What I didn’t know back then was that ‘Into Your Arms’ was written by the band’s Ozzie bass player Nic Dalton and his sometime girlfriend Robyn St Claire. Nic Dalton also had his own Sydney record label, called Half A Cow. Among many great bands, it harboured Smudge, which was fronted by a lanky type singer-songwriter Tom Morgan. When the equally lanky type singer-songwriter Evan Dando and Tom Morgan met, an almost instantaneous golden songwriting partnership came to being, resulting in Morgan contributing to about half the songs on The Lemonheads’ two most successful records and eventually giving the band the stylistic consistency and direction they so desperately needed to break through.
Fast forward to September 2011 when Lou Barlow’s Sebadoh came back to Sydney. Smudge were invited to open and moshcam.com recorded their whole show. Admittedly, watching this footage made me realize how much they stand out against temporary bands in terms of sloppiness. As a longtime fan I also could have done less with hearing mediocre renditions of all but mediocre songs. But nearing the end of the set their new(ish) song ‘Mess With The Bull’ finally gave me crystal clear confirmation that my ongoing teenage crush on this band was completely justified. Not just because they had the coolest drummer chick in the world. Not just because they came from a sunshine paradise populated by people speaking the funniest sounding English accent in the world. But because when I hear this new song in all its freshness I realize that their chief songwriter is one of those few people that actually sets the virtual bar whenever I myself am trying desperately hard to add melody, not too obvious chord progressions and the odd killer line together. And whenever I see such a thing happen on stage, who am I to judge about sloppiness, overly clean guitars and mediocre renditions?
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