Tall Dwarfs, Three Songs (12" EP)

1981's Three Songs defines the Tall Dwarfs' model that the duo of Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate sustained for over 20 years.  Song structures are very simple, drawing from classic pop history.  All three songs on this EP proved memorable ones in Tall Dwarfs' catalog, especially the A-side "Nothing's Going to Happen" — their intuitive sensibilities were already fully-formed.  The arrangements' simplicity, however, draws far less from history.  Instead, the duo rely on their own limited resources to define their palette.  Songs are built with tape loops, acoustic and electric guitars, toy keyboards, and vocals, with only some of these elements in each song.  No particular effort was made to flatter any of the sounds, but the mixes fit together intuitively.  This extremely austere approach to home recording defined a prototype for the "lo-fi" sensibility that grew popular more than a decade later.  The treble sounds nice and clean here (on my 1985 reissue pressing), but there's no low-end in the arrangements.  My reissue preserves the funny set of faces drawn on the front cover, but replaced the original back with a much simpler design.