Josh Page, returning Dig Me Out Board of Directors patron from Australia, brought The Hummingbirds to the table. Want to bring your own lost album to Dig Me Out? Join the Board of Directors or suggest an album.
The album that went Gold in Australia and vanished from the rest of the world.
This is not the usual obscurity story. The Hummingbirds did not fail. They did not get bad reviews. They did not play to empty rooms. Their 1989 debut loveBUZZ hit ARIA #31, their single “Blush” cracked the top 20, they sold more than 40,000 copies in Australia, and they toured alongside The Ramones, Dinosaur Jr., and The Cure. The reason most people outside Australia have never heard of them is simpler and stranger than any tale of artistic failure: the album is geo-locked. It is not available on streaming services outside Australia. There is no official digital release for the rest of the world. There is a fan-uploaded YouTube video. That is your option. Thirty-five years of licensing dysfunction have done more damage to this record than any critic ever could.
Rolling Stone Australia ranked loveBUZZ #154 on their 200 Greatest Australian Albums list in 2021. It appeared in the book The 100 Best Australian Albums. The band that made it played the right venues, ran with the right crowd, and recorded with a producer who had already defined the sound of one of America’s greatest rock bands. Then the file got stuck. The world moved on. The album stayed in Australia.
The Producer Who Should Have Made This Famous
Mitch Easter is not an obscure name if you know your early R.E.M. He produced Murmur(1983) and Reckoning (1984), the records that established R.E.M. as the defining sound of American college rock, and he was the founder and frontman of Let’s Active. He is not someone labels hired when they were being careless. He is someone they hired when they believed in a band.
In 1989, rooArt Records, a Sydney label founded by Chris Murphy, the manager of INXS, brought Easter to Australia to record loveBUZZ. The result sounds exactly like what it is: a jangle pop record made by people who understood both the melodic architecture of early R.E.M. and the rhythm-forward aggression of the best power pop of the era. Rickenbacker-bright guitars ring clean on the surface while chuggy downstroke rhythms push hard underneath. The drums, courtesy of Mark Temple, hit with a snare punch that is genuinely rare for the genre. This is jangle pop that has a backbone.
The Hummingbirds formed in Sydney in 1986, rising from the ashes of a band called Bug Eyed Monsters. By the time they recorded loveBUZZ, the lineup was Simon Holmes on vocals and guitar, Alannah Russack on guitar, Robin St. Clair on bass and vocals, and Temple on drums. Their rooArt deal was the kind of moment Australian indie bands dreamed about: a label with resources, an American producer with credentials, and enough advance money to make something real.
The Harmonies Are the Point
Put on headphones. Seriously. loveBUZZ is built around an interlocking vocal architecture that does something most bands in 1989 were not attempting. Simon Holmes anchors the center. Russack and St. Clair weave around him on either side, sometimes harmonizing, sometimes running counter-melodies that cut against the main line rather than reinforcing it. Women singing low while men sing high. Multiple cadences layered over each other in the same bar. The effect on “Alimony” and “Blush” is closer to the Mamas and the Papas than to anything happening in the Sydney indie scene at the time.
This is the album’s most durable strength, and also what holds it together across its more uneven moments. The songwriting ranges from the bright pop precision of “Blush,” which reads like a college radio single that should have happened, to the six-minute shoegaze dirge “House Taken Over,” which sounds fully formed and genuinely interesting but probably belongs on a different release at half its current length. “Word Gets Around” is practically a Buddy Holly song; “If You Leave” closes with a deep, moody female vocal that draws comparisons to Stevie Nicks at her most atmospheric. At fourteen tracks, the album tests its own cohesion. The back half loses steam. There are songs that feel like they arrived at the session from a different band’s rehearsal.
None of that changes what the first eight tracks can do on a good speaker system with the volume up.
The Lemonheads Connection Nobody Talks About
During the recording era, Nic Dalton filled in on bass when Robin St. Clair fell ill. Dalton was Australian, connected to the Sydney scene, and would later become a full member of The Lemonheads. While he was filling in, he and St. Clair were together. They wrote a song during that time, a song called “Into Your Arms.”
Evan Dando heard it. The Lemonheads recorded it. It became their biggest single.
The Hummingbirds gave the Lemonheads their signature song. Most people who know every word of “Into Your Arms” have never heard of the band that wrote it. This is a Natalie Imbruglia situation on a smaller scale, in reverse, with a geo-lock on the original.
Evan Dando’s affection for Australian music ran deep. He covered songs by multiple Australian bands during this period. The cross-pollination between Sydney’s inner-city scene and American college rock is a thread that keeps surfacing when you look at what was actually happening in the late 1980s, and The Hummingbirds sit right at the center of it.
The Label Story
rooArt was not a scrappy indie operation. It was founded by the manager of the biggest Australian rock band in the world at the time, sold to BMG Australia for five million dollars not long after loveBUZZ came out, and eventually had a genuine commercial breakthrough with Ratcat, who went to number one. The Hummingbirds were the label’s second signing. They were the proof of concept.
What the label gave them: a serious budget, Mitch Easter, and a chance at the American market via a Polygram US licensing deal. What the label also gave them, apparently without telling anyone: an unauthorized house remix of “House Taken Over” that a rooArt executive commissioned for the UK market. Electronic drums, a dance beat, the band learning about it after the fact. The Hummingbirds broke up in 1993, leaving behind loveBUZZ, a follow-up record called Va Va Voom (1991), and a catalog that has been stuck behind a geographic firewall ever since.
Simon Holmes died in July 2017, at fifty-four. The band released a compilation of early EPs that year as a tribute. There has been no official remaster of loveBUZZ. The YouTube upload remains.
The Verdict Nobody Agreed On
When Dig Me Out covered loveBUZZ, the hosts split: two voted Worthy Album, one voted Better EP. The community poll came back 80% Better EP. The minority host opinion won the popular vote.
Which is right? The Worthy Album argument: even with its weaker tracks, loveBUZZ contains enough genuinely great material that trimming it to ten songs produces a near-perfect record, and there is no reason to penalize an album for what could be edited out. The Better EP argument: a fourteen-track album that loses altitude in the back half is not a great album, it is a great EP that kept recording. Both positions are defensible. Neither is obviously wrong.
What the split actually reveals is something honest about how the record is constructed. The first eight tracks are locked in: momentum, vocal interplay, guitar architecture that holds under examination. The back six are more variable, occasionally adventurous, frequently unfocused. The closer, “Miles to Go,” builds to a cinematic crescendo and then just stops. “If You Leave,” which precedes it, would have been a far stronger ending.
Is the geo-lock protecting a forgotten masterpiece, or is it making an uneven debut album easier to mythologize than it deserves? Does 80% of the community know something two of the hosts don’t? And what does it mean that a band that opened for The Cure and Dinosaur Jr. is still only accessible to people with an Australian IP address?
Go listen. Then come tell us what you hear.
loveBUZZ is available on streaming within Australia. Outside Australia, the full album is on YouTube. Listen to the full episode and share your verdict in the comments.
Episode Highlights
Intro: Blush: loveBUZZ opens the episode exactly how it should, no preamble, just the single.
1:11: Josh Page returns from Australia: back with his second patron pick, and this one isn’t on US Apple Music.
2:37: The album title before Nirvana: loveBUZZ got its name before Nirvana broke, then the Australian industry came knocking for “the next Nirvana.”
5:05: Band history: from Bug-Eyed Monsters to a Gold record: started in 1986, signed to rooArt (INXS manager’s label), Mitch Easter producing, “Blush” hit ARIA #19, 40,000+ copies sold.
6:09: The Lemonheads connection: Robin St. Clair and Nic Dalton co-wrote “Into Your Arms” while he was filling in for her; the Lemonheads turned it into their biggest hit.
9:03: Into Your Arms (The Lemonheads): clip played to illustrate the co-writing story; this is a Lemonheads track, not a Hummingbirds song, written by St. Clair and Dalton.
13:08: What works: the harmonies: three to four interlocking voices, women singing low, men singing high, more complex than The Bangles and closer to the Mamas and the Papas.
14:19: Alimony: originally an EP single smuggled onto the full album; Chip and Jason both flag it as a standout.
19:17: Get on Down: aggressive rhythm and hooky drum fills give this jangle pop record some actual weight underneath.
22:52: Hollow Inside: multiple hosts call it a keeper; plays during the open what-works discussion.
28:51: House Taken Over: called a “shoegazy dirge” by Jason; Josh reveals a rooArt executive secretly remixed it as a house track for the UK market without telling the band.
33:27: Miles to Go: Chip calls it “half a song”; it builds to a cinematic crescendo and just stops; all four agree it is the wrong album closer.
38:48: If You Leave: deep, moody female vocal with a Stevie Nicks vibe; Josh and Tim agree this should have closed the album instead.
42:08: Verdicts: the hosts split 2-1; the community voted 80% Better EP; the minority position won the popular vote by a wide margin.
Outro: Blush: loveBUZZ opens the episode, and it closes it the same way.
🧠 Have a lost or forgotten album that deserves the spotlight? Suggest it here.
If this hit for you, try these next
Lemonheads: History of the Band: How Evan Dando built one of the most beloved alt-rock catalogs of the 90s, from hardcore roots to melodic breakthroughs.
The Lemonheads: It’s a Shame About Ray: The 1992 album that featured “Into Your Arms,” written by the very people in today’s episode.
Dinosaur Jr. in the 80s: Roundtable: The Hummingbirds toured with Dinosaur Jr.; here’s the full DMO breakdown of what that era sounded like.
