The Three O’Clock
3 Apr
Before I began this post, I plugged the Three O’Clock into our search bar to see how many times I’ve referred to this band. I was surprised and more than slightly disappointed in myself that there have only been two previous mentions (and only one by me!). You see, the Three O’Clock is one of my all-time favorite bands. They were one of the first bands I discovered on my own, once I had graduated from my parents’ Beach Boys, Bee Gees and Carpenters records (those records primed me for the Three O’Clock’s 60s-throwback sound). I can recall the night I first heard their album Sixteen Tambourines like it was last night: lounging in the back of a van, packed with friends, cruising down PCH, the crisp guitars, clean bass lines, and Michael Quercio’s magical voice ringing in my ears.
I immediately acquired that album and the band’s previous releases: their early garage-pop album as the Salvation Army and the first EP with their new name. These songs were my teenage years. These songs helped me navigate my formative relationships with girls as they, the relationships, ignited, crashed, and burned. No matter my mood, The Three O’Clock fit to a T. Any time a new girl caught my eye, “With a Cantaloupe Girlfriend” its driving drums and hopefully-baroque keyboards nudged me forward. Then when said girl reciprocated not ever, or for a year, two, then never again, “She Turns To Flowers” and its backwards guitar twisting through the refrain of “then she is no more,” saved me from wallowing too deep in teenage despair.
Then a funny thing happened. I never outgrew the band. Even after the band imploded I tracked subsequent projects with equal enthusiasm: Louis and Mary’s Danish, Michael and Permanent Green Light, and later, Jupiter Affect. By this point I was working full-time in radio and was quite the evangelist for all four aforementioned bands. I even brought out Permanent Green Light out to play a grand opening party for a music store I was managing. When my first son was two, I included The Three O’Clock’s cover of “Sorry” by The Easybeats in the first mix CD I made for him. We’ve been geeking out on the Three O’Clock together ever since. Now he’s sixteen. Now he just snags albums off my harddrive.
Fast forward a decade and the Three O’Clock and its members have lain largely dormant until late last year when blips of the band began surfacing on the radar of social media. I suspected these flickers of resurrection portended a much bigger event. And while the initial announcement that the band would be reuniting for Coachella was impressive, I’m much more thrilled that they’re playing a string of smaller shows, so my kid and I can be reunited with our paisley pals in a more intimate setting. I want to be crammed into a club with people who share my affinity for the band rather than fighting an indifferent crowd of 80k in the middle of the desert.
Michael, Louis, Danny, welcome back! See you Saturday!
It’s embarrassing to tell you how much I love this band. It’s embarrassing to admit that I listen to this band over and over and over and over again. I admit that I completely give up my critical faculties when I listen to Veronica Falls. Pure bliss! The melodies! The harmonies! The boy/girl vocals! My son, who just got his driver license and with whom I now share a car, had to eject their album out of my CD player’s cold…dead…slot. Speaking of death and coldness, this band has a reputation for being into death and dark and cold, but au contraire! All I can do when I listen to Veronica Falls is dance around, strum my air guitar, and sing my lungs out. Sure, the opening track to their first album is called “Found Love in a Graveyard” and the follow-up track’s refrain is “Take your hands off me,” but graveyards can be cheery places if you’re dancing on someone’s grave to the right soundtrack and you can always ask your dance partner to remove their mitts politely, respectively.
Today’s downloads come from a new EP from an Australian quintet that may find themselves in legal hot water with a certain US-based scouting organization when said organization finishes boiling in its own stew of legal, ethical and PR problems. Cub Scouts formed just over a year ago and have been cobbling together songs on their bandcamp page. “Evie” got lots of spins on Triple J and they’ve been playing around locally, but it may be a while before they hit stateside. That’s OK. They have time to craft another batch of songs while their fellow Aussies in San Cisco test the waters here next year. We’ll see how well Americans take to cute, indie-popsters from down under. I say the more the merrier, especially considering the depth of Cub Scouts’ gems. Did I tell you how great the title track is? I’d hate to tell you I told you so, but I told you so.
I know sushi rolls aren’t really sushi. I get it. I respect it. On my block there’s a sushi place that flat out doesn’t serve rolls. They won’t have anything to do with desecrating the simple beauty of fish on rice. I also respect our western notion of wrapping up fish in a slathering of mayonnaise, deep frying it until it’s delicately golden, chopping it up and dousing it with Sriracha, or any combo of the three. My favorite sushi roll in the world is the 
Ghost Lights make perfect music to fall asleep to. And I mean that in the best possible way and not because I’m in bed snuggled up to my laptop. The subdued yet lush instrumentation hits you like a muscle relaxant and you’re off to dreamland. The effect isn’t accidental. The artist behind Ghost Lights, Noah Cebuliak, disappeared into Canada’s wilderness and discovered emotions that can’t be transmitted by mere words or waking logic. Who is the Canadian equivalent of Thoreau? I nominate Cebuliak (Canada’s answer to Neil Halstead at least). He went into the woods, with a guitar, to see if he could learn what it had to teach. These songs are his lessons learned and the only way you’re gonna benefit from them is by checking out of the rat race, unplugging, and letting yourself drift toward the lights, the Ghost Lights…
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