The Triffids

David McComb – lead vocals, guitar
Graham Lee – pedal and lap steel, guitar, vocals
Rob McComb – guitar, violin, vocals
Jill Birt – keyboards, vocals
Martyn P Casey – bass guitar
Alsy MacDonald – drums, percussion, vocals

Like so many great bands of the eighties, The Triffids first stirred in the white-hot afterburn of punk, inspired by a rare sighting of the Sex Pistols on Australian television. David McComb (guitar, vocals) and Alsy MacDonald (drums) formed Dalsy in a Perth bedroom late in 1976. The schoolboy capers that ensued slowly but inexorably turned serious. There were numerous early name, direction and line-up changes, with plenty of gigs and low-budget recordings along the way – they recorded the best part of a hundred songs to cassette, selling them in small batches at local record stores – before they released their debut single on vinyl in 1981.

The first settled line up of The Triffids emerged soon after the band moved to Sydney in 1982. McComb and MacDonald were augmented by David’s older brother Rob (guitar and violin), Martyn Casey (bass) and Jill Birt (keyboards). Late in 1983 they started work on their first studio album, ‘Treeless Plain’, named after the vast and barren stretch of southern central Australia – the Nullarbor – that they were so used to driving across. They continued to play around Australia, moving frequently between Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, and recorded the mini-album ‘Raining Pleasure’ in April 1984.

Though both albums met with critical acclaim locally, the Australian music scene was still largely fixated on the chugaluga pub rock that punk had swept aside in the UK. The Triffids’ passionate but small fan base was in no danger of sustaining their ambitions – David McComb’s songwriting was developing too quickly – and they moved to London in September 1984. On one level their aim was simply to survive until their return tickets had to be used, some three months later; on another, it was to secure a major label record deal. But before they left for the UK they had one small piece of business to attend to: minus Jill Birt, they gathered as Lawson Square Infirmary, with James Patterson (guitar) and Graham Lee (dobro), to record a secret one-off session in the middle of the night at Sydney Opera House.

Once in London their incendiary live shows quickly brought them to the attention of the music press and John Peel. Within a few weeks they recorded their first Peel session. By January they were on the front cover of the NME, which posed the question: “1985 – The Year Of The Triffids?”

And in a sense – though not a commercial one – it was. Back in Australia David McComb heard that Graham Lee had just started to play pedal steel and invited him to work on the next single. Lee returned to London with the band and was a full member by the time they started work on their classic album, ‘Born Sandy Devotional’. They still hadn’t secured the record deal they craved, but eventually raised enough money to record the album anyway.

With master tapes under their arms, The Triffids then set off and did the rounds of London’s record companies. Still with no takers, they released it independently in June 1986 on Hot – the same label that had handled their earlier work. A near-unanimous flurry of gleaming reviews followed in the music press. By now the band had already recorded another album, and it was released in November 1986. The purposefully low-fi ‘In The Pines’ had been recorded over five days in a remote tin shearing shed some 400 miles south east of Perth. The band was back in Australia for a holiday; a little more was spent on alcohol than equipment hire.

More glowing reviews followed and, finally, a major label took the bait. Island signed them to a three-record deal in November 1986. ‘Calenture’ came first, with a far glossier sound than the band had ever had before, in October 1987. Sessions for ‘The Black Swan’, their most adventurous recording, started less than a year later, and what proved to be their last studio album was eventually released in April 1989.

In a shade over three years The Triffids had recorded four albums and numerous singles, toured extensively in Australia, the UK and Europe, ventured briefly to the States, and held occasional day jobs as well. A band that took it’s first impetus from punk had gradually expanded its sound to successfully include elements of rock, country, folk, rap, opera, funk and cabaret. Unsurprisingly, a degree of exhaustion and disillusionment set in: despite all the critical acclaim, The Triffids’ sales did little more than recover costs. After the last dates to promote ‘The Black Swan’, they decided to take a break.

And that, apart from a contractual obligation or two, was that. They rested, but never re-grouped. ‘Stockholm’, a collection of twelve songs that were recorded for a radio session during a European tour in May 1989 (but treated and released as a live album in July 1990), was the band’s parting shot.

David McComb founded the Blackeyed Susans and launched a solo career but died tragically in 1999; Graham Lee continued in the music industry, playing with McComb throughout his post-Triffids career and setting up a record label in Melbourne; Martyn Casey played with McComb and joined Nick Cave’s band, The Bad Seeds. MacDonald and Birt returned to Perth, married, raised a family and became a lawyer and an architect respectively. Rob McComb teaches in Melbourne.

The Domino Recording Company is in the process of re-releasing extended and remastered versions of the band’s original albums, together with a concert album, a DVD and a rarities set. June 2006 saw a brief reunion of the surviving band members for a fans’ convention in Belgium and the unveiling of a plaque in London, marking the site where Born Sandy Devotional was recorded.

Discography:

‘Treeless Plain’, November 1983
‘Raining Pleasure’, June 1984
‘Born Sandy Devotional’, June 1986
‘In The Pines’, November 1986
‘Calenture’, October 1987
‘The Black Swan’, April 1989
‘Stockholm’, July 1990