Clever – Hangin Egg (Tropical Cancer Rort)
This record bursts into existence, there’s simply no other way to describe it. The band plays with intensity. Like punk. But as with any kind of idealism you could throw around the P-word in this day and age the group sounds ragged, weathered and torn. ‘No Cold Solo in Red Hill’ tells you this before […]
Kitchen’s Floor – ‘Dictaphone’ (Reissue)
I guess you could call this a reissue. But get this clear. It was never issued. Don’t care. Do you? I just listen to the first few seconds of ‘Loneliness is a Dirty Mattress’ and my heart stirs. Dictaphone is early Kitchen’s Floor. A few songs recorded, thrown together on tape and put out there […]
Phantastic Ferniture – Phantastic Ferniture (Makeout Records/Caroline Australia)
They wanted to make a pop record for fun, and yep, that’s what they’ve done. Phantastic Ferniture’s self-titled debut album gets the tick for ‘pop’ and ‘fun’, but not in that sickly boy-band/girl-band formulaic kind of way. It’s much more cool. There’s something that evokes the 80s for me, but the more I listen, the […]
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Wrong Creatures (Inertia)
BRMC largely fly under the radar here in Australia. Perhaps it’s because they inhabit that alternative rock ’n’ roll space reserved for bands the ilk of The Jesus & Mary Chain or Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. After nineteen years together, Peter Hayes and Robert Levon Been, along with drummer, Leah Shapiro, are still […]
Marlon Williams – Make Way For Love (Dead Oceans)
I’ve been fortunate to listen to Marlon Williams’s much anticipated new album, Make Way For Love, for a couple of months now and finally it has made its public arrival. Fans will already be familiar with a lot of these new songs from his recent gigs or from having seen a few videos on Youtube. This […]
Calexico – The Thread That Keeps Us (Spunk)
Yeah, so I’m a self-confessed Calexico groupie. Have been since first seeing them support Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl in 2003, touring their much revered album, Feast of Wire (2003). My mate Ross burnt Hot Rail (2000) for me soon after and I became hooked to their unique […]
A Passion Unstated but Deeply Felt: Beaches’ ‘Second of Spring’
There are few Australian groups which can truly grasp the mind-manifesting ideas of the psychedelic sound and its underpinning ethos but Beaches are an act that consistently strikes the anvil on its head. A collection of members from well-known Melbournian acts with a few more extra hands thrown in, the five-piece have retained a lengthy […]
Alex Cameron – Forced Witness (Secretly Canadian)
Western society – as with everything else – has managed to make an entertainment industry out of failure. It’s like the dark side of the under-dog tale; the temptation to watch how far down somebody can go, how many supports can fail, how much you can change someone through hardship, addiction, weakness and ambivalence. You […]
The Stevens – Good (Chapter)
I think people have a soft spot for art that, while it might seem at odds with itself at times, ultimately forms an experience that defies expectations of failure. Like a forest made up of different kinds of trees, or mismatched chairs around a table – there’s always something that’ll warm you when unity occurs […]
‘Humanz’, Gorillaz: Subjectivity Is Not an Inherent Human Trait
By Athanasios Lazarou The most interesting thing about Gorillaz long awaited return isn’t the music (it’s inconsistent at best), it’s how the album is being delivered. Humanz is album that insists on both its own commercialism and its refusal of authorship. After a 7-year hiatus we not only get a 26-track album with collaborators such as […]
