Behind The Moon – Tim Blanchard – Book Review
by Killian Laher

This is Tim Blanchard’s follow-up to Like Magic In The Streets.  He has fast-forwarded on five years or so from the mid-80s to the dawn of the ’90s.  If anything the writing is even more in-depth and detailed than its predecessor.  It’s a wonderfully geeky attempt to link the Sundays, Prefab Sprout, Fatima Mansions, the Apartments and Trashcan Sinatras.  Blanchard brilliantly conveys the mysteriousness of the Sundays, the confrontational nature of Cathal Coughlan, the dedication to melody of Paddy McAloon, the olde-world loucheness of Peter Milton Walsh, and the necessary bloody-mindedness of the Trashcan Sinatras.  The concept of the book, similar to Like Magic In The Streets is the making of an album for each band, not necessarily their debut, and the state of the world around them as they made them.

1990 was a funny year, not quite 80s, not quite 90s, and it feels like much longer ago than 34 years!  What’s as interesting as the bands and their albums is the political context around the time.  It was a period of change, socially and musically, brilliantly documented by Blanchard in his book.  There are fun observations about Q magazine and insightful comments about what the UK music press used to be.  There’s more information here on the Sundays and the Apartments, to name two of the bands, than you would typically come across as a reader of the music press, online or offline.

As with its predecessor, what comes through here is the quality of writing, each chapter has a great long-form piece about bands who existed (and in the case of Trashcan Sinatras, exist) marginally off the mainstream.  An excellent read for anyone interested in indie bands pre-Britpop.