Day After Day #249: Bittersweet

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Bittersweet (1985)

Some bands are sneaky good. Sometimes you notice them, sometimes you don't and before you know it, they've amassed a catalog full of great songs. The Hoodoo Gurus are one of those bands.

Formed in Australia in 1981, the band was originally known as Le Hoodoo Gurus and had a lineup with three guitarists (Dave Faulkner, Roddy Radalj and Kimble Rendall) and a drummer (James Baker), playing punk-edged pop. They released their first single, "Leilani," in October 1982 and soon dropped the "Le" from their name. Rendall and Radalj soon left the group and were replaced by bassist Clyde Bramley and guitarist Brad Shepherd.

The Gurus released their debut album, Stoneage Romeos, in 1984. It's a strong collection of catchy garage rock. In addition to hitting #29 on the Australian album chart, the band had some success in the U.S. on college radio, especially the song "I Want You Back." Baker was let go in the summer of '84 and replaced by Mark Kingsmill, who joined the band on their first U.S. tour. 

The second Hoodoo Gurus album was 1985's Mars Needs Guitars!, a takeoff on the 1967 sci-fi movie Mars Needs Women. Faulkner, who wrote and sang most of the band's songs, was front and center on the album's masterful first single, "Bittersweet."

Years later on the band's website, Faulkner wrote that as they were working on the second album, "I vowed to myself that I would write less comic narratives and try to express my sentiments in a more forthright way. I feel I succeeded with BITTERSWEET though at the time I didn't think that a) the band would want to play it and b) our audience would want to hear it. I was happily wrong on both counts."

The song starts slowly before the full band kicks in.

"You are my sword/Your love is its own reward/My heart, I have found/Gets carved surely by the pound/God knows I tried/Tried to hold you with all my might/But time has won/And I could never be that strong/I couldn't be that strong/(Don't cry) that used to be my favorite song/(Don't cry) Tears so bittersweet/(Don't cry) fill my eyes whenever we meet/It's always bittersweet."

For a group whose first album was named after a Three Stooges short and whose first video featured the band backed up by stop-motion plastic dinosaurs, this was a definite tonal shift. At least for a song, anyway. After all, this is on an album called Mars Needs Guitars and the next single was "Like Wow - Wipeout." But while the lyrics have the protagonist pining over a lost love, the music is uplifting, pushing the lovelorn sap to move on.

"We've grown and times change/When we meet now it feels so strange/Well, I hold you like a sword/And you won't cut me, cut me like you did before/It's always bittersweet."

It's 3-and-a-half minutes of power pop perfection. Although it didn't chart here, the song went to #16 on the Australian singles chart and the album hit #5 (it broke onto the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S., topping out at #140). The Gurus were getting known around the world and opened for the Bangles on a two-month tour. Subsequent albums performed slightly better in the U.S. as the band got play on MTV's 120 Minutes for songs like "What's My Scene," "Come Anytime" and "Miss Freelove '69."

But as the '90s wore on, the Gurus found less success in the U.S. After 1991's Kinky, which hit #170 on the Billboard 200, the band's next three albums didn't chart here at all. The band split up in 1998 and reunited in 2003, releasing three albums since, the most recent being 2022's Chariot of the Gods. 

In the fall of 2020, the Gurus were set to do their first tour of the U.S. in 10 years, but it was postponed because of some minor outbreak that happened that year. I had a ticket to see them in Boston, but it was pushed back to the fall of '21, and then that got pushed to 2022 because the Australian government had banned international travel for Australian residents for the rest of 2021. I never did see them in 2022, but a buddy of mine had an extra ticket for their show in Boston tomorrow night and I am finally going. They're playing Stoneage Romeos in its entirety and then a second set of their hits, likely including "Bittersweet." So that should be great fun indeed.