Label: Dedicated
Year of Release: 1995
It's common enough to upload tracks by sixties outfits for whom background information is scarce, but nineties bands - especially nineties bands who were signed to well-known labels - seldom fall through the cracks so easily. By that stage in history we were all just starting to go online and leave dirty great Internet trails about exciting new bands we'd just seen and heard, and much of that information is still available today.
Superalmendrado, on the other hand, are an absolute mystery. Signed to Dedicated, the home of Spiritualized, The Cranes and Chapterhouse, this seems to be the only release of theirs which made it out into the public realm, and even then I've only ever seen Promo copies of it, leading me to suspect that it never received an official release. This is a jarring, dischordant piece of work which makes use of angst rock drumming, needles-on-the-nerves guitar lines, and forlorn vocals to bring three tracks which are not easy on the ear. Whether you consider this to be genius or utterly unlistenable may depend upon your tolerance of rock music's more experimental strands - but one thing's for sure, this isn't pop.
The whereabouts of the band presently remains as big a mystery as the full details of the line-up, but Craig Ward appears to have been the most active since, leaving Superalmendrado to join cult Belgian band dEUS not long after this single crept into the world. Whether his departure spelt the end for the band as a going concern or not is difficult to ascertain, but on the face of the little evidence we have available to us, it's probably safe to say that it won't have helped.
Anyone with any other background information on this band should get in touch to fill in the blanks. I'd be grateful for any help received.
Tracklisting:
1. Gotta Give It Up
2. Shedtronics
3. The Ballad of John Harlow
