Long Tomorrow

In 2006 Community Radio 3CR and Wakefield Press produced the Tomorrow Is Today: Australia In The Psychedelic Era, 1966-70 book documenting and celebrating the Australian youth culture of the late 1960s. In June 2007 3CR, Weather Records and Off The Hip released a double CD featuring 19 of Australia’s finest psych, garage and indie bands covering classic songs from acts such as The Masters Apprentices, Love Ones, The Twilights and Marty Rhone.

The Long Ryders kicked off their major label debut, State of Our Union, with one of their most anthemic and most explicitly political songs, "Looking for Lewis and Clark," and that tune set the tone for the rest of the album – State of Our Union found the Long Ryders reaching for a larger audience at the same time that they were using their music to say a great deal more than they had in the past. Musically, plenty of roadwork had tightened the band's interplay to an even finer point than on Native Sons (Sid Griffin and Stephen McCarthy were both in superb voice, and their guitar work meshed perfectly), and Will Birch's production gave the songs a poppier sheen that still allowed the band's roots-conscious sound to shine through. Lyrically, State of Our Union took a long look at Reagan-era America as the gulf between the rich and the poor began to divide the nation, with "You Can't Ride the Boxcars Anymore," "Two Kinds of Love," and "Good Times Tomorrow, Hard Times Today" all exploring issues of economic injustice, and even the less obvious political songs often having a progressive subtext ("WDIA," a tribute to the great Memphis R&B radio station, deals with how the love of music brought together black and white listeners in the 1960s).

As the post-punk dust began to settle, a particular strand of artist began applying a knowingly distant, colder aesthetic to their work. While much of the scene began to be dominated by bigger budget, commercially minded former punk and new wave acts, a darker undercurrent did survive, often more interesting, more dangerous and sexier than anything that could be heard on Top Of The Pops at the time. The first generation of the darkwave movement consisted of bands that were equally influenced by the fractured drama of Depeche Mode, Siouxsie & the Banshees and The Cure as they were by the art damaged experimentation of Cabaret Voltaire, Wire and Throbbing Gristle, always rich in Gothic spirt, societal displacement, urban isolation and sexual energy.