Sneeze
hac50
Remastered by William Bowden 2020
The first album from Sneeze.
Originally released in 1993 as a twenty-track double 7 inch, then followed up on cd in 1996 (including 21 bonus tracks), the debut album from Sneeze is now released on LP. Recorded between August 1991 and April 1993 by Tom Morgan and Nic Dalton with special guests the Lemonheads, Swirl, Simon Day from Ratcat, Alannah Russack, Robyn St Clare and Simon Holmes from the Hummingbirds, Smudge and the Plunderers.
Produced by Michael Levis, Desmond Heffrey and Tod Erstaz. Recorded by Michael Levis at Troy Horse Studio (old and new), King Street, Newtown. Additional recording by Colin Wright and John Rafferty.
All songs written by T.Morgan/N. Dalton.
41 songs in 47 minutes re-mastered in November 2020 from the original tapes by William Bowden.
The black vinyl version comes with A4 insert.
*****
Nic: “Tom and I started writing these short songs for the band he was forming with Alison (Smudge) whilst I was in the Plunderers and subbing in the Hummingbirds. Then Michael Levis from Troy Horse suggested that we release a seven-inch double album and the Sneeze project ended up sprouting forty-one songs, written mostly over the counter at the original Half A Cow bookshop (only “Steak & Chips” and Tom’s “Divan” ended up with Smudge).
In August 1991, while they were touring Australia with the Hummingbirds, The Lemonheads were the first band to get the Sneeze recordings started, even before Tom and Nic did. “We thought if we get the ‘big American band’ – who we’d only just met – to do it, then our friends in Ratcat and Hummingbirds would too!”
Simon Day from Ratcat sings and plays on “Pedal”, Alannah Russack from the Hummingbirds sings “There He Is” and duets with Tom on “Shaky Ground”; the Lemonheads play two songs “Autumnal Eyes” and “Trouble In School”, which happen to be the last ever recordings featuring the Dando/Peretz/Ryan line-up, recorded after their soundcheck at the Lansdowne.
Swirl – known for their epic numbers – record the longest song on the album “Backdown” at a little over two minutes, Smudge do “(Don’t Go) Girlie” – one of the early songs Tom and Nic wrote for them, and the Plunderers contribute one of their last ever recordings with “Winter Won Out”.
Simon Holmes and Robyn St Clare from the Hummingbirds sing a lullaby “Baby Asleep”, written for their son Milo. As drummers can, both David Ryan and Evan Dando play on a few more songs. Ever-patient and armed with creative suggestions, engineer Michael Levis plays the jazzy guitar and bass on the opening track “Sneeze Theme” which is the only instrumental on the whole album.
*****
Sneeze formed in 1991 by Nic Dalton and Tom Morgan. They released four albums: Sneeze (1993), The Four Seezons (1997), Lost the Spirit to Rock & Roll (2001) and Just The Blues Sped Up (April 2004). They started playing live in 1996 – including a US tour in 1998 and a UK/Europe tour in 2002 – and have been slowly chipping away at a fifth album (since the turn of the century). Sneeze played their last show in January 2016.
In 1993 they released their debut album, Sneeze, on a double seven inch single, which initially comprised 20 tracks with none over two minutes in length. It was recorded with a range of guest musicians: Swirl, Smudge, Plunderers, Simon Day (from Ratcat), Simon Holmes, Robyn St Clare and Alannah Russack (from the Hummingbirds) and US act The Lemonheads.
Nic later recalled that the group was initially a studio-only side project. “Tom and I started writing these short songs for Smudge, whilst I was in the Plunderers and the Hummingbirds. The Lemonheads were the first band to record a Sneeze song, even before Tom and I did. We ended up starting Sneeze, but we never thought we’d play live.” Prompted by Nic’s girlfriend at the time (Lara Meyerratken) for the band to play live, she joined on the drums in 1996.
Sneeze’s second album, The Four Seezons (1997), has one side providing their “take on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons” and the b-side has live tracks recorded at Fbi Radio. After Lara left the group in 1998 they used “several drummers including using the drummer of their support act for the evening.”
Sneeze had many other members including long-term drummer Simon Gibson (from Half Miler) as well as Russell Hopkinson (from You Am I), and Andy Calvert (from Wifey). Bill Gibson (from the Eastern Dark) on bass and Cameron Bruce (from the Fantastic Leslie) on keyboards have played shows with the band, as have Bernie Hayes, Jess Ciampa, John Encarnacao, Ben Pettit, Beth Proudley (from Bidston Moss) and Leticia Nischang (from Spain’s 120 mins).
Sneeze saw their floating line-up as one of their strengths. Dalton described how “there’s about 10 or 11 Sneeze members. Basically it’s like the album, Sneeze is whoever we want to get in the band. Every time we play live we seem to have a completely different lineup, and just really love that. It makes it fresh and exciting, and you never know who’s going to turn up and what it’s going to sound like. But they’re all such good musicians that it always ends up sounding great.”
Read more...The Four Seezons
Released in 1997 by Half A Cow Records on 12″ vinyl. What does a band do after their last release – which was a compact disc with 41 songs in 47 minutes? A: They record a 19 minute epic and release it on 12 inch vinyl only. And this is exactly what Sneeze have done. In May 1996 Nic Dalton and Tom Morgan, the two heads of Sneeze, sat in a loungeroom about to head off to a recording studio to begin what they had been calling for a few years “Sneeze 2”.
A band should move on, progress, rally forth they both agreed. An idea struck. Let’s record our interpretation of “The Four Seasons”. Yes! What better way for Sneeze to return than with the opposite of an album of songs under two minutes in length – an epic titled “The Four Seezons”. So it began and they recorded one day each over the next four seasons to capture the spirit in the air. Twelve months and 19 minutes later “The Four Seezons” appeared.
Side two is a live-on-radio-FBI test broadcast from July 1996 featuring Tom and Nic with guitars, Casio and bongos and eleven songs from their debut double seven inch, including “Shaky Ground”, “Ripped Jeans” and “I’m Upset Enough (Parts 1 & 3)”.
Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll
“We could’ve been contented, we could’ve been contenders,
We could’ve been somebodies, now we’re somebody’s story that we met on a bender, It’s never going to end.” – from “Wu-Li”
One morning, during their disastrous 1998 tour of the USA, Sneeze wrote “Wu-Li”, track 1 of Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll. The preceding night Nic had fallen asleep rolled up in a sail he had found on Thumb Cove, Martha’s Vineyard, after getting lost on his way back to the shack (the other guys had driven past looking for him at one point, but Nic had hidden in the dark). In the first light he made his way through the bushes and saw Tom, with a near-empty bottle of Sambuca and a guitar, sitting on the ground outside the shack. Nic sat down. They started to write a song.
What was on their minds? Was it how Tom had spent a night in a Boston jail after pissing in public? Or how earlier the same night, Nic had accidentally poured his beer into the mixing desk, forcing Sneeze to complete their set acapella plus drums? Or was it how Nic had played their first show in LA solo-Sneeze, after Tom had crawled out the backstage door and disappeared, only to wake up five hours later behind a dumpster in a Sunset Boulevard shopping mall?
The tour may have been a disaster, but at least they got some songs out of it. It wasn’t all bad; Tom and Nic spent every other moment plugged into their Walkmans, listening to either an early 70s soul compilation tape or else Don Covay’s “Super Dude 1” which had been introduced to them in Boston after their friend Winston had seen their show and heard Sneeze’s “Doctor Of Love” and “Too Much Man To Be My Woman” (“I think you’ll like this,” Winston said, as Don Covay’s “I Was Checking Out, While She Was Checking In” crackled over the stereo).
Tom Morgan: “As songwriters, what we loved about these early 70s soul songs was that there were these incredibly funny lyrics about tragic and lonely situations, sung with complete conviction.”
Sneeze are a band who have been characterised by their sometimes-contrary love of variety – from the 41 songs in 47 minutes debut album to their second album The Four Seezons which featured a nineteen-minute song on side 1. Sneeze are not a band you can second-guess, especially on stage. Their live shows are a minestrone of sweet sad soul, early 90s pop, psychedelia, punk rock rants and the odd piece of Australiana. Their variety is not just limited to the songs but to the line-up; guest singers pop up from the audience and Nic, Tom and Simon, the drummer, rotate instruments every second song. But with Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll, Sneeze decided a more cohesive and focused effort was required to create, in their words, their masterpiece, Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll.
Nic Dalton: “This is definitely the best record that Tom and I have ever been involved with. It’s taken us five years to perfect. It’s the pinnacle of our songwriting and what we want to get across to the listener – an album that is entertaining, exuberant and also strangely sad. But we couldn’t have done it without the help of some very talented friends.”
Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll – 5 years in the making, 18 sad, sweet soul songs about sex changes, loneliness and the occasional trip to the tittie bar. 12 studios, 10 engineers and a line-up that includes Simon Gibson (their drummer), all members of the Bernie Hayes Quartet, Lara Meyerratken, Rusty Hopkinson (You Am I), strings from Sydney Symphony Orchestra and a brass section.
“On the occasional Friday we’d stay in
League turned down, and no one coming round
Now the lounge is crowded, and you’ve scratched ‘Super Dude 1’
C’mon boy break the lease or take the money and run.”
– from “Maybe Moving In Together Wasn’t Such A Good Idea”
– press release by Lucy Lehmann
The Maybe Moving In EP
Sneeze are back with a new EP, featuring “Maybe Moving In Together Wasn’t Such A Good Idea”, taken from last year’s Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll. The Maybe Moving In EP also includes seven new b-sides; first up, “(Love Theme From) Cousin Erich”, a duet between Tom and Lara about a Marrickville couple who just can’t get it together. Then there’s “(Theme From) Smoke!” – Sneeze’s theme song for a 70s private eye TV show. Track four, “Beibe Pelu”, is a Spanish rendition of “Baby Asleep” (the original version was released on Sneeze’s debut album) with the vocals of Leticia Nischang (of Spain’s 120 mins). Next up are four separate tracks that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle – “Tittie Bar (Part 2); Girls, Girls, Girls, Crazy Girls; Nurse Jones; and Tittie Bar (Part 3)”. The Tittie Bar Suite is a 13-minute journey through the sad world of strip clubs, seen through the perspective of a lonely customer, a club MC, and a single mother stripper with a law degree. – from the 2004 press release
Release date April 15th, 2002. Sneeze are back with a new EP, featuring the upbeat Maybe Moving In Together Wasn’t Such A Good Idea, taken from last year’s Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll. The Maybe Moving In EP also includes seven phenomenal new b-sides; first up, the beautiful and catchy (Love Theme From) Cousin Erich, a duet between Tom and Lara about a Marrickville couple who just can’t get it together. Then there’s (Theme From) Smoke! – Sneeze’s buoyant theme song for a 70s TV show, whose hero is a Shaft-esque Native American PI . Track four, Beibe Pelu, is a Spanish rendition of Baby Asleep (the original version was released on Sneeze’s debut album) with the lovely vocals of Leticia Nischang (of Spain’s 120 mins). Next up are four separate tracks that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle – Tittie Bar (Part 2); Girls, Girls, Girls, Crazy Girls; Nurse Jones; and Tittie Bar (Part 3). The Tittie Bar Suite is a 13-minute journey through the sad world of strip clubs, seen through the persective of a lonely customer, a club MC, and a single mother stripper with a law degree.
Just The Blues Sped Up
Sneeze do a complete u-turn from the soul sounds of 2001’s Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll and come up with a sprawling, crazed and defiant 20-track ode to rock and roll. If Lost The Spirit were a melancholic love-sick woman, then Just The Blues Sped Up is her out-of-control teenage lover.
With a line-up of Tom Morgan, Nic Dalton and long-term drummer Simon Gibson plus bassist Bill Gibson and Cameron Bruce on keyboards, the bulk of Just The Blues Sped Up was completed in 2003 with special guests – such as Leticia Nischang, original Sneeze drummer Lara Meyerratken, You Am I’s Russell Hopkinson, John Encarnacao and Ben Whitten – filling in some of the blank spaces along the way.
Some of the songs are from when Sneeze first started playing live in 1996 – “Going Skiing, Pretty Weird”, “When Honey Snaps” and “Loud & True” – to more recent crowd faves such as “Dress Ups” and “That Man’s My Weakness”. The album also contains the Sneeze song that got regular airplay “If It’s Catchy It Means You Stole It”, which features backing vocals courtesy of Treetops’ Ben and Jordan and the audience at the Annandale Hotel on June 13th, 2003.
Pics
Video
Doctor Of Love – live on ‘The Big Schmooze’ (2001)
(Don’t Go) Distant – live on ‘The Big Schmooze’ (2001)
live at the Middle East Bakery, Cambridge 19/7/1998
Toxicosmos Radio show, Valencia, 2002
Buy Music
Sneeze (41 Songs in 47 Minutes)
Shhh! Sex Gang…
Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll
Just The Blues Sped Up
The Four Seezons
1-800 Billy Ruane
The Maybe Moving In EP
Doctor of Love / Loud & True EP
Discography
Sneeze (41 Songs in 47 Minutes)
Sneeze (41 Songs in 47 Minutes)
originally released on double 7 inch (moo08) in 1993
cd (with 21 bonus tracks) (hac50) in 1996
LP vinyl (hac50) in October 2022
Produced by Michael Levis, Desmond Heffrey and Tod Erstaz. Recorded by Michael Levis at Troy Horse Studio (old and new), King Street, Newtown. Additional recording by Colin Wright and John Rafferty.
All songs written by T.Morgan/N. Dalton.
41 songs in 47 minutes re-mastered in November 2020 from the original tapes by William Bowden.
Side one
Sneeze Theme
Ying And Yang Telephone
Trouble In School
2 Kates
There He Is
Commencing December
Shaky Ground
Doomed To Visit Disneyland
Back Down
Don’t Go (Girlie)
(‘Cause You’re So) Sweet
Winter Won Out
Pedal
Accident Prone
Satan
Monday Night At Mars With Zero People
Goodbye Vinyl
Side two
Ripped Jeans
Autumnal Eyes
Baby Asleep
Darth Vadar Helmet
Dad’s Trailer
Create Your Friends
Better Days
Photo Finish
I’m Upset Enough (Parts 1&3)
Could Run Or Walk
Lolly Land
You Put Me Where I Am Today
Climbing Vulture Street
Evil Star
R
She’s Got A Boyfriend
Pins And Needles
Dice
Cold Cold Morning
(You’re So) Patient
Nevermind
Explain Deep December
Strawbreeze
Demand
Shhh! Sex Gang…
Shhh! Sex Gang… (hac200)
released June 2018
1. (Theme From) Smoke!
2. Going For The Drive
3. (Love Theme From) Cousin Erich
4. (You’ve Never Had) Sex Sober
5. Too Much Man To Be My Woman (Reprise)
6. Isle Of Lesbos
7. Tittie Bar (Part 2)
8. Girls, Girls, Girls, Crazy Girls
9. Nurse Jones
10. Tittie Bar (Part 3)
11. Sagrada Familia
12. Girl, It’s Time We Had A Man To Man
13. 9/9/99
14. Beibi Pelu
15. I Want To Be A Woman (Part 1)
16. Snood (Bid Adieu To Girlish Days
17. This Is The Song Only Young Girls Can Hear
A collection of Sneeze tracks from EPs, compilations and vinyl-only releases.
Tracks 1, 3, 14 from The Maybe Moving In EP. Tracks 7, 8, 9, 10 (the Tittie Bar Suite) also from The Maybe Moving In EP. Tracks 4, 5, 6, 12, 15, 17 from side four of the vinyl version of the Lost the Spirit to Rock & Roll double LP. Track 2 is from the Shake Yer Popboomerang 2 compilation (Popboomerang). Track 13 is from the “Doctor Of Love” cd single. Track 11 is from the Singles Club Split 7 Inch Collective compilation (Low Transit Industries. Track 16 is previously unreleased (lyrics from a poem by James Joyce). All songs written by Sneeze except track 17 by Evan Dando.
1-800 Billy Ruane
1-800 Billy Ruane (hac193)
digital single released by Half A Cow 2017
Sneeze return with their first single since the Just The Blues Sped Up album in 2004. The lineup of Tom Morgan, Nic Dalton and Lara Meyerratken give you the 29 second epic “1-800 Billy Ruane” – dedicated to the well-loved, and missed, Boston man-about-town Billy Ruane.
Recorded in 1998 and 2017 at Troy Horse and Tempe River studios in Sydney. Mixed by Tim Kevin, October 2017.
Written by N. Dalton/T. Morgan
The Maybe Moving In EP
The Maybe Moving In EP (hac97)
released on cd by Half A Cow 2002
Sneeze are back with a new EP, featuring “Maybe Moving In Together Wasn’t Such A Good Idea”, taken from last year’s Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll. The Maybe Moving In EP also includes seven new b-sides; first up, “(Love Theme From) Cousin Erich”, a duet between Tom and Lara about a Marrickville couple who just can’t get it together. Then there’s “(Theme From) Smoke!” – Sneeze’s theme song for a 70s TV show, whose hero is a Shaft-esque Native American PI . Track four, “Beibe Pelu”, is a Spanish rendition of Baby Asleep (the original version was released on Sneeze’s debut album) with the vocals of Leticia Nischang (of Spain’s 120 mins). Next up are four separate tracks that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle – Tittie Bar (Part 2); Girls, Girls, Girls, Crazy Girls; Nurse Jones; and Tittie Bar (Part 3). The Tittie Bar Suite is a 13-minute journey through the sad world of strip clubs, seen through the perspective of a lonely customer, a club MC, and a single mother stripper with a law degree. – from the press release
REVIEWS:
Plenty of fun, value and diversity within this indie eight-tracker and you’d do well to get yer mitts on a copy. In particular, check out the Steve Miller-ish tones of the title cut, the brief but moving ‘Beibi Pelu’ or the meandering ‘Girls, Girls, Girls, Crazy Girls’. – Time Off
Doctor Of Love/Loud & True
Doctor Of Love/Loud & True (hac81)
released on cd by Half A Cow August 1999
1. Doctor Of Love
2. Rumour,Conjecture, Speculation, Hearsay
3. Loud & True
4. When Honey Snaps (live)
5. Ninth Of The Ninth, Ninety-Nine
Doctor Of Love from Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll. An alternative version of Loud & True appears on Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll,
Russell Hopkinson: drums (except track 4). Lara Meyerratken: drums (track 4), backing vocals (track 1). Keira Hopkinson: vocals (track 5). Justin Hayes: vocals (track 3). Robyn St Clare: backing vocals (tracks 2, 5). Nicole Forsyth: viola (track 5), Airena Nakamura: violin (track 5). Strings arranged by John Encarnacao.
1, 3: Mixed at Alberts. 2, 5: Mixed at Charing Cross, recorded at Alberts & Charing Cross. 4: Recorded live at the Sandringham, Newtown 28/9/98 (a week before it closed). Mastered by William Bowden at Festival.
Just The Blues Sped Up
Just The Blues Sped Up (hac109)
released on cd by Half A Cow Records 2004
1. On Again, Off Again
2. Off Again, On Again
3. Might As Well Chalk It Up
4. (Take The) Headache Over Heartache
5. (When We Were Kids We Played) Dress Ups
6. The Play Up
7. That Man’s My Weakness
8. Too Much…Information
9. When Honey Snaps
10. Sv¥chers Dü
11. Loud & True
12. A Walk In The Park (Parts 1 & 2)
13. Ain’t That Kinda Party
14. Jimmyjimmyjanejane
15. Heaven Tonight
16. High Heels
17. Singles Club
18. Climbing Chester Street
19. Going Skiing, Pretty Weird
20. If It’s Catchy It Means You Stole It
Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll
Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll (hac96)
released on double 12″ and cd by Half A Cow 2001
also released by Fire Records UK 2002
1. Wu-Li
2. Too Much Man To Be My Woman
3. Doctor Of Love
4. Deaf Girl, Dumb Guy, Blind Love
5. (You’re Not) The ‘Onely One
6. (Don’t Go) Distant
7. Dancin’ Dollars
8. Tittie Bar
9. B.U.
10. I Got A Type
11. Maybe Moving In Together Wasn’t Such A Good Idea
12. I Want To Be A Woman (Part 2)
13. Welcome Back Succubus
14. Sex Gang Of The Year
15. Casual Cashew Daddy
16. I Believe In Marrickville (Parts 1 & 2)
17. Aint No Love On The Road
18. I’ve Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll
The Four Seezons
The Four Seezons (hac69)
released on 12″ vinyl 1997
Side One:
The Four Seezons –
1. Winter
2. Spring
3. Summer
4. Autumn
Side Two:
Live on Radio FBI –
1. Ying And Yang Telephone
2. 2 Kates
3. Create Your Friends
4. Photo Finish
5. Ripped Jeans
6. Shaky Ground
7. Winter Won Out
8. (Don’t Go) Girlie
9. Demand
10. There He Is
11. I’m Upset Enough (Parts 1 & 3)
Tom Morgan: vocals, guitar, bass, mono-poly, harmonica, percussion
Nic Dalton: vocals, guitar, bass, mono-poly, casio, rhodes, sax, drums, percussion
with
Pete Bat: keyboards
Pip Branson: violin
Lara Meyerratken: backing vocals, rhodes
Stephen Robertson: trumpet
Sally Russell: backing vocals
Engineered and mixed by Michael Pilz.
Written & recorded a day each in Autumn (18th May 1996), Winter (4th August 1996), Spring (30th November 1996) and Summer (15th February 1997) at Smash Studios, Camperdown NSW Australia.
Mixed in Autumn (3rd May 1997) at Charing Cross Studio. Mastered and Edited by William Bowden at Festival.
Reviews
Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll
“Recruiting a hefty team of guest musicians for this recording, including You Am I’ s Russell Hopkinson and The Bernie Hayes Quartet, the result is 18 tracks that duck and swoop through a variety of musical hoops…it’s not long before you’re taking the journey over and over again.” – XPress, Perth
***
“But it’s the lyrics that shine on this Sneeze outing…Lost The Spirit makes it known right from the start that the lyrics are the most important feature of the record with both Morgan and Dalton using plenty of humour while singing with straight up conviction.” – Inpress, Melbourne
***
“Sneeze surprise one and all by forsaking the indie pop and digging up the soul roots we never knew they had. It’s not exactly Philadelphia, but it’s pretty damn steamy for Annandale.” – Barry Divola, Who Weekly
***
“One of the most unique Australian pop releases to date…it’s eclecticity which makes this album such an easy and addictive listen, time and time again. Although musically catchy, what stands out is Morgan and Dalton’s humourous lyricism… You’ll want to learn the words just so you can sing along. This album’s strength is in its easygoing, light nature, and it’s the most fun you’ll have with a pop record all year ” – Oz Music Project
***
Tom Morgan and Nic Dalton may be the mainstays of Sneeze, if for no other reason than that they do most of the songwriting. Still, there’s such a cornucopia of players involved in this album, with the personnel switching around on virtually every track, that Sneeze seem like more of a collective pool than a proper band. Nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that there’s such a breadth of styles and songs on this 18-track disc that it sometimes sounds like a various-artists compilation rather than the work of a specific artist. The genre that seems closest to their heart is early-’70s soul music, particularly the overly romantic and emotional kind. It’s the early 2000s, though, so you get some postmodern twists, such as the gender-blurred Too Much Man to Be My Woman and the more explicit I Want to Be a Woman (sung from a man’s point of view). That’s not the whole picture, though. There are also some almost embarrassingly blatant, whether intentional or not, Elvis Costello-esque vocals; an apparently straight approximation of those 1970s songs when the woman would begin by talking no-nonsense heart-to-heart romantic confessions before breaking into song (on (Don’t Go) Distant); kinda Bowie/glam-era cops (B.U.); fetching, dreamy pop on I Believe in Marrickville (Parts 1 & 2), sung by Lucy Lehmann, who unfortunately does not sing on any other track; and Casual Cashew Daddy, which sounds like Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door wed to typically indie pop/rock wordplay. As emulators of early-’70s soul singing, Sneeze are kinda likable and kinda annoying, particularly the higher they get in the vocal register. It’s an odd record, and hard to know what to make of it – not as pretentious as Magnetic Fields, say, and better than Lambchop, if you have to find parallels among collective-type indie rock eclectics, but bound not to attract as much attention. – Richie Unterberger, AMG
***
It’s been along wait for the follow up, almost 8 years in fact, since the release of their debut full-length album, the self-titled Sneeze, which comprised an extraordinary 41 songs in 47 minutes and was recorded after the band adopted the admirable manifesto “If ya can’t do it in two minutes it ain’t worth doin’.”
Best known for their work on the Lemonheads’ It’s A Shame About Ray and Come On Feel The Lemonheads, Nic Dalton and Tom Morgan have spent the last 3 years recording Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll which is probably their best work to date. Whilst admittedly never taking themselves too seriously, they have dispensed with the rigid two minute rule, there is actually more depth to many of the songs here than the occasionally frivolous veneer might suggest.
Drawing on the additional experience and diversity of an extensive line up of musical support including half of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the album is deeply infused with the sounds of 70s soul music to which both Dalton and Morgan were extensively exposed on the band’s last U.S. tour. Brass arrangements, lush strings, mock falsetto vocals and somewhat tongue in cheek lyrics all add up to a winning formula. Opener Wu-Li asks with some charm “Where was I when you needed me?” Having already deduced “We could’ve been contented, we could’ve been contenders”.
You Am I drummer Russell Hopkinson can be found keeping a low-key backbeat on the call and sponse, ever so slightly cheesy, yet irresistible Doctor Of Love. The bold brass on (You’re Not) The ‘Onely One, Lara Meyerratken’s lovely guest vocal on (Don’t Go) Distant, the Hammond organ driven Maybe Moving In Together Wasn’t Such A Good Idea, the layered psychedelia of the Mazzy Star like Casual Cashew Daddy are all worth singling out for specific praise.
As often sad and reflective as it is whimsical and funny, Sneeze may have Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll, but the Jackson 5 meets indie pop in an alternative dimension experiment they’ve found in its place is undoubtedly a worthwhile and extremely entertaining diversion until they find it again. – Geraint Jones, July 2001
***
Sneeze have got soul. It’s taken Tom Morgan and Nic Dalton five years to perfect, but Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll is a masterstroke of songwriting and vision greater than anything the’ve released before.
Sneeze (and friends) sing unashamed lyrics of joy and sadness over simple melodies with expert arrangements, and wrap it up in strings and horns for that 70s soul authenticity.
Wu-Li sets up the album with Nic and Tom declaring their laughable social status. From here, the inane relationship stories begin with Too Much Man To Be My Woman and Doctor of Love (Big Brother’s theme song for Peter).
Inspired by James Brown, Elvis Costello and Jerry Springer, Sneeze have produced an endearing and honest album in Lost The Spirit one that would be labelled an ‘Australian Classic’ if Michael Gudinski had to make money out of it. – Patrick McCabe, Time Off
***
After over three years in the making and eleven different recording studios, Sydney’s Sneeze have finally released their third album Lost The Spirit To Rock & Roll. Sneeze’s foundations lie in the duo of Nic Dalton and Smudge’s Tom Morgan, who have imported special guests such as Bernie Hayes and Russell Hopkinson (You Am I) to execute their sounds. This, along with a plenitude of instruments – including saxophone, congas, violins and a glockenspiel – results in eighteen diverse tracks. Utilising this range of instruments, Sneeze explore and integrate various eras, particularly the 60s and 70s – further enhancing the scope of the release. Traces of blues, jazz and classic rock merge to form a unique alliance.
I Got A Type is the most minimal track in terms of instrumentals with only Dalton and Morgan providing vocals, guitar and drums. However, this does not result in an obvious lack of substance. I Believe in Marrickville is delivered in two parts, with vocal contributions presented by Lucy Lehmann and Morgan united in a duet at their intersection. The next one and a half minutes of Ain’t No Love On The Road provides an opportunity for a male bonding chant and highlights the idiosyncratic nature that is evident throughout the release.
Bernie Hayes’ vocals during Deaf Girl, Dumb Guy, Blind Love are a highlight, with a smooth, blues rhythm and slight raspy quality. Also featured is a five strong vocal backing – a common thread throughout many of the tracks. Also prevalent to Sneeze are their two-minute durations, which results in the entire album registering in at just over three-quarters of an hour.
Despite the slight buzz that emanates from many of the tracks due to insufficient production quality, this is a generally satisfying album – offering character and diversity. – Alicia Woodrow, Rockus rating: 7/10
***
