LABURNUM OF THE MIND - 2026 album by Dave Graney and Clare Moore

 

                                          photo Meredith O'Shea

Dave Graney and Clare Moore have their new album, Laburnum Of The

 Mind, a rock album.

Its out at all streaming outlets April 30th but can already be obtained at 

record shops in Australia and at shows. 

“When we say “rock” I guess we would be thinking of The Doors, Wire, 

Urge Overkill, Steely Dan, Queens Of the Stone Age, The Replacements, 

Pulp, Roxy Music The Fall, The Blue Oyster Cult and those kinds of tones.

 Those kinds of lyrical flights and suspensions. Bo Diddley and Latin beats 

and diminished and augmented chords. Expensive inversions. Flash stuff. 

 Though there is also a lot of dumb, irrational, loose and goofy as well”.

The first seven tracks are all pretty upbeat and in the pocket grooves. 

Backbeats abound. Then it gets freaky with the title track, Laburnum Of 

The Mind and the diss song from out of time, Little Bands Suck.

“It’s our first NEW release on vinyl since the original age of vinyl in the 

early 90s. It’s available digitally and on Compact Disc as well”.

Available through Magnetic South as a vinyl record. 

Contact Dave Lang dave@magneticsouth.com.au

 

The vinyl record does not ccontain the song "People I Think About".

All instruments are played by Dave Graney and Clare Moore with mistLY 

guitarist Stuart Perera guesting on two tracks. Recorded in Melbourne at 

Soundpark with Idge, mixed by Dave Graney and Clare Moore and 

mastered by Idge.

Cover art by Tony Mahony who has done all the visual imagery for Dave 

Graney and Clare Moore since 1992. 

Laburnum is a stop on the Belgrave train line from the CBD to the outer 

suburbs of South East Melbourne. Not a suburb, a stop. 

 

 

The first song to be released as a lead track is Hits Are The Worst. A 

Doorsy groove with a very late 60s chordal deal and flow. Think (?) Brian 

Auger, Traffic or The Zombies. The vocal mixed right up front. The words?

 Like the music, “flash and expensive but dumb, loose and goofy too. 

 Highly illogical..

 

 

 

Second single from the forthcoming Dave Graney and Clare Moore album, 

LABURNUM OF THE MIND.

I Ain't Got No Float is an R&B groover with a drop D funk chugg to it. 

Rhythmic switchbacks and asides that summon the very Dan. Lots of 

space to it and some post punk white pepper on those clean, 

asymmetrical 

guitar licks. Clare Moore rocking straight through it like Bonzo or Paul 

Cook.

Dave Graney on guitars and bass and vocals.

Clare Moore on drums, keyboard and backing vocals.

Video shot by Dave Graney and Will Hindmarsh aka Twinkle Digitz at Wills 

studio and some scenes around Boronia Mall.

Contains background images by Tony Mahony.

Australian made 1960s Vibralux GA12 guitar amplifier sourced by John 

Brown, Tasmania. 

 

We will be making every attempt to play shows with Stuart Perera on guitar

 (since 1998) and Stu Thomas on bass (since 2004). Dave Graney and

 the mistLY.

                                    photo Amber Schmidt

One of the last times we played in Melbourne, writer David Pepperell had 

this to say about our show...

"Last week I had the great pleasure of seeing the witty, urbane and totally 

delightful Dave Graney and Band at the Ember Room in the wilds of St. 

Kilda. It was a total musical experience involving Dave's erudite, 

observational songs - perhaps even fables in the style of Aesop - plus 

playing that was really a tickle to the ear. Dave performs his compositions 

with such elan and sophistication that he draws you into his world and 

holds you there until the last note of the night. Singer-Songwriters often 

seem self-obsessed but to me Dave sings about a world he would like to 

live in and possibly thinks by singing said songs he could bring that about. 

He sings well too - and his guitar playing was exemplary all through the 

show. Stuart Perera’s perfectly aligned Rickenbercker playing, smooth 

bassist Stu Thomas and his very charming wife Clare Moore on drums 

provided him with a solid foundation to elucidate his dreams and 

inspirations - songs with character and belief plus a very wry view of this 

maybe crumbling world. Dave is a gem, polished to a high sheen, rare in 

the current charivari that one has to endure when sampling the music 

scene these days. He is not to be missed - I have not had such a 

pleasurable night out in years. He is certainly at his peak now after battling 

around the traps for some years - get out and see him while he still takes 

such enjoyment in presenting his creations to you all".

*************************************************************************************

 

Sunday April 26th – 2-4pm hopefully in the beer garden - Dave Graney 

and the mistLY at The Retreat- Sydney Rd Brunswick

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/dave-graney-the-mistly-album-launch-laburnum-of-the-mind-tickets-1984854590511

Friday May 15th – Murray Delta Juke Joint, Goolwa

https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1554441

Saturday May 16th - the Wheaty in Adelaide

https://tickets.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/4672e8ec-6cc6-478d-bcd7-23e0c963d336

Sunday May 31^st Sunday – Young St Tavern, Frankston

https://events.humanitix.com/davey-graney-and-clare-moore-laburnum-of-the-mind-hits-are-the-worst

Thursday June 4th – Smiths, Canberra

https://www.smithsalternative.com/events/dave-graney-and-clare-moore-95853

Friday June 5th - Marrickville Bowlo Sydney

https://tickets.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/55fd8421-18f3-468e-b608-c4c824fc5e1c

Saturday June 6th - the Heritage, Bulli NSW

https://codeone.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/8b62279b-47e8-4ba6-a764-fa0556d27e0b

 

Friday June 12th – the Link and Pin, Woy Woy NSW

https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1557903

Saturday June 13th – Stag and Hunter, Newcastle NSW

https://stagandhunter.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/dd822c28-4407-4804-bd24-4741ef16d9f6

Sunday June 14th – The Flow Bar, Old Bar NSW

https://www.dramatix.com.au/events/2379

 

Sunday July 11th - 12th – Mullum Roots Festival, Mullumbimby NSW

https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1413705

 

Friday July 24^th Courthouse Theatre – Geelong Vic

https://www.trybooking.com/DKWQW

Friday July 31^st Banshees Ipswich Qld

https://bansheesbar.com.au/event/laburnum

Saturday August 1^{st -} Eudlo Hall, Eudlo QLD

 

Sunday August 2^nd Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane Qld

 

Friday August 28th – The Duke Of George, Fremantle WA

https://moshtix.com.au/v2/event/dave-graney-and-clare-moores-album-launch/193045

 

Saturday August 29th – Lyrics Lane – Perth, WA

https://lyricsunderground.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/258b00ea-72b9-49dd-95b4-151fb82924f8

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes 30th Anniversary Soft and Sexy Sound Tour update.

 The Soft and Sexy Sound 30th Anniversary tour is happening. Fremantle Social Club and the Rivers Hotel in Margaret River, WA are up next. Six shows down and 15 to go.

We play the Soft n Sexy Sound album in the first set. The same sequence / running order as on the album. Then we take a break and then play another set of rockers.

Photos by Amber Schmidt from the show at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne. Lighting by Deb Hatton.

 Here's a great review of our Sydney show.

 

Ticket links ......

Friday Oct 24th Freo Social, Fremantle WA

Saturday Oct 25th, The River Hotel, Margaret River WA

Friday Oct 31st, Brisbane Crowbar QLD

Saturday Nov 1st, The Imperial, Eumundi QLD

Sunday Nov 2nd, Mo's Desert Clubhouse, Gold Coast QLD

Friday Nov 7th, Byron Bay Theatre NSW

Saturday Nov 8th, Bellingen Memorial Hall NSW

Thursday Nov 13th, King Street Bandroom, Newcastle

Friday Nov 14th, Avoca Beach Theatre NSW

Saturday Nov 15th, The Lounge, Chatswood NSW

Sunday afternoon Nov 16th, Dangar Island Bowlo NSW

Friday Nov 21st, The Gov, Adelaide SA

Friday Nov 28th, Royal Oak, Launceston TAS

Saturday Nov 29th, The Pier, Ulverstone TAS

Sunday Nov 30th, Longley International Hotel, Longley TAS

 

 

*************

Just before the tour started I was asked to sing a  song with the
Beasts Of Bourbon as they reprised their 80s album Black Milk at the Forum in Melbourne. It was nice spending the day with old friends and also newer friends such as Cash Savage and Dan Brodie. Phots by Amber Schmidt.

 

 

We spent a week in Sydney before the tour started, mostly seeing some visiting friends from Edinburgh but we also did some media for the tour. Took the new driverless Metro train across to North Sydney from the inner west in ten minutes and walked on to the set of Channel 9s Today Extra. Talked with David Campbell and Belinda Russell who welcomed me very warmly and were total  pros. (Belinda  chucked her phone to a floor manager to take this shot)

 We also spoke with Michael Rowland at ABC Radio National, Mick Molloy and his team at MMM Breakfast in Melbourne, Clara Slewa at RRR, Toby Creswell at Eastside FM and Tony Moclair at Melbournes 3AW.

 Clare Moore and I also got invited to a night at Victorias Government House for a music related night. The Governor and Arts Minister both name checked Nick Cave and Henry Rollins.

 

 

These shots are from our show Bundelaguah. Live at the Bundy. A hall in the middle of some paddocks near Sale, Victoria. A great BYO situtation run by local music enthusiasts. Fantastic gear and great people!

 

Robin Casinader has been great on the tour. Pulling amazing sounds at the beginning from his keyboard, his mellotron, his ipad and his phone.  It was challenging at the start but he has pared it down a little and sounding great.

 

Clare Moore and I have also been finishing up our album for 2026 release. Its a tocking album. We play everything, started it in December 2023 when we thought Soundpark was closing. It's all pretty much finished, including the cover image. 

Dave Graney and Clare Moore regional shows in Ararat, Camden (NSW), and Cronulla and then its the Soft n Sexy Sound 30th Anniversary tour

 

Early  August sees some regional dates by Dave Graney and Clare Moore

Wednesday 6^thAugust – Town Hall, Ararat. 7:30-pm

Friday August 8^th, Camden Estate NSW 4:30pm

Sunday 10^thAugust, Brass Monkey Cronulla. Doors 12:30pm music at 2pm.

"Dave Graney ‘n’ the Coral Snakes 30th anniversary tour for the Soft ‘n’ Sexy Sound album is happening in October-November.The rehearsals have begun and it’s great getting into a lot of songs that we rarely or never played. It was a really deeply serious set of songs. Deep Inside A Song, Scorched Earth Love Affair, the Pre Revolutionary Scene, Morrison Floorshow, I’m Not Afraid To Be Heavy, I’m Gonna Live In My Own Big World, Rock n Roll Is Where I Hide, The Birds And The Goats, Dandies Are Never Unbuttoned and more! A thing of it’s own. Produced by Victor Van Vugt. Great art by Tony Mahony, including our genre/logo AOART. There were also little messages all over the booklet alluding to the times such as Tenez Le Droit, Baby. That was the motto of the Victorian Police and Melbourne in the first half of the 90s was a scene of police and gangland revenge and retribution due to the Walsh st shootings. There was some other text floating around, "Whiskey Fast and Honey Slow" which is a line from a Tim Buckley song which I thought could have described some of the music. Also "Woe Is You", which appears in the song Outward Bound and which I thought encapsulated the angst free but not necessarily meek and mild stance from which I was delivering the conceptual bombs of which the album was made. 

The music is sounding great. There have only been a couple of times since we recorded it that I have sat and listened to this record intensely. I am so proud of it. Really no weak part to it. Diverse? Hell yes! Made under pressure. Victors recording and production was amazing. I am sorry if I never thanked him enough. Cannot believe how he recorded some of the vocals so well at almost a whispered volume. 

We will be playing the entire album in order and then another set of songs from albums before and after. Join us!

 

                     Robin Casinader, Clare Moore, Dave Graney, Stu Thomas and Rod Hayward

                                                        photo by Meredith Oshea

 Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes 30th Anniversary edition of the Soft n Sexy Sound at Apple Music. 7 extra B side tracks and 9 extra tracks from a live performance with strings at the Melbourne Concert Hall in 1996.



Ticket links....



Friday Oct 3rd Factory Theatre, Marrickville, Sydney

Saturday Oct 4th Waves, Wollongong, NSW

Sunday Oct 5th The Street Theatre, Canberra

Friday Oct 10th, The Corner Hotel, Richmond, Vic

Saturday Oct 11th, Bundy Hall, Bundalaguah VIC

Friday Oct 24th Freo Social, Fremantle WA

Saturday Oct 25th, The River Hotel, Margaret River WA

Friday Oct 31st, Brisbane Crowbar QLD

Saturday Nov 1st, The Imperial, Eumundi QLD

Sunday Nov 2nd, Mo's Desert Clubhouse, Gold Coast QLD

Friday Nov 7th, Byron Bay Theatre NSW

Saturday Nov 8th, Bellingen Memorial Hall NSW

Thursday Nov 13th, King Street Bandroom, Newcastle

Friday Nov 14th, Avoca Beach Theatre NSW

Saturday Nov 15th, The Lounge, Chatswood NSW

Sunday afternoon Nov 16th, Dangar Island Bowlo NSW

Friday Nov 21st, The Gov, Adelaide SA

Friday Nov 28th, Royal Oak, Launceston TAS

Saturday Nov 29th, The Pier, Ulverstone TAS

Sunday Nov 30th, Longley International Hotel, Longley TAS

*************

A recent interview with Dave Graney and Clare Moore for HiFi Way.

Listen Carefully podcast interview with Dave Graney- 32 minutes.

Listen Carefully podcast interview with Clare Moore - 30 minutes. 



 

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes Soft and Sexy Sound 30th Anniversary Tour October-November 2025

 

 

“The Soft ‘n’ Sexy Sound. 1995. Gold status. ARIA award for Best Male Artist (I called it “king of pop” as that sounded less pretentious). Rock’n’Roll Is Where I Hide, I’m Not Afraid To Be Heavy, Apollo 69, Morrison Floorshow.

Looking forward to getting back into this Shelby GT500 of an album for a celebratory tour. (The previous year’s album You Wanna Be There But You Don’t Wanna Travel had been a Monaro GTS and Night Of The Wolverine was of course a Second Hand Ford. The Devil Drives - a Statesmen ‘73 Caprice/leaded – lay in wait in the future).

Great to be playing with guitar master Rod Hayward and Robin Casinader on keys again. Robin insists we play the album in order so we are going to do just that. Then a set of classics from our corner of rock from before and after 1995. Stu Thomas will be joining with us on the bass guitar (as we call it in the business). The bass guitar. Count us in Clare Moore - Queen Of The Tubs- and see you at a show!” 

 

Friday Oct 3rd Factory Theatre, Marrickville, Sydney

Saturday Oct 4th Waves, Wollongong, NSW

Sunday Oct 5th The Street Theatre, Canberra

Friday Oct 10th, The Corner Hoyel, Richmond, Vic

Saturday Oct 11th, Bundy Hall, Bundalaguah VIC

Friday Oct 24th Freo Social, Fremantle WA

Saturday Oct 25th, The River Hotel, Margaret River WA

Friday Oct 31st, Brisbane Crowbar QLD

Saturday Nov 1st, The Imperial, Eumundi QLD

Sunday Nov 2nd, Mo's Desert Clubhouse, Gold Coast QLD

Friday Nov 7th, Byron Bay Theatre NSW

Saturday Nov 8th, Bellingen Memorial Hall NSW

Thursday Nov 13th, King Street Bandroom, Newcastle

Friday Nov 14th, Avoca Beach Theatre NSW

Saturday Nov 15th, The Lounge, Chatswood NSW

Sunday afternoon Nov 16th, Dangar Island Bowlo NSW

Friday Nov 21st, The Gov, Adelaide SA

Friday Nov 28th, Royal Oak, Launceston TAS

Saturday Nov 29th, The Pier, Ulverstone TAS

Sunday Nov 30th, Longley International Hotel, Longley TAS

                                            *************

 

The roundabout way we took to make the Soft n Sexy Sound.

Didn’t somebody smarter than me say that life is what happens while you plan to do something else?

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes started in London 1987 after Clare Moore and I finished up with the Moodists. Gordy Blair on bass, Louis Vause on piano and Malcolm Ross on guitar. Recorded for Fire Records. Had to return to Australia in late ‘88 due to visa problems we recorded an album for Fire in Melbourne with the White Buffaloes who included Rod Hayward on guitar, Conway Savage (who later left to join the Bad Seeds) on piano and Chris Walsh (ex the Moodists) on bass. (Called My Life On The Plains and produced by Phil Vinall who came over from London. He later returned to produce Magic Dirt). Returned to the UK in 1990 to reunite with the Coral Snakes and pick up where we left off. Recorded I Was The Hunter And I Was The Prey with Phil Vinall again producing in a studio in Croydon. A major indie distribution company went under, taking many small labels with it and the album was put into a state of suspense-limbo-of unknown destination so Clare Moore and I returned to Australia. All through 1991-2 we played in Melbourne and Sydney as Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes with Rod Hayward and Robin Casinader on keys. We played shows without a bass player which we called “Soft and Sexy shows” as they were a different approach to our normal sets, focusing more on vocals and song arrangements and textures. We listened to a lot of classic reggae and KD Langs’ Ingenue album.

Gordy Blair came out to play with us for six months before returning to the UK. A live show from this time was recorded and released as Lure Of the Tropics. We also played with the late Andrew Picouleau on bass. In 12 months in 1992-3 we released I Was The Hunter and I Was The Prey, Lure Of The Tropics and Night Of The Wolverine. The latter really came out of the Soft and Sexy semi acoustic shows we had been doing. It had no bass on half of it and was produced with Tony Cohen.

We signed with ID records and toured outside of inner city Melbourne and Sydney for the first time, working nationally opening for Hunters and Collectors and then the Cruel Sea and then a national tour of our own. To do these dates we had to get louder and funkier and this led to the album You Wanna Be There But You Don’t Wanna Travel, again produced with the late Tony Cohen in 1994. This album debuted top 10 in Australia. (It featured I’m Gonna Release Your Soul and The Stars, Baby).

We played all kinds of outdoor festivals and live tv shows. Clare Moore began collecting exotic vinyl (which was abundant in op shops then) in all the new regional towns we were visiting and we listened to a lot of hip hop and trip hop , country, Brazilian music and jazz (pilfered from the Universal Records offices) which led to us thinking of recording an album with more attention to textures and arrangements than just recording a performance as if it was a live show. We recorded the Soft and Sexy Sound with Victor Van Vugt producing. Victor had left Australia with the Moodists as a teenager and had stayed in the UK as a live mixer for Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, The Pogues and the Fall and many other artists. He had started working in the studio more and had come back to Melbourne. He knew what we wanted, Clare Moore and I were of a very UK music sensibility.
We spent a lot of time rehearsing the songs and recorded it all at AAV in Melbourne. Robin Casinader scored a lot of strings for it. On the last day of rehearsal I showed everybody a song I had written called Rock n Roll Is Where I Hide. I had it all totally arranged. The band kicked into it really easily and we put that down as well. It was the least Soft ‘n’ Sexy sounding song of all but it was the one which people tuned into and it became one of the songs we have been most associated with. It went for six minutes and had no chorus and the title appeared nowhere in the lyric. It was weird and it rocked. It helped that we had a classic rock guitarist in Rod Hayward to really drive the insistent guitar motif right out of the world. It was released in 1995 and went Gold in 1996 (I got my gold record made with gold ropes so I could wear it around my neck, hip hop style) and I was awarded an ARIA for Best Male Artist. (This award had previously been shared around between Barnesy, Farnesy and Deisel). 

Up until that we had been inside a small label - ID - which was inside the large coroporation that was Universal Records. (Universal had a catalogue of LABELS. One person looked after MOTOWN and ISLAND. They also had Polydor, Phonogram, Polygram, Def Jam....It was huge.) We were benefiting from the power and range of the big machine. When I won the award people outside the ID label noticed us. It had been quite sweet until then.

We had already recorded our next album The Devil Drives and Clare Moore and I took it to London to mix with some trip hop adjacent studio people the day after the 1996 awards. Both Night Of The Wolverine and The Soft n Sexy Sound were released on This Way Up in the UK/ Europe in 1996. 

 

******EXCERPTS FROM WORKSHY in regard to The Soft 'n' Sexy Sound

The Soft ’N’ Sexy recording session was quite fraught. Clare Moore and I had communicated our wish to Victor the producer for the aesthetic drive to be more towards the recording of songs and sounds and textures than the recording of a band, but we/I had not communicated this very well to the rest of the Coral Snakes. Our music had been produced by the live music scene we’d been playing in. It had been heated up and cooked, and the tempos were tight and the choruses were signposted. The snares cracked and the guitars were loud. Now we were asking the band to try and get some feels such as ‘dread’ into tracks by playing slower and being less quick to climax. Tension. We wanted to grind things out. This was hard to articulate at the recording stage.

Again, I had brought about twenty songs to the pre-production and rehearsing sessions, which ran almost straight into the recording dates that had been booked. Times for photo sessions and video production were also being nutted out, vaguely. It was a situation of industrial music being pulled into a production line, but it was great to be making music for a waiting audience and business.

The songs I was writing were a kind of reaction against the world of the big festival/grunge-era music we were in the middle of. It had a kind of orthodoxy about it that I found pretty corny. Clare Moore and I had come from the 1980s and that underworld scene. Post-Nirvana, there were younger acts getting easy rides from high school into recording and touring situations. That was a new normal to them but it didn’t make for very funky music. And the way it went straight to large festival stage dimensions with attendant big gestures and PAs ruined the sound as well. It wasn’t a situation where individual or unique sounds could be brought out. Nobody sound-checked and you had to go on and hit hard with your best-known and most powerful hits. A big contrast to the 60s festivals where people like Hendrix presented new material to audiences who expected surprises. Nobody in this world knew of our former band, the Moodists, and we didn’t drag that period into view. We were happy to play in this new situation. Our peers from that era, the Go-Betweens and the Triffids, had not really made it into the new decade as yet. For Kim Salmon, who was a peer we could look across to and check our co-ordinates, the 90s were all about the Surrealists, not the Scientists.

And though I’d bought Jeff Buckley’s first EP, I couldn’t stand all the people who copied him. There was no restraint! I preferred Waylon Jennings – and I’d also heard a lot of Tim Buckley’s music. The late Jeff’s story and approach had a lot of the 90s in it. The angst and the damage and the howling.

Rock’n’Roll is Where I Hide

All this unease with my surroundings and the general pop zeitgeist fed into a song called ‘Rock’n’Roll is Where I Hide’, which eventually drove the album to Gold Status in Australia and kept us touring it for two years. This song was actually the raw sound of our band; it had none of the textures and production or arrangement quirks we approached on the other songs on The Soft ’N’ Sexy Sound.

I’d walked around the streets and experienced a couple of years of people clocking me as some sort of face they had seen recently in the paper or on TV. That sort of attention is maddening. Because you enjoy it – it’s flattering, but weird. It creeps you out and rots your poise. I had always been the sort to stand back and observe people and situations, like a crime writer. I was never jumping on tables and wanting to be the centre of attention. Now I was feeling that power, or that way of being, being taken away from me. People were looking at me. They’d sit behind me at cafés …

There was also the uncomfortable way I sat with the rest of the grunge-era music life. The scene was all these long-haired, cargo-shorted, tribal-tattooed, dreadlocked, shirtless young athletic men yelling about ‘awesome’ things and acting out in ‘full on’ prankish manners. I wouldn’t say I was contrarian in nature, I just preferred to identify as a country man than a dude. Not that new kind of a dude anyway.

The music for ‘Rock’n’roll is Where I Hide’ was a three-chord trick with one note pedalling throughout, all the way, for six minutes. It was coming from some sort of a hypnotic mantra direction. In other ways, it was totally springing from my youthful listening to Southern Rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers. I had the perfect band to bring it to life. Rod Hayward’s guitar skills were so great. Beautiful tone from his old Strat and his Marshall amp. Precise chording and stellar soloing. The groove from Gordy and Clare Moore was amazing, and Robin Casinader built the electric piano dynamics like a true player.