Top of this pile has been Sneaky Feelings' first album, Send You. I find it pretty hard to think about Sneaky Feelings without taking Matthew Bannister's book 'Positively George Street' into consideration. The basic gist of the book is Sneaky Feelings were the best band on the Flying Nun roster and that they were held back simply because Roger Sheph
erd and Chris Knox didn't like them. Based on their contribution to the Dunedin Double EP this sentiment would seem pretty deluded. The Chills and The Verlaines blow them out of the water, and then they follow it up with singles like 'Pink Frost' and 'Death and the Maiden'. But then, in my opinion, neither of those bands released an album as strong as Send You, or even it's follow up Sentimental Education. Bannister and David Pine songwriting was far more direct than Dunedin's resident "poets" Graham Downes and Martin Phillips, but numbers like 'Not To Take Sides' and 'P.I.T. Song' easily challenge their very best - and then you've got songs like 'Won't Change' and 'Someone Else's Eyes', which show a pretty significant Elvis Costello (after whom the band was named) influence.Sneakies are getting a fair amount of recognition these days which is, of course, great. They may not have got championed by the label the way some of the other Flying Nun bands did, but it seems these days there's no shortage of the love they never felt when they were together. Maybe it's changing tastes or something I don't know; but their heart on sleeves sentiment and an unabashed love of POP! music is perhaps considered a bit more acceptable these days. Either way they were a great band and if someone could just make the Flying Nun back catalogue a little bit less deleted I'm sure there are hoardes of potential fans.
Hopefully this is the start of me writing in this thing more often again - I've got some serious Crystal Stilts gushing to do.
