Strange Girls, The

Strange Girls, The

Truly & Lyric

Soft Abuse

As subjects of a recent career spanning vault-clearing anthology, the likelihood that more old recordings by The Strange Girls might surface was an unlikely one. Thankfully it’s just what happened. Culled from leaky audience video recordings, Truly & Lyric features two Clayton Noone songs that never surfaced elsewhere. These date from around 2002 and feature the core duo of Kaaterama Morehu and Noone. Draped in artwork by Mark Anderson (Greymouth), Truly & Lyric offers another fleeting glimpse at The Strange Girls’ downcast beauty in action. Limited to 200.

Strange Girls, The

Threads

Soft Abuse

Threads marks a first dip into the archives of unreleased recordings by The Strange Girls, the cult Dunedin duo of Kaaterama “Motty” Morehu and Clayton Noone that existed off and on from the early ‘00s up until Motty’s untimely passing in 2020. At their best, The Strange Girls made ruminative, repetitive and atmospheric bummer folk, similar to sounds by Flying Canyon or The Pupils combined with The Dead C squall. All of these elements are present on Threads, which rescues stray, unreleased tracks made around the time of their best album, Beset. Motty’s beautiful, fragile croon guides through a thicket of hiss, solemn strums and stirring feedback. Threads wasn’t intended to be the lone archival release, but with Motty’s passing it may be the final word from The Strange Girls. Time will tell. Rest in Peace, Motty.