It's been a couple weeks - you miss me? I missed you. So here is a veritable shitload of music videos for us to catch up over...
Let's kick off with a brace of ace Aussie releases, starting with Beef Jerk. Great name, right? Wait til you get a load of their single - 'Schooners'. Man, talk about a band after my own heart - hence me having them up to Brisbane to launch their 7" at Trainspotters October 12. It's shambolic but has a real kick. Jangle booze - a bountiful charm.
If you are yet to partake in a lil Day Ravies, more the fool you. The Sydney band are embracing the wall-of-noise brutality that shoegaze pigeonholes kids into, and imbuing it with warmth and purpose. Many bands like this drift off into the dream pop world, but as 'I Don't Mind' attests, these guys are more the stuff of uneasy yet pastel nightmares. Think Lynch, if he was a LOT more lighthearted.
Sticking with the lo-fi video shenanigans are Adelaide slackerhounds Bitch Prefect who are prepping their follow-up to last year's excellent debut Big Time. 'Better Next Time' is off their latest Adelaide 7", and it has that desperation masked as nonchalance shtick down pat - except here it is distilled to an acute pang. Wastoids with heart.
The jingle-jangle-jungle that is Australia is rife with beast of the wild, and The Ocean Party is yet another of these laconic animals. Their shows in Brisbane last week were great; side-projects Velcro (in a Sonic Masala Presents show no less), and Mining Boom also slayed; their 3rd LP Split is on the horizon; and they will be launching it with Sonic Masala in late November. The love affair continues with the eponymous single, sung by newish drummer (and brother of guitarist/vocalist Lachlan) Zac Denton.
It has been twelve years since radiant guitar pop degenerates Dollar Bar gave us an album, but in Paddington Workers' Club, that wait is almost over. One of Brisbane's - nay, Australia's - unheralded gems, the four-piece might be flung to all ends of the East Coast, but if their show at The Waiting Room back in May, and new single 'Everyone's Everyone's' is any indication, the time apart makes the time together all the sweeter. I'm expecting to fall hard for this record. Plus, I AM thinking of leaving Brisbane to go to Melbourne to hang out with people from Brisbane! How'd you know, Dale?
No Monster Club - The Best Thing About Us Is We Never Grow Up from Bobby Aherne on Vimeo
Now after that delectable smorgasbord, let's head across the seas. First stop - Ireland. Last year we thought that No Monster Club was dead. No - the resurrection has been staged, now its time for the band to take over the world. On the cusp of leaving for an American tour (as in, in the next hour), No Monster Club give Sonic Masala a quick taste of where the band is heading - just over one minute of rad thrashy silliness. They have a recorded album, Foie Gras, that is unreleased - someone get on that!
Across the ditch to England now to nestle down with now-trio Yuck. New album Glow & Behold comes out on Friday - I've been listening to it for a week, and whilst it hasn't grabbed me, it's one of those sonorous earworms that is likely to lay its eggs in your brain for a long time after. 'Middle Sea' is the best bridge from the past and the future for the band - and possibly for English tennis (sorry England, but Andy Murray is fucking Scottish).
Whilst we are in the Mother Country, let's get our brains eaten. Leeds noiseniks Eagulls have a great little 7" on the way, and this video for the track 'Nerve Endings' is the epitome of nauseous tension. Basically swirling wraithlike band footage, superimposed over the quick-frame decomposition of a brain. Grim. At least the maggots are having a good time... But then again, this track is killer, a noise maggot for your brain.
HABITS "TOYMAKR" from HABITS on Vimeo.
I've played one video from LA's Habits, and here's another. In the same vein of course - VHS weirdness with schizoid fried scattered colours - it's an acid trip into the loser brain of a karaoke-performing prepubescent Beck. The dude is playing a show with Deap Vally and JUUJUU this weekend, he's for real.
Darting back now to New Zealand and HDSPNS, an Auckland band that already had two strikes what with having all capital letters and no vowels in their name... Luckily for me (and them - I have vengeful clout you know) they have scored with the metronomic guitar rock of '54000' from their incumbent VIVIDISM EP. Fitting in with fellow angular stylists Popstrangers, this is the kind of atonal thrashing that isn't necessarily flaying the skin from the bones so much as lightly scouring your cheeks with acid and steel wool. You just taken morphine though, so it tickles.
I'm leaving you with a double whammy of live psych revelation from two gods of the genre, Dead Meadow and Wooden Shjips. Both bands have new albums out, and they have both been kind to Australia in past years, so maybe this is something we will see with our own peepers soon enough. Just lean back and let your mind expand...
NOW GET BACK TO WORK! (And hey, glad to be back)
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