropped his no guitars stand then?

Yeah, I saw those pix of him in NYC, and couldn't believe he was playing a guitar. It seemed kinda wrong.

sound your eyes can follow was th ebeginning of the end, except for the amazing 'shadows of tall buildings'.

While I agree that "Shadows" is the highlight of the record, I do think that album was the high point of his creative output with both bands. It certainly holds up better than the Laika album that got all the positive press at the time.

― Vic Funk, Sunday, 24 August 2003 18:47 (9 years ago) Permalink

The Moonshake records w/ Margaret Fiedler are really amazing. I haven't pulled them out in a while, but they were very important for me circa 1994 and I should probably listen to them again soon. Callahan's vocals were a little hard to take at first, etc. I think that Fiedler definitely wrote the better tracks, esp. on Big Good Angel and Eva Luna with weird time signatures, Mig's killer basslines and Guy Fixsen's production. It was the perfect amalgam of MBV, dub and On The Corner-era Miles Davis without sounding like just that description. Classic, most definitely.

The "Sound Your Eyes Can Follow" has some nice cuts and the use of sampling was pretty impressive (for 1994), but after that, the records were mediocre at best.

― direct_program, Monday, 25 August 2003 00:45 (9 years ago) Permalink

sound your eyes can follow lost some of the 'it's sounding like the apocalypse here' and it all got a bit too jazzy for my tastes. i guess i am a luddite cause i missed the guitars.

― keith (keithmcl), Monday, 25 August 2003 00:53 (9 years ago) Permalink

Both the Wolfhounds and Moonshake were fantastic bands for different reasons. Wolfhounds found an excellent balance between pop melodies and the discordant stylings of such bands as Sonic Youth, The Fall, etc. "Bright and Guilty" and "Blown Away" for me, are the essential albums, however, the "Lost But Happy" compilation brought out by Cherry Red a few years ago, is the perfect introduction (it worked for me!)

Moonshake seemed, in hindsight, like a natural progression for Dave Callahan. Merging some of the Wolfhounds' chaotic sensibilities with the dubbier, sample-laden underpinnings. The contrast between his and Margaret Fiedler's songwriting styles certainly couldn't be ignored, either! Although I appreciate all their releases, I have to agree that the original line-up yielded their finest releases. "Secondhand Clothes" (single), "Eva Luna" and "Big Good Angel" are all testament to this.

Wolfhounds:
http://66.40.206.13/index2.htm

The $urp!u$ (Callahan's current project):
http://www.thesurplus.com/

Tell 'em I sent ya!

― Leigh Hawkins, Monday, 25 August 2003 05:26 (9 years ago) Permalink

8 months pass...

Howdy,

If anyone can help me out finding a copy of The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow on vinyl, please shoot an e-mail my way to unborn_umbrella_birds@yahoo.com. If you have one you want to sell, know of a dealer I can e-mail, etc. I live in the USA. I tried google, gemm, ebay -- got nuttin'. The album must be on VINYL. I'm not a stickler about mint condition or newness. A used copy in good shape is A-OK.

I hope no one minds if I post a "Want to Buy" message here.

THANKS. You're all very nice people.

― JH, Monday, 17 May 2004 02:49 (9 years ago) Permalink

Been loving the Wolfhounds for a long, long time, ever since I used to do the long trudge to school with Unseen Ripples on my Walkman, listening to those guitars tumbling around, careening into each other... All their albums have got much to recommend them for different reasons, but I think I like Attitude the best, specifically for some of the amazing mid-song gear shifts they pull off. Check out that glorious moment on 'Vertical Grave' where everyone seems to hit the detonator simultaneously and the sound suddenly expands in all directions at once.

Some *extremely* kind soul recently did me a DVD of the Wolfhounds live circa 1986. Quite messy and shambolic, and you sort of realize that Callahan's voice must have been *really* honed in the studio on those records, it even more wayward and abrasive than usual. But seeing them rip through 'Me' and the like is fantastic. Wot a wonderful band.

― NickB (NickB), Monday, 17 May 2004 07:43 (9 years ago) Permalink

9 months pass...

Okay...listen to the beginning of "LH 702" by Can (on Unlimited Edition). Now listen to Moonshake's "Girly Loop". Sample-spotting is fun!!

Question: was the Matador re-issue of Big Good Angel re-mastered? 'Cause I have the version on Too Pure, and the volume is a little low, and I was wondering if it's worth buying the Matador version. I mean, we need maximum volume for "Two Trains"!

― Ernest P. (ernestp), Saturday, 12 March 2005 01:52 (8 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...

Dunno who else has heard about this, but the Wolfhounds website has announced a reunion gig in June. Never saw them live at the time, so sorely tempted to go along, despite my reservations about the whole band reunion thing in general.

― NickB (NickB), Monday, 9 May 2005 09:48 (8 years ago) Permalink

Quoth Andy Golding: "Keep Thursday 16th June free. I'm saying nothing else at this point..."

― NickB (NickB), Monday, 9 May 2005 09:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

I love 'Blown Away', the production is tinny and scrappy though, it would seriously benefit from being remixed from the ground up.

― mzui (mzui), Monday, 9 May 2005 10:49 (8 years ago) Permalink

"Coward" and "Gravity" from that EP on Creation still remain my favorite of any of the Moonshake stuff. But all but the last album (Dirty & Divine) are pretty great.

Wolfhounds I've only recently gotten exposed to (the last year or so) but that Lost But Happy comp has seen a ton of play from me over the last 12 months.

― rentboy (rentboy), Monday, 9 May 2005 12:06 (8 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...

We went to see the Wolfhounds last night. I hadn't seen them play since November 1986. They were very good indeed.

I'd forgotten how fine their best melodies are, even in the later 'sonic architecture' stuff. They are very fine.

They seemed to be having more fun last night than they did eighteen years ago.

― Tim (Tim), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 09:30 (7 years ago) Permalink

Did they play Rite Of Passage and Skyscraper?

― mzui (mzui), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 10:15 (7 years ago) Permalink

Skyscraper certainly. As for Rite of Passage, I'm afraid I can't remember. Sorry.

Starry & I spent the tube journey to Elephant and then the bus journey to Peckham (about 50 minutes in total) hobbled by our collective inability to remember what "Rule Of Thumb" is called.

"Rule of Thumb" was a particular highlight for me.

― Tim (Tim), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 10:25 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm sad that I missed them - I was completely pooped and unable to make the trip. They never really got the appreciation they deserved at the time, and it's little recompense now, but I do hope they pulled a decent crowd in. Get any photos?

― NickB (NickB), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 10:30 (7 years ago) Permalink

No photos, sorry, though there were people there waving cameras around. Perhaps they'll end up on that website.

I was hoping that the very drunk man next to me, wobbly filming long tracts of the set with his mobile telephone, was you Nick.

― Tim (Tim), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 12:11 (7 years ago) Permalink

Ha, I wish... Drunk and wobbly sounds about right, but I was miles away!

― NickB (NickB), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 12:29 (7 years ago) Permalink

10 months pass...

The Wolfhounds and Moonshake were both fantastic. Sure there are a few songs that kind of took a left turn but, that's the fun of it all. I can't say any of them are less that great. Most make you wonder what David Callahan and, if there were any on that song, his co-composer(s) were thinking. What inspired that song?

― Amaranth, Wednesday, 3 May 2006 16:08 (7 years ago) Permalink

2 years pass...

More great Brit Pop.

Rent Act
Rite of passage

saw these truckers supporting butthole surfers or was it big black at some dump in london?

― Fer Ark, Saturday, 26 July 2008 23:12 (4 years ago) Permalink

Sorry kids - did not do them justice.Wolfhounds were s f a

― Fer Ark, Saturday, 26 July 2008 23:14 (4 years ago) Permalink

seriously flooping able

― Fer Ark, Saturday, 26 July 2008 23:15 (4 years ago) Permalink

only moonshake album ive ever heard was Eva Luna...which is killer.

― Drugs A. Money, Sunday, 27 July 2008 06:07 (4 years ago) Permalink

3 years pass...

^ had no idea but hey, looks like a new wolfhounds record is out

― Goodbye 20th Centipede (NickB), Friday, 18 May 2012 22:32 (1 year ago) Permalink

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