I’ve been curious about this single for some time now, first hearing the title track from Stéphane’s excellent Coldwave.fr website, and now, thanks to the always excellent Bx-59cppw, here we have the full 7” from UK post-punk band Sits. Vacant. We have four excellent guitar driven post-punk tracks from 1981, with both a mix of gloom and bite to keep fans of both sides of the spectrum happy. If you enjoyed Sinking Ships, Language From Memory, Headleaders, Normil Hawaiians, etc. (basically, the DIY post-punk sound from the early 1980s), then this one is for you! As a nice bonus, the Bowie nut in me loves the Heroes-era photo as the 7” cover, a nice and welcome nod to the man who helped usher in the new dark wave.
While this is Sits. Vacant’s only release, the band changed their name soon after, becoming The Tier Garden (not to be confused with Edward Ka-Spel and cEvin Key’s Tear Garden, who formed in 1985, a year AFTER this band’s first release). The Tier Garden released three singles, all of which are available for free download via Last.fm. Some other members also collaborated on a 7” under the name Perfect Circle (this time predating the alt-rock supergroup by 15 years, my guess is they got the name from the R.E.M. classic).
Wait a second- is the name of the Perfect Circle track ‘Only When It Rains’? Very, very interesting. Anyway, you can hear both tracks on youtube (the b-side, ‘On Returning’ is an excellent melancholy dirge on first glance, while the a-side is akin to early Mighty Lemon Drops with a more new wave flavor), but leave a note here if you happen to have a copy or a nice rip of this 7”.
OK, enough babble, here’s the info for this excellent 7”. Thanks again to BX-59cppw for the donation!
Sits. Vacant- Alone In the Dark 7”
1. Alone In the Dark
2. Nowhere to Run
3. Vacancies
4. It’s Too Late