RECORD TURNOVER 80s HITS #83
Normil Hawaiians was a British post-punk that are notoriously hard to pin down. Weirder than A Certain Ratio and more improvisational than This Heat, they’d been a part of the London scene around labels like Dining Out (who released their 1980 debut single). They later signed with Illuminated Records and a revamped line-up of the group retired to rural Wales, living and recording as a commune with the assistance of Dave Anderson (Hawkwind, Amon Düül II). The resulting double-LP More Wealth Than Money was released in 1982 and is perhaps their ultimate statement – one foot resting in their bleak post-punk past and the other in more pastoral experimentalism that speaks to the solitude of nature. They come together in the two closing tracks “Left Alone With Her Pipe” and “Traveling West” that stretch across the fourth side of the record. In recent years Upset the Rhythm have reissued their output.
