The Pooh Sticks - Think Bubble (2014)

The Pooh Sticks were rock's most inside joke, a monumental yet affectionate prank on the very mythology of pop music itself. Cloaked behind ridiculously overblown marketing schemes, made-up histories, and cartoon-character images, the Welsh group punctured the industry's myriad excesses, freely pilfering from the entirety of pop's past by shoplifting titles, lyrics, and melodies at will. The Pooh Sticks were ostensibly led by frontman Hue Pooh (born Hue Williams), who in October 1987 teamed with Swansea-area schoolmates Paul, (guitar), Alison (bass), Trudi Tangerine (keyboards), and Stephanie (drums), but in fact these last three members didn't actually exist. Their 1988 debut single 'On Tape' was a witty jab at indie rock fan boy mentality released on manager/svengali Steve Gregory's Fierce label, and of course I bought it straight away, and it's still a prized possession. The real mastermind behind the Pooh Sticks was Gregory, writing, arranging, and producing their records, designing their cover artwork, and even choreographing their live performances.Their next release was an ironically lavish box set comprised entirely of one-sided singles. including the infamous 'I Know Someone Who Knows Someone Who Knows Alan McGee Quite Well', a nod to the Creation Records chief. Their first album was a live recording called 'Orgasm', and was "recorded live...in Trudi Tangerine's basement". The 1989 mock-bootleg 'Trademark Of Quality' was next, compiling live material from a pair of recent club dates, including a cover of the Vaselines' 'Dying for It', as well as an early rendition of the group's semi-original 'Young People'. In 1990 they finally recorded a proper studio album, 'Formula One Generation', and the following year the band added Talulah Gosh and Heavenly vocalist Amelia Fletcher to their ranks, and recorded their second studio album 'The Great White Wonder'. For this release they changed direction, eschewing their 'twee' British indie pop for a more American-styled power pop sound, akin to bands like Jellyfish and Redd Kross. The next record 'Million Seller', released on 11 January 1993, is considered by some power pop fans to be the band's best work, and 1995's 'Optimistic Fool', followed the same path, but was to be their final release for some time. In 1995 they claimed to have cut no less than 30 demos for a follow up to 'Optimistic Fool', but this never happened, and so in 2014 they hosted a website where they gave out free downloads of 10 of those demos under the follow up album's working title 'Think Bubble'. Despite being demos, they are all great indie-pop songs, and an album of polished versions of these tracks would have been most welcome. 

Track listing

01 Stereo Love
02 My Amp
03 You Said A Bad Word
04 Jimmy Webb's Horse
05 The Hardest Working Man In Showbiz
06 Call Me Carnival
07 International Language
08 Five O'Clock Shadow
09 Stars Fall Like Dominoes
10 Out Here In The Night