Submarine “Pollen”

I’m reaching back to the dorm room days here. That was a time of Anglophilia for me, at least partially out of lingering sentiment for a big summer love I’d had with a British woman (Where are you now, Becky C?).

Picking up the Volume mini-mag/compilation series on import was one way I indulged this tendency. It was a pretty reliable source for rare tracks by U.S. alt-rockers and introductions to U.K. NME faves, G-d bless their poor, doomed hearts, as well as the breathless hyperbole and cheekiness we expect from the Brit music press.

Submarine¹ was possibly my favorite discovery from that time. This English outfit combined the languor and softness of the slowcore pioneered by Galaxie 500 with the wallpaper/earbleed guitar of shoegazers like My Bloody Valentine. Pardon the pin-the-comparison-on-the-rock-band, but the one thing about their Volume interview I remember is that these guys pretty much copped to their influences, with maybe a nod to Amerindie freaks like the Flaming Lips.

A decade-plus later, the music still holds up for me. For instance, we have “Pollen,” off 1994 singles comp Kiss Me Till Your Ears Burn Off. It was the Volume track, the first song I heard by these guys.

Why it was relevant to me in 199_: The “I’m tired of always feeling the same” line spoke to my youthful ennui. (Don’t worry, guys, somehow I survived.) And its “I really wanna see you again” refrain made it the soundtrack to a semester or two of pinings for the aforementioned summer love.

But bittersweet nostalgia held aside, the song is trippy and epic, repetitive to the point of being meditative. “Pollen” has all these wonderful elements, and each would be enough in and of itself to sort of make the song for me.

I love the layers of stompbox guitarmageddon and the shy, mushmouthed vocals. Then there’s the melodic bass part that actually holds the arrangement together, a legacy of New Order bass hero Peter Hook passed down through Naomi Y. of Galaxie 500. The chimes, the whistling feedback that pops in prettily, the vaguely Eastern drone–this could’ve been a fussy, disjointed mess, but the pieces came together organically and instead it’s a gorgeous mess.

I actually spent a little more than my usual five minutes of Google research in prepping this post, because these guys have disappeared so completely that if I didn’t have the discs to show for it I’d almost think I imagined ‘em.

Thank garsh for Wikipedia, ’cause now I know that Submarine split up, then reformed more or less as Jetboy DC–who in turn disappeared even more completely with even less evidence of ever existing.

Main Submariner Neil Haydock may now be a chef. Bass fiddler Rob Harron apparently traveled back in time and became a silent movie star. Drummer Rob Havis (a.k.a. “Ponk” and no, I’m not kidding) soldiers on with something call Suns of the Tundra.

Shine on, you crazy diamonds, and thanks for two platters worth of insane beauty and psych rock power.

Kiss Me Till Your Ears Burn Off at Gemm.
S/T at Amazon.