Album Review: Springloader - Just Like Yesterday (2024)

Well, this is a lovely surprise, and a bit of a trip. An album which started its journey as far back as 1994, finally springing to life in November 2024. 

As the old Mainland Cheese advert used to tell us … “good things take time”. 

Springloader was initially the shared vision of Failsafe Records guru, Rob Mayes (guitars, bass), and founding drummer Dave Toland. In late 1993, with the band still very much in its infancy, they were joined by Michael Oakley (vocals, guitars), and Che Rogers (bass). 

The fledgling album began its rather fragmented life with the earliest recordings in Christchurch in the summer and autumn of 1994. Thirty years on, with a fair bit of interim tweaking, the (not really) ironically titled Just Like Yesterday has finally been released. There was essentially a dry run of the album in 2005, a low key release called Just Like Falling, which featured demo tracks and “as is” recordings of many of the tunes that make up the fully formed album we see today. 

I’ve got to be honest: beyond the music of Supergroove, Strawpeople, and one of two other local acts, much of the first half of the 1990s is a giant vacant void for yours truly when it comes to music from Aotearoa. I do know that it was a highly productive period for the genre we call “New Zealand Music” but because I was based in the UK for much of that era, I missed a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t land on those then-faraway shores. There was no internet back then, kids, and I’ve more or less been playing catch-up ever since.

And I also know - beyond nascent electronica, hip hop, and perhaps a bit of “rave” - one of the most prominent or popular genres in the UK in 1994 was this thing we’ve come to call shoegaze, with bands like Ride, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, plus the even more niche likes of Boo Radleys and Swervedriver, all creating their own unique brands of driving guitar rock. Guitar rock that had an even more distinctive sound than the job-lots of US grunge being imported into the UK at that time. Mostly indie-driven - during an era when the Independent charts mattered more than the pop charts - it was a brand of rock that was fresh and melodic, and one which mostly relied upon its carefully crafted wall-of-sound aesthetic. When done well, especially in a live setting, it could be exhilarating. 

Which is pretty much where Springloader comes in. If the then abandoned album, had somehow - by dint of some miracle - managed to find the ear of one or two of the influential UK radio DJs back in 1994, it may well have been a very big deal. Because when I listen to the title track, which opens proceedings, I’m instantly transported back to the central Glasgow bedsit I occupied for most of that year, and the music on the radio shows I spent most evenings listening to. 

But more than any of that, there’s an experimental bent at play on Just Like Yesterday which might just give the album an important point of difference. Alternate tunings and unorthodox guitar techniques, with Mayes, perhaps better known as a bass player, clearly enjoying the creative freedom that every guitarist-at-heart craves. 

Something that, with the aid of no little post-millennium spit and polish, tends to give it, with accidental reverence to its very title, a degree of timelessness. And there’s a sense that Just Like Yesterday could just as easily have been made during any of the rock n roll eras, bar perhaps, the very first one. 

‘Just Like Yesterday’ (the track) really is the perfect title track and advance single. An almost Byrdsian indie power-pop gem, it also offers us an early taster of one or two of the more unorthodox guitar settings that then go on to proliferate the rest of the album. 

There’s a good balance of higher tempo tracks (‘Nothing I Want More’, ‘Looking Out For You’) and more introspective slower tunes (‘Closer To Further Away’, ‘All That I Want’) before the album builds to a couple of dense near mini-epics in the form of ‘One More Thing’ and ‘Too Close’, nearer the end. 

At ten tracks, clocking in at around 45 minutes, Just Like Yesterday feels a bit more than the mere sum of its parts. Whatever else it might be, for me, it is already working as a stylistic reference point to a particular time and place. Which is never a bad thing to be. And yet, yet … as alluded to above, it’s not really that at all. 

It’s an album that comes complete with its very own very-rock n roll backstory. A story that has taken some 30 years to be told. A story told in quite some detail in the extensive sleeve notes that come with the release. The story of a previously lost album finally being found. 

The sleeve notes also offer a lot of other stuff - lyrics and chords - that for the most part can be filed away in the drawer labelled: Unrepentant Guitar Nerd Stuff. 

(Everyone has a drawer with that label, right?) 

And bonus upon bonus, if the accompanying press release is to be believed, there’s already a follow-up album locked and loaded to go for Springloader in 2025. 

Check it out the Springloader Bandcamp page (here).