Sand Pebbles
By Bruce Laird

The back-story of the Sand Pebbles is as colourful as the band’s music. Hanging out with Jeff Bridges in Los Angeles, pulling down screamers at the MCG, wandering through the forests with a mind full of fly agaric mushrooms, chewing the fat with surviving members of the Small Faces, writing scripts for television soap operas, even attending school with the enfant terrible of Internet libertarianism, Julian Assange - it all contributes to the total aesthetic experience that is the Sand Pebbles. Like a novel you can’t put down, there always seems to be another intriguing page in the Sand Pebbles story to explore. 

It’s been two years since the last Sand Pebbles record, the A Thousand Wild Flowers compilation released at the instigation of Galaxie 500 and Luna protagonist Dean Wareham, and three years since the last Sand Pebbles studio album, Ceduna. In that time, the Sand Pebbles have found a new drummer, swapped jobs, given up vices and added to the members’ progeny. “I’ve had two kids, written a novel, gone through a lot of emotions … a lot of stuff’s happened,” bass player Chris Hollow says.

Having relocated to a surf beach near Ceduna on the west coast of South Australia for the band’s previous record, the Sand Pebbles opted for a more conventional location for Dark Magic. “Most of it came about through two sessions we did at Atlantis,” guitarist Ben Michael says. “It’s a really beautiful studio - maybe not to look at, but it’s got beautiful old analogue equipment.”

For most of the band, recording in a larger studio wasn’t particularly a significant event. “We’ve recorded on digital before, but I don’t think we’ve recorded to tape,” observes Hollow. “None of us were nervous in the big studio at the time, but [drummer] Wesley [Holland] – who was 19 at the time – was shitting himself!” Hollow says. “Funnily enough, the first song we did was Blue Eyes in Black and White, and he was really nervous on that song because it was the first time he’d recorded in a studio, but on the last song, Spring Time, he was really loose - but on the record, Spring Time is the first song, and Blue Eyes is the last,” Hollow says.

Sand Pebbles albums have a tendency to sound like composite pieces, rather than a disparate collection of songs, and Dark Magic is no exception. According to the band, however, any thematic musical consistency is subconscious at best.  “We did the launch for the last album at the Toff a couple of years ago, and two of the songs on the new album are on that record, so we’ve had some of the songs for a while,” Michael says. “We had about five or six songs written going into the first session, and when you’ve got five or songs written, it’s time to think ‘time to start’, and the rest will take care of itself,” says Hollow.

The title of the album is taken from a track on the record, though could equally have been chosen as a statement on the music itself - not that Michael and Hollow necessarily agree. “Quite a few of the songs have a dark edge,” muses Michael. “And there’s quite a bit of magic on there,” adds Hollow. “I suppose we didn’t really name the album because of a theme or anything. There’s more a touch of folk on the record, so maybe it picks up on that.”

What isn’t subconscious is the demographic spread of the members of the Sand Pebbles’ membership. With the arrival of Holland on drums, it was quickly realised that the Sand Pebbles had members born in the 50s (Andrew Tanner), 60s (Ben Michael), 70s (Chris Hollow), 80s (Tor Larsen) and 90s (Holland). “I can say for me that because there’s all these other responsibilities, music is a really important part of my life - probably even more so,” Michael says. “And everyone’s at a completely different stage in their life, which I think is a really good thing,”

Holland’s ‘passion and drive’ led the band to benefiting from the mixing services of Tim Holmes (Death In Vegas) and Will Caruthers (Spaceman 3, Spiritualized), when he found himself with the opportunity to play both some Sand Pebbles music, which found immediate favour. “That was Wes’ great contribution to the record, getting those guys to do the mixes - and the mixes they came up with were fantastic, just found something we wouldn’t have,” Hollow says.

The contribution from Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips cements the relationship between the duo and the Sand Pebbles that began a few years ago when Hollow sent them a copy of the band’s second record, Ghost Transmissions.  So when Wareham agreed to bring his Galaxie 500 celebratory tour to Australia, the Sand Pebbles was his first choice as support band. “He’s been involved for a couple of years, and he’s never let us down,” Hollow says. “We’re big Galaxie 500 and Luna fans, and he released those records when that sound wasn’t in vogue. And you go back and listen to them now, and they still hold up just as well.”

It was via a posting on Wareham’s blog last year that the latest curious Sand Pebbles fact leaked out when Wareham revealed that Hollow had attended the same high school as Julian Assange. “Julian and I are the same age, were in the same class,” Hollow explains. “He was just as mysterious and enigmatic then. He was big into the Lord of the Rings. Whenever he felt put upon by other students he would yell, ‘Philistines! You’re all Philistines!’ It made it doubly funny having to go to the school library to look up what it meant,” Hollow laughs.

Sand Pebbles launch their new album at the Northcote Social Club on Saturday September 24. Dark Magic is out now through Dot Dash/Remote Control.

Sand Pebbles
Dark Magic
Dot Dash/Remote Control

 In another era – especially one dating back about 40 years – the Sand Pebbles would have embarked on a career path toward legendary, almost mythical status.  Inspired by the idealism of the time, and fuelled by the inebriates of the moment, they would have released two and a half albums of mesmerising psychedelia, before imploding under the weight of egos, drugs and a music industry unable to marry artistic quality with commercial imperative. 

Condemned to Greil Marcus’s dustbin of history, the band would remain unknown to all but a select few, its members in various states of artistic despair, emotional dysfunctional and physical disrepair, tracked down by a few obsessive fans, playing the odd reunion show of variable quality before sliding back into cult obscurity.

Thankfully, the Sand Pebbles are more than an intriguing chapter in a Richie Unterberger obscure musicological treatise; the Sand Pebbles are now, they’re happening and they’re what the kids should be listening to.  Dark Magic is the Sand Pebbles’ fifth album, and picks up where the band’s previous album, Ceduna, left off.

If Ceduna took the Sand Pebbles on a journey to the arid edge of the Grateful Dead’s wandering rock’n’roll experience, on Dark Magic the Sand Pebbles pull up a chair around a psychedelic-folk fire graced by the spirits of The Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash.    

At their spiritual heart, The Sand Pebbles are a pop band: Spring Time (Who Hasn’t Lost Their Head) is an exercise in spiritual beauty, River Sparkle glistens like the early morning sun and Dark Magic awakens the dawn with religious reverence.  On Occupied Europe (Take Me Across the Water) the Sand Pebbles have catapulted back – or forward, depending on your point of view – to 1984 and the sharp-edge landscape of English post-punk.  Close your eyes, turn your head and it’s 1970 all over again, as Another Way to Love takes you to end of one decade, and into another that promises to rectify lost idealism.

And then there’s the triumvirate of acoustic tracks: Long, Long Ago, One of These Mornings and Blue Eyes in Black and White, each brimming with enthusiasm and hope for a world that can only be if humanity faces up to its contradictions, limitations and imperfections.  This is the Sand Pebbles at their beautiful best.  Thank the deity of your choice for the Sand Pebbles.

Bruce Laird

In a word: kinetic
If you like this, you’ll like The Buffalo Springfield
Key track: Because I Could

Ceduna

(Sensory Projects)

Just about every middle class kid with a Lonely Planet guide, a thesaurus of hackneyed eastern philosophical musings and a pair of a designer hessian pants has claimed to have had a transcendental moment. Transcendental, in this context, is often used synonymously (but erroneously) with enlightening. A genuine transcendental moment is said to occur when the witness achieves a higher plane of consciousness, possibly due to the surrounding cultural and environmental conditions, and most likely with the aid of some mind altering substance of valuable potency. But when the drugs wear off, so usually does the moment, and, unless sent spiralling into the waiting arms of a cult with a penchant for liberal sexual activities and micro-managed financial practices, the witness is left with little more than a hazy memory of something that seemed more enjoyable than mundane, everyday existence.

There are plenty of transcendental musical moments to be had without embarking on a journey of self-discovery. Indeed, the liner credits to the new Sand Pebbles record, Ceduna, convey the band’s thanks “to everyone who transcendental with us”. The Sand Pebbles understand the power of a transcendental, psychedelic experience – not in the sense of bright ink blots, purple granny glasses and festering Grateful Dead t-shirts, but in the sense of a moment when you can close your eyes, listen to the music and wait for it to interact with your senses and take you to a different cognitive place. Sure, you don’t stay there forever – but if it was perennial, it’d never be any fun going there.

Ceduna was recorded proximate to the town of the same name, located on the south-eastern coast fringe of South Australia, referred to popularly as the Great Australian Bight. As an artistic statement, Ceduna is a product of its geographical environment. It’s sparse, remote and laconic, an album that you can listen to anywhere, anytime, and feel just that little bit more relaxed, a bit more aware and a helluva lot more in touch. The colours of the album are immediately recounted and illustrated with the opening track Red, orange, purple and blue – it’s bright, but a bit dark on the inside, light but really deep, man, if only you know where to look. Wild Season, in contrast, is a celebration of surf, sand and the beauty of the pop song, played out eight miles high into the psychedelic musical atmosphere. The perfectly crafted harmonies that characterise Short term memory loss are as compelling as David Crosby’s charismatic grin after imbibing some of LA’s finest mescaline (later on, Tina Louise recounts tales of acid fuelled juvenile pranks that would amuse Crosby’s drug-battered brain). The literary inspiration of Tennessee runs a distant second to the haunting, beach bummed television feel of the tune itself and Purple Flower is a love song that gives folk a sparkling mauve tinge. And then there’s the intergalactic brilliance of Future Proofed, a song that both typifies and contradicts western society’s inherently flawed quest to protect itself against the perils of the future, without acknowledging that we’re all only living in the moment, and it’s only this moment that we can deal with.

In Silver Comet the Sand Pebbles take a sharp left back down the glistening, spaced out, surf pop that only few bands even comprehend the existence of, before the final song, Scenic Railway, unrolls slowly into a lazy fifteen minute journey out of the haze, and back into what passes for normality. Like the early morning recovery session with a couple of cigar sized doobies, things stumble back into reality after the wild night spent in wild psychedelic heaven.

And while the Sand Pebbles’ journey is at an end, and the transcendental moments are over, you can’t help but feel you’re all the better for it. Ceduna doesn’t solve world poverty, re-plant old growth rainforests, bring peace to the Middle East, or even eradicate the influence of the mind-numbingly moronic public relations industry from our daily existence. But it does give you plenty of moments that transcend all that shit – and that’s what quality psychedelic music should do.

PATRICK EMERY