I’m currently up to June 1993 in my Peel Show listening and one of my takeaways from the year so far is that the San Diego band, Trumans Water were possibly Peel’s favourite band of the period. He’d fallen hard for them the previous year and gave tracks from their album, Of Thick Tum, heavy exposure on his programmes through September 1992. I’ve missed all of that because I wasn’t involved in any shows at that time, so there was no opportunity to blog about them.
By March 1993, Peel was like an over-excited child waiting for Christmas morning. Coming into this 26/3/93 show, he had spent 3 weeks waiting for permission from Elemental Records to be able to play tracks from Trumans Water’s new album, Spasm Smash XXXOXoX Ox & Ass, only to hear nothing from the label. Tonight, he lost patience and played Speeds Exceeding and in the process introduced me to a band who when I’ve found them good, have been great; and when I’ve found them bad, have been unbearable.
Stylistically, Trumans Water put me in mind of a faster, punkier version of both The Happy Flowers and Wckr Spgt. Their songs are the sound of utter human desperation, pinning the listener against the wall and frantically screaming their sentiments into your face because if they don’t do it that way, you won’t get it. And if you don’t get it, then there’s a very real chance that the band will mentally collapse into a sobbing heap in your arms. It’s not surprising that as I’ve heard most of their music through the spring and early summer of Peel’s 1993 playlists, anything of theirs which has made my shortlists for inclusion here has usually had a question mark next to it. Speeds Exceeding didn’t though.
In large part, I think it’s because they chose to base the thrust of the song’s melody around one which sounds like a close cousin to You Made Me Realise by My Bloody Valentine. That’s always a good start in terms of drawing people in to a song. Lyrically, Speeds Exceeding reads like a conversation between the philosophies of both the younger and older generation in America. The lines tumbling over each other like quick replies to the other’s assertions. The older generation believing that the country needs to be saved (where have we heard that before?) while the younger generation claim to be ignorant of the needs of the country and commit themselves to pleasure, mainly because the previous generation have left them nothing to build on. This could have been a reflection of the American political mindset in late 1992 as the 70 & 60 something presidencies of Reagan and Bush Mk I were succeeded by the youthful mid-40s new broom of Bill Clinton. Though it feels that the older generation felt it meant America was going to Hell in a handcart, while the younger generation felt that nothing would really change. That being said, the political subtext starts to get lost when the song reaches its slow movement at 1:38.
For John Peel, Trumans Water were not a passing fancy. They were astonishingly productive, with at least 5 albums coming out on a variety of labels across 1993 and into 1994. They have remained active well into the 21st Century and Peel was playing material by them up until the year before he died. They’re likely to have me putting question marks down against their name for a long while to come.
Video courtesy of vanwolf2.
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