Who remembers Angie Hart?

I do. I don't think anybody who lived in Australia in the nineties can quite forget how unique Angie's sweet soulful vocals were and still are.

The first conscious memory of mine has to be of Frente!'s Ordinary Angels from their 1992 Clunk EP.



This quirky and engaging pop song was the perfect vehicle for Angie's pixie like voice. When Clunk proved to be a commercial success (Ordinary Angels being the 20th best selling single on that year's ARIA charts), Frente! began work on their first album "Marvin the Album" with it's ode to urban Australiana "Accidently Kelly Street". Then something unexpected happened. Maybe the constant radio and TV saturation of the single was too much, I can't really speculate but the backlash against Frente! had begun. People who had heard the single were split into two extremes, those who got into the quirky light-hearted nature of the new release and those who absolutely loathed it. The latter was the clear majority at the time.

I too, being a self conscious teenager in the mid nineties, also shied away from Frente!. In between Frente!'s first and second albums, Angie recorded a single with Pop! called Tingly. Pop! was a one-off pop outing that wasn't repeated and once again I was enraptured with Angie's distinct and unforgettable voice. I owned this CD single way back in the 90s but unfortunately it was in one of 2 boxes of CDs which has gone to a certain person's house and never came back (You know who you are Missflea!).

In 1994, The "Lonely" EP was released with it's B-side, a cover of New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle". The reduction of the largely synthesizer driven original with it's 4/4 beat and prominent baseline to a minimal arrangement of just a guitar arpeggio and a vocal part proved to be a smooth move and and it became an unexpected hit that gave Frente! a lot of international recognition. Angie's female vocals gave the track a distinctly different feel to the original with Bernard Sumner's male vocals and I think this contributed a lot to the song's popularity.



The song's simple and unpretentious treatment of the original 's melody make it, in my mind, the most memorable and emotive of Frente!'s work.

Soon after the release of Frente!'s second album the band broke up and Angie left these shores to pursue a further music career in the United States. So a decade later I thought i would never hear Angie's angelic voice in a song again when I ran across a post in Zeon's blog about her. I soon rediscovered what I loved most about Angie's version of "Bizarre Love Triangle" in her cover of the Cure's "Pictures of You". Those little moments of reflection you have when you find a quiet part of the day to have a nice, slow listen.

Listen to "Pictures of you" and other songs at Angie's myspace.