The French chapter of Smoked Salmon ie Dimi Dero, Delphine Ciampi, Doug Galbraith and Kim, booked themselves into Sylvain Philipon’s Stereodrome Studio in Perpignan South of France.
This was to wind up their national tour in October 2023.
Armed with a couple of unfinished songs and a sketch, Kim thought it prudent to ask “ got any spare riffs?”.
Bassist Delphine provided one which the band promptly jammed into shape.
With the session all finished Kim went on a holiday but kept the riff playing in his subconscious, eventually channelling the vocal hook line of Hey Hey Narcissus.
This being a Euro Holiday this name came more from Greek Mythology than ‘Pop Psychology’, but in these post, post modern times the Pop element was sure to creep its way in.
Try as he might, the only way Kim was able to sing this new wonder was in his patented ‘Lou Reed knock off’ mode, which proved to be, well, too much of a patented Lou Reed knock off!
Solution?: Get Claire Birchall of Smoked Salmon’s Melbourne Chapter to sing it.
Come April, finishing this song off at Rolling Stock studio with Myles Mumford recording the vocal, Claire tries her patented Kim Gordon and Lucinda Williams to which Myles says “ no! we want Claire, not Kim”.
She gives us Claire and voila!
To avoid confusion, the previous Smoked Salmon singles have featured Kim singing, as he does on 96.66% of the band’s repertoire.
However, Smoked Salmon’s audience is clearly of superior intelligence and will understand and embrace this stunning Smoked Salmon vocal delivery from chanteuse Claire Birchall on the third single from the imminent Smoked Salmon album.
We give you the single ‘Hey Hey Narcissus’!

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia.