Throw: Dreambaby Goodbye (Failsafe/digital outlets)

Anyone who steps back and observes the changing tides of popular music would have seen the success of country music coming a little while ago. And the reasons were simple: country music tells stories, has some stock imagery and metaphors, familiar melodic patterns and allows the writer to insert their own narrative.

Those stepping back to look at that bigger picture might also have observed how – despite their conspicuous failure on charts where r'n'b and rap-cum-soul artists mostly dominate – there has been a strong undercurrent of dream-pop and shoegaze reemerging.

Those are genres of widescreen sound, slightly droning melodies (in many cases) and the excitement of powerful guitars. They can also be a massive major chord away from power pop in all its melodic and harmonic glory.

Throw were a band out of Christchurch on the Failsafe label and had spun off from Dolphin (another Failsafe band).

They didn't last long – about a year by my count – but they released one memorable album (memorably title Rememory) and they were all over before that album even appeared, as I remember it.

(It was the early Nineties and such an enjoyable period for me that things blur.)

There was apparently going to be another album Dream Baby Goodbye – clever title if you know Suicide's classic Dream Baby Dream – but it didn't seem to happen when it should have.

Their story is a little muddy (see here at the Failsafe site)

By chance while looking at Failsafe's site again Elsewhere came upon this Dreambaby Goodbye album which was the one pulled together after the band's demise by Failsafe capo and band founder Rob Mayes.

There's some gorgeously rowdy dream-pop (Jessica Don't), inventively soaring power pop-cum-drone (Freefall) and quiet-anthemic songs (Letting Go).

Softly

Had Throw carried on there's no certainty they might have “made it”, but what they left behind from their short incarnation can be quite engaging and worth discovering.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here. But as we have learned, Failsafe's own site frequently offers surprising reissues.