Miracle Legion’s The Backyard Revisited

Released in 1984, Miracle Legion’s The Backyard EP sounded like a warmer, more intimate counterpart to R.E.M. classics like Murmur and Reckoning.

In the latest edition of Records Revisited, David and Juan return to this cult favourite of the ’80s college rock era.

Juan – Revisiting The Backyard

Like many elder millennials, my introduction to Miracle Legion started through their wonderful offshoot, Polaris. Having become the soundtrack to my adolescence, I’d essentially memorised the music they’d recorded for the original material featured on the children’s Nick show, The Adventure of Pete and Pete. But while Polaris seems like too easy an introduction for someone like David, given its excellent jangle tunes, I thought I’d go back to the very beginning.

Released in 1984, The Backyard sounded like a warmer, more intimate counterpart to R.E.M’s classic records, Murmur and Reckoning. While early R.E.M albums delighted with their impressionistic poeticisms, Miracle Legion cut straight to the heart by building a world filled with wonder and self-discovery. Channeled through its immaculate jangle, an instrument that in itself evokes strong feelings of wistfulness, the EP’s title track makes you feel like the rest of your life is about to unravel. “The world was so big, and I was so small,” frontperson Mark Mulcahy sings in his signature quavering voice, illustrating one’s loss of innocence simply but effectively.

Meanwhile, the songs here cruise by with an effortlessness that, while heavily indebted to ’80s college rock, provides a different side from the usual bands dropped from the era, like The Replacements and Dinosaur Jr. Jangle pop bands eventually became dime-a-dozen, but as tracks like “Butterflies” and “Stephen, Are You There?” demonstrate, Mulcahy and his bandmates always added little dissonant touches that stood out from the more straightforward folk-rock direction bands like The Feelies took. On both tracks, I even hear the smoothed-out bluesy dissonance heard in many ’90s grunge ballads. And honestly, I even consider the crisp twang of “The Heart is Attached” as sharing a little bit of a resemblance to R.E.M’s musical path post-Reckoning, especially their big breakthrough Out of Time, just as Miracle Legion appeared to be influenced by them.

It’s usually fairly clear why some bands achieve more success than others. The aforementioned R.E.M. were simply magnetic as a unit, undoubtedly one of the top 5 US bands of all time, for reasons that I could gush over in a 300-plus page book and still come up short. But given the band’s affinity for vivid storytelling and past remembrances, it’s also clear why Pete & Pete show creators Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi opted to give Miracle Legion a fair shot. To an extent, they helped extend their lifeline, leading to the creation of their own label and their last hurrah: 1996’s Portrait of a Damaged Family.

Much has been written about their career, brought up by writers just like me. But for someone like David, who’s naturally had more exposure to the UK side of jangle pop, I thought this still-unsung release would offer a broader perspective of how important they were on this side of the pond.

David – Discovering The Backyard

I’m a couple of years older than Juan, and I suspect it’s a combination of that and my upbringing in the U.K. that led me to overlook Miracle Legion for so long. I was probably just a little too old for The Adventures of Pete & Pete and I even spent my teens denying R.E.M.’s greatness, before finally succumbing to their charms in my early twenties. Ironically, it was Murmur that sealed the deal. I went on to embrace The Feelies and The Replacements, and I love Hüsker Dü’s late career work, so I clearly have a passion for jangly college rock—I just never ventured deep enough into the American canon to discover The Backyard. Until now.

The British jangle pop scene of the mid-1980s was a strikingly different beast, and Juan is correct that I’m much more familiar with that particular lineage. Obviously, everyone is familiar with The Smiths, who provide the conventional gateway into the U.K. jangle scene—and, in “This Charming Man,” its quintessential song. Bands like Orange Juice, The La’s, Felt, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions and, later on, The Sundays all helped to define British jangle pop in their own way, but none of them could be mistaken for an American college rock band.

So, Miracle Legion don’t immediately sound like the jangle I grew up with, but that isn’t to say they don’t sound immediately familiar. Coming to this record in my 40s, after cherishing Murmur for two decades, it’s really hard to shake those early R.E.M. vibes. The quality of the songwriting, especially on the sublime title track, reassures me that The Backyard isn’t a tribute act, but the sonic signatures are eerily similar.

It’s funny that Juan mentioned The Replacements above, because I can hear a little bit of them in The Backyard’s more raucous moments (“Closer to the Wall”). “The Backyard” itself, which pairs the faintest hint of a country twang with a proto-slacker vibe, seems to subtly foreshadow artists like Drive-By Truckers and even indie rocker du jour MJ Lenderman. It’s not the same, but perhaps Mark Mulcahy had a hand in that particular blueprint too?

While I don’t think The Backyard quite stands shoulder to shoulder with an iconic, era-defining record like Murmur, I recognise that’s hardly a fair benchmark to judge it against. I’ve certainly heard enough to dig into the rest of the Miracle Legion/Mark Mulcahy catalogue.

Records Revisited is a recurring No Ripcord feature exploring how albums evolve alongside the people who listen to them.