Little River Band is an Australian Rock group, most prominent during the late 70s, and early 80s, mostly in Australia and America. How I found them was through buying a stack of records for next to nothing from an ex DJ, and coming across an album of theirs.

Their music, during their peak, doesn’t sound like most of the music of the time. A lot of the music at that time sounds blatantly electronic (and not in an intentionally ‘electro’ type of way), synthetic, and fake instrumentally, but they were still very organic. Their vocal melodies did sound a bit power-ballady, and 80s sometimes, an example is this:

although it was released in ’79, sounds and styles don’t just pop up out of nowhere, as soon as an ‘era’ begins. What drew me into them, though, which you can also hear in this song, is their harmonising, and layering. At the time, I was really into bands and artists that done a lot of layering, and done it well. Particularly Soul artists and groups, but not exclusively.

The album that I found, and that introduced me to them, is First Under the Wire

which I would recommend to anyone into this area of music. It’s a well put together album, both instrumentally and vocally. They aren’t the strongest vocalists, but the arrangement is very good. I even like the order they put the tracks in, it’s just a really well put together album in general.

And now, here is a song about spending time alone, to reflect, and get to be comfortable with yourself:

and it sounds like, and looks like, an ad for Florida or something, from the 90s, at least the ones that ran in the UK. I know that readers from the UK who are over about 21 will get the reference.

They are still going nowadays, albeit with a different line-up, although I’m not sure what they’re like because I haven’t listened to anything new. There’s a twitter here, called lrb news, that seems like it might be someone from the band running it, or maybe a manager or something, a facebook here, and their website is here.