Garbage & The Flowers

***The long-awaited re-issue of THE GARBAGE & THE FLOWERS’ classic double album Eyes Rind As If Beggars, a sprawling collection of fragile melodies, abrasive improvisations and velvet voices. The story of The Garbage & The Flowers, by some measure Wellington's most brilliant pop band, is equal parts classic underground rock'n'roll and a hazy ramshackle history pockmarked with bursts of genius and stoned rehearsals. Rare is it for any band to garner so much underground acclaim while leading such a nebulous existence. A small handful of releases, compilation appearances and few live shows make for a curious stop/start history. Tension can produce the goods and tension was what watered The Garbage & The Flowers. Yuri Frusin (guitar, songwriting) and Helen Johnstone (viola, vocals, now bass) met in their teens sometime in the 1980s. Naming themselves after a line in Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" and taking cues from The Velvet Underground, the band has existed in some shape or form since, with help from Paul Yates, Heath Cozens, Torben Tilly, Rachel Davies, Kristen Wineera, and Stuart Porter. This is a rock'n'roll classic which will whip the wigs off all the crystalline clowns today. Includes a bonus full-length disc of additional material.