VIDEO VACUUM - Courtney Barnett, Peak Twins, Forest, Girls Names

It's a breakneck kinda day, one thing piling up on the next. So these excellent music vids should help alleviate the tension, baby...



Sonic Masala's current fave song of the year has just been equipped with its own rad visual, with Courtney Barnett and co clowning around on the clay tennis courts for 'Avant Gardener'. Everything Barnett does at the moment turns to gold - even if there was backlash for her cover of a Yeezus track. Cmon! She appropriated Coon cheese into the lyrics! That's sleight of hand comic genius of the Aussie laconic sort! Anyway, we have the whites, the wooden racquets, the good natured rivalry, the durries at drinks breaks. Golden. Barnett is playing in London, the Notting Hill Arts Club to be exact, tonight. If you're around, check her out - she's on at 8.30pm and will be the best act of the night by far.


Peak Twins - So Long from BSR on Vimeo.

Adelaide's Peak Twins have developed the perfect Blue Velvet-esque slow-dance karaoke tune in a decrepit photo studio film clip committed to celluloid. They are warming up for the eponymous album release through Bedroom Suck, and it promises to exceed expectations as the band subvert genres to their own cursed whims with uniquely salacious results. Great stuff.



Two Aussie bands juxtaposed with two UK acts. Cambridge kids Forest are infusing their jangle slackerdom with ample amounts of scuzzy, blase abandon. Their 'Coaster' vid has the requisite shimmering, slightly out of focus images, the clowning around in a field, and...blase abandon. Just abandon the blase and embrace the fuzz, because Forest dish out in generous helpings. Their freshly-minted EP Caramel Arms should be a good'un. If you value Brit bands because you have NME grafted to your inner thigh, disregard others and give these guys a try - they are genuinely fun.


Finally we have Belfast buddies Girls Names, who have released the almost-nine minute title track of their album The New Life as a single. Good on them, eschewing convention. Truth is, this is my favourite song on the album, perfectly encapsulating the band's emancipation from twee noise pop to a moodier expanse - a similar chrysalis moment that the Horrors encountered a few years ago. This B&W clip is epileptic performance art at its most cloying yet entrancing. Seriously though, the combo of sight and sound is a hypnotic masterstroke.