custard

Custard emerged as an Australian band that fused Pavement and Pixies-style intelligent pop with the humor associated with Violent Femmes or Ween. The musicians first assembled in Brisbane during 1989 under the name Custard Gun. David McCormack handled guitar and vocals while Shane Bruun played drums, James Straker contributed lead guitar for a couple of early shows, and Paul Medew covered bass; that configuration cut the initial single “Rockfish Anna.” Straker departed at the beginning of 1990, prompting the adoption of the shortened name Custard.

After receiving the Australian Academy of Music’s Encouragement Award in 1991, the group added bank teller Matthew Strong on lead guitar. Strong’s financial support—one-third of the pressing costs—made possible the vinyl edition of “Rockfish Anna.” The award also supplied $500 worth of studio time, which the band used to track roughly thirteen songs in a single eight-hour session; those recordings became the dual-titled debut album Buttercup/Bedford, whose artwork alternated between the two names. Manufacturing delays stranded the CD in Canada for eight months.

During intervening tours to Sydney and Melbourne, Custard signed with the newly formed RA imprint, a rooArt subsidiary established by INXS manager Chris Murphy to promote Australian acts abroad. Drummer Shane Bruun stepped aside for Gavin Herrenburg. RA requested an EP, so the band drew one preexisting track and five fresh cuts from the Buttercup/Bedford sessions to create Gastanked. Another EP followed, accompanied by yet another drummer change as Danny Plant replaced Herrenburg.

The first full-length RA album, Wahooti Fandango, was tracked at Brisbane’s Sunshine Studios, the same facility used by the Go-Betweens. Around the same period David McCormack and Glenn Thompson joined ex-Go-Between Robert Forster to record his album Calling From a Country Phone at Sunshine.

When Frank Black toured Australia in 1994, Custard secured support dates and befriended Eric Drew Feldman, who played bass and had produced Frank Black’s solo records. Feldman agreed to produce the next album, Weisenheimer, which was cut in San Francisco and yielded the single “Apartment,” among the most popular Australian independent tracks of 1995.

With Glenn Thompson now on drums, the band toured the United States alongside Redd Kross and the Presidents of the United States of America. At the tour’s conclusion they recorded We Have the Technology in Memphis and San Francisco, again under Feldman’s guidance. The exhaustive schedule and resulting homesickness marked a turning point, extinguishing ambitions of widespread success and fracturing numerous personal and professional relationships inside and around the group.

In October of 1988 the members reconvened from various parts of Australia to make Lovearama with Australian producer Magoo of Regurgitator. The fourteen tracks, clocking in at forty-two minutes, introduced a tongue-in-cheek “disco” flavor to Custard’s customary hook-driven style. Although the band refused to tour for six months, the single “Girls Like That (Don’t Go for Guys Like Us)” came close to delivering the commercial breakthrough long anticipated.

Faced with a contract renewal in mid-2000, Custard opted to disband instead and assembled the career retrospective Goodbye Cruel World. Singer David McCormack, the principal architect of the band’s songs and sound, subsequently launched the Titanics, an outgrowth of Custard and his concurrent solo and side projects.