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The Triffids

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The Triffids began with high school friends David McComb and Alsy MacDonald and Phil Kakulas making a noise in the garage. The punk revolution hit Perth, Western Australia in the late 1970s and inspired the friends to get serious. With Dave’s elder brother Robert on guitar and violin they went through a series of other instrumentalists. After many failed attempts, the name The Triffids was adopted. The triffid was an imaginary plant from another planet that fatally blinded humans in John Wyndam’s 1950s novel The Day of The Triffids.

By 1981, The Triffids won a public radio station competition and as first prize made their debut single Stand Up / Farmers Never Visit Nightclubs. It was released in July that year and the band began to think beyond the Nullarbor. The following year came the more interesting 4-track EP Reverie and the group made their first forays to Sydney and Melbourne. Another single, Spanish Blue really marked the group as a major talent, but the line-up had still not settled.

In 1983, Perth-born bassist Martyn P Casey stabilised the bass position. After moving to Melbourne, they signed with Mushroom records subsidiary White and released a four-track EP, Bad Timing. As their song said, “It was a hell of a summer”. They left Mushroom, recruited another West Australian, Jill Birt, to finally permanently fill the keyboard position, and moved to Sydney.

David McComb refused to confine himself to a pigeonhole

Undaunted by a lack of interest from the music industry they scraped together the budget for an album. Treeless Plain, their first full-length long player was recorded in 12 midnight-to-dawn sessions in a tiny studio on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. It was released in the spring of 1983, to unanimous critical acclaim. The band had a tough, muscular rock sound that betrayed a country and blues influence. David McComb’s songwriting had matured to the point where he was going weight-for-age against his con temporaries such as Paul Kelly and Nick Cave. The album boasted classic tracks such as Red Pony and My Baby Thinks She’s A Train.

The album was released through indie distributor Hot Records to strong sales. The Triffids continued their relentless touring and for many months held down midnight-to-dawn residency at the infamous Sydney Trade Union Club.

In early 1984 the Triffids made their first foray to the UK. Friends, the Go-Betweens, gave the band their first show in the UK and they were soon taken to the heart of the UK music press. Major labels were also courting the group.

In January of 1985 The Triffids became the first Australian band to be featured on the cover of the New Musical Express as the paper declared that to the “The Year of The Triffids”. The band existed in London in the company of other expatriate Australians – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dave Graney’s Moodists, the Go-Betweens – eking out a living. European tours were popular with these bands largely because Continental promoters provided hot meals.

Impatient at protracted record-company negotiations, the band scraped together the budget for another album. They had enough cash to record ten songs, which McComb conceived as a concept album about love. The album Born Sandy Devotional is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. With “Evil” Graham Lee aboard on pedal steel guitar the group created a “high, wide” sound that was intricately textured. Producer Gil Norton who had worked with Echo and the Bunnymen began his production career, which was later to include the Pixies, on this LP. McComb’s songwriting had taken another leap forward and the album contains the single Wide Open Road amongst nine other gems.

Born Sandy Devotional was unanimously acknowledged as a milestone. Mushroom came back to the fold and licensed the album for Australian and New Zealand. The band returned to Australia to participate in the Australian Made tour at the invitation of Michael Hutchence. While on a short break in Perth that summer they repaired to the McComb property outside Perth and recorded the country/folk In the Pines on a portable 8-track recorder.

The band’s audience increased exponentially and they were now a fixture on the European and British touring circuits. A deal with Island Records was soon inked. Their next step was to re-enter the studio and make their second masterpiece, Calenture.

“Calenture” was a disease that affected sailors in the 18th and 19th centuries that were at sea for extended periods of time. Its symptoms were wild hallucinations. The album’s title reflected McComb’s state of mind – years and years on the road with no personal stability. Disease notwithstanding, the band moved up a notch utilizing lush string sections and complex musical arrangements to songs such as Bury Me Deep in Love and Trick of the Light. Bury Me Deep in Love was used for the wedding of Harold and Madge in the TV series Neighbours.

Island was in the process of being sold and the band suffered from a lack of marketing at this critical juncture in their career. Unable to capitalize on radio support for the singles, the band’s morale suffered.

In 1988, there was one more studio album, The Black Swan. This was the band’s most experimental album – utilizing hip-hop beats and complex melodic structures. Jill Birt stepped to the fore on the single Goodbye Little Boy.

A final album Stockholm, recorded live in Sweden, finished their catalogue in 1989. David was by now plagued with ill health in large part due to a congenital heart defect

David McComb put the Triffids on hiatus as he pursued solo projects. The band made their way back to Australia and gradually assumed other lives: Jill Birt and Alsy Macdonald married and became an architect and lawyer respectively while Robert McComb took up teaching, Martyn Casey eventually joined Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Graham Lee started his own record label W Minc and has continued to play music.

David reunited with Phil Kakulas (who had been in Martha’s Vineyard and worked with Grant McLennan) in the Blackeyed Susans. David’s health limited his physical contribution to the band but he was ably supported by a floating group that included members of the Bad Seeds and the Cruel Sea and Triffids Martyn and Graham. David subsequently formed the Red Ponies with Marty and Graham to support his only solo album Love of Will.

In '92 David began playing with Triffids founder Phil Kakulas and the golden voiced Rob Snarski in the Blackeyed Susans. The band also featured Graham and Warren Ellis and Jim White from the Dirty Three. At the same time he finally recorded his acclaimed solo album, Love Of Will, with the Red Ponies including Martyn and Graham. He undertook a European tour to support the album but, by this time, he was suffering from as yet undiagnosed heart problems. David's poor health led to the cancellation of a proposed Triffids reunion tour of Australia in 1994 to support the release of a definitive best of – Australian Melodrama.

In 1996, he underwent a heart transplant but his health never fully recovered. He died at home on Feb 2, 1999.

The Triffids legacy lived on. They influenced countless younger bands and continued to be remembered by their peers. Paul Kelly and the Saints’ Chris Bailey performed Wide Open Road at the Mushroom 25th Anniversary concert in 1998.

The Triffids have never lost their fans around the world. Their catalogue has been elegantly remastered and released in recent years. In 2006 the group were reunited for a major retrospective festival in Belgium and early in 2008 the band and friends performed as part of the Sydney Festival,

As the English broadsheet The Guardian said recently: “Over eerily majestic guitars and strings and darkly anthemic tunes, The Triffids unfold tales of lives being lost in wide open spaces.”