Days of The Triffids

The Triffids were one of my favourite guitar bands from the 80’s, together with other Australian groups like The Church and The Go-Betweens. They have a very melancholic sound and a somewhat rural feel, with influences from folk and gospel. I find especially their early, bare sounding albums like Treeless Plain (1983) and Raining Pleasure (1984) excellent. Later, more succesful releases (Born Sandy Devotional, Calenture) are a bit more polished, but still good. Around 1989 the band disbanded and mastermind Dave McComb embarked on a solo career. He tragically died on February 2nd 1999, from the results of a car accident.
The website thetriffids.com is dedicated to the memory of David McComb & the Triffids and is maintained by former band member Graham Lee. There’s much to be found on the site, like an extended discography, lyrics and other texts and various photo galleries. Nice to read are the ’89 tour diary and ‘Dave`s Influences’, containing tracklists of self-made tape compilations. Not to be missed is the audio section, which is something of a rarities collection. It contains amongst others some early single tracks, two tracks recorded for Dutch radio, the Velvet Underground cover ‘Beginning To See The Light’ and live tracks by McComb’s backing band The Red Ponies.