Aural Australia #7 - Black Out Drunk Friday

Bypass consumerism deathtraps and just get drunk tonight. And listen to these classic new tracks. Best money you don't really need to spend (although you should head out and buy the records, at full price, support your local scene!)

Sydney's Weak Boys is probably the louchest of the louche knockabout guitar pop bands in the country at the moment. 'European Holiday' is about the simple things in life - six pack of beer, Tally-Ho's, maxed out cards and the TAB. And how pot dealers take your hard earned on European holidays, obviously. No one wants to work, and this song sounds like the Boys barely have the energy for it anyway. It's so laidback it's almost asleep, dreaming of holidays in such a staid, banal way that it drips of delusion and surrender. Weak Boys II will be out soon - cannot wait.

I saw a flyer pop up in Facebook recently for a Brisbane show for some stellar outlier acts (Men With Chips, Deck In The Pit and Piss Pain are all on the bill) that also features X Wave, a band I have only caught twice over their 5+ years' existence but both times melted my brain. It is the kind of no wave noise that claws itself out of the La Brea Tar Pits, designed to trudge on relentlessly, one hacked, stilted step after another, a malevolent force against which there is no protection. I thought they had broken up - but they are the cockroaches of abject derision. Not only do they play tomorrow, they released a split 7" not too long ago with another underground Brisbane mainstay, xNOBBQx - if you want to lift the pavers of the Queensland capital's sewers and see what slithering denizens lie beneath, there isn't a better place to start than here. Out through AG Picks, you can get the vinyl here. (NOTE - the song below is not on the release, but I need to put something here, and I want everyone to go out and buy this bloody record).

The staccato drum machine, the Theremin-like whine, the bottomed out bass - it's a post-punk Heat Wave! Kurt Eckhardt (Astral Skulls) and photographer Kallindy Williams join forces to shine a sordid glow on the shadows of Australian inertia and hardwired desperation. Their album is called Dead Beats, so yeah, outlook is pretty grim. But with tracks like 'Dead End Town' at least the Apocalypse can be danced to.

Back to Brisbane now and Leavings, a three piece that focus on rapid, rapacious noise pop. Their 7" on Tenzenmen Records, Sell & Shark, kicks off with a Japandroids-esque fuzzball racket in 'Sell', while 'Shark' trades in the freneticism for a more kinetic tension, yet no less rambunctious, each instrument feeding off each other until they are exhausted, implode, die. It's a small taste of what this new band is capable of - and I have heard the masters for the upcoming album, and they are killer.

It's weird that a band existed in Brisbane for so many years and released a couple albums, and I have never heard of them. That's Thirteen Seventy for you. Their 3rd album Cover Up The Signs starts off with 'Shadow Of A Doubt', a chamber piece akin to ...Trail Of Dead esoterics, the emotive piano slowly being met by orchestral sighs, melancholy feedback hums, vibrating strings. It's a lovely start, and while the entire album doesn't always gel with me, there are some great highlights, with some touchstones whispering at the edges and making strange bedfellows, such as the aforementioned AYWKUBTTOD, Giants Of Science ('All Horizons End'), Alice In Chains ('Laconic'), and My Bloody Valentine ('Blind') - all in the first four songs. The recordings are rich and dense - it's an ambitious record worth a visit.

You mightn't recognise the name Alex MacFarlane, but you would surely recognise his work - mainly with The Stevens, but also performing with Twerps and Tyrannamen. Here, as the first (and thus far only) release on Melbourne DIY "label" Hobbies Galore, he has brought out a solo album of recordings, a languid scuzzy exploration of pop and rock permutations that evokes the hedonistic explorative charms of Robert Pollard, Bradford Cox, Julian Cope and Michael Rother. The 23 track release has so many left turns and surprises - krautrock, reverb wonk bedtime murmurs, Eastern tape hiss contemplations, Ariel Pink meltdowns, Beatles fried jams - it is like a sonic diary burrowing deep into MacFarlane's psyche, watching the cream and the crock fall out of his head, littered with nuggets of aural gold. The fact that it is constantly on here in the wee hours as I am up writing, reading, burning the midnight oil, ready to absorb something new, and it's a cassette (I currently only have an old dictaphone as big as a loaf of bread that can play the bloody thing) means there is something very special here.

O.K. Permanent Wave, the new release from Melbournite Sweet Whirl, is a dark chasm of brooding Gothic croon, a late night ode to haunted Americana embedded within the Australian consciousness. Rumbling bass and vocals are all that spikes the speakers, and yet each track is imbued with static, slow-motion ramblings along the shadow-stained crossroads and backstreets, the streetlights strobing overhead, the humidity oppressive, inhibition lifted, innocence lost. Caught somewhere in between PJ Harvey,  Angel Olsen, and Liz Harris (all preferably in their early days) , O.K. Permanent Wave is a hypnotic gem of an album.

Let's finish off with the sultry dream pop sounds of Pure Moods, a Melbourne threesome that have released a deceptively excellent album. It's deceptive in that it feels kinda lightweight, yet is riddled with hooks and warmth that you cannot help but be buoyed along by its myriad charms. There is the breezy blast of 'Blurb', the maudlin jangle of 'Elisa Lam', the pep and perk of 'Meadow Heights', most of which come with a cathartic crunch that alleviates the languid jams. But the key is in the poignancy of the lyrics - whether it's worrying about never patching things up with your father before one shuffles off the mortal coil, mystifying disappearances, mawkishness approaching manic depression, the stories are eloquent and vibrant. The Ocean Party observations are warranted but a little too obvious - Pure Moods is very much its own creation. Very impressed with this record.

Aural Australia #6 - Cybercilious

One of my favourite things about Australia is just how dumb most of our top paid sportsmen are. Having the Hayne Plane Train Brain Drain show porn to school students = while teaming up with Norton to talk about cyber safety, no less - is nothing short of cringeworthy brilliance. Classic Larry David stuff - except real, and creepy, and dumb, and not played for laughs, and will get off scott free.

Luckily we have far better offerings in the musical department...

I really dig/dug Ex Tropical, Jarrod Quannell's first outlay as Lost Animal. I hadn't heard much from the man, but now he has a new album out in the form of You Yang (through Captured Tracks and Dot Dash). His partner in crime is Shags Chamberlain, who you might remember from the excellent Pets With Pets and is now a part of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. What a world, huh? Anyway, first taste off it is 'Too Late To Die Young', which features Quannell's particularly louche vocals as the film depicts staring off in the middle distance in both urban and rural settings, smoking and scaring kids at a birthday party, and bathtub ruminations before shirking the midlife crisis shackles for some solitary dancing amidst golden balloons in an abandoned town hall. My life, really.

Ela Stiles follows up her acappella drone loop opus Ela Stiles (which she launched at a SM show at The Brightside which was easily the weirdest shows I have put on - poor venue and venue owners, a complete shambles in my mind, nothing to do with the acts though, sorry Ela (and Dollar Bar, and J Francis, and especially Primitive Motion!)) with the warped chamber noise of Molten Metal (through her own great Paradise Daily label). Nowhere near as bare, but certainly still stark and affronting, Molten Metal loops around an industrial, well, melt, implosions of loops and staccato drum machines with Stiles' vocals either puncturing or enveloping the claustrophobic sonic substrata she has laid down. She continues to play with vocal interpretation ('I Don't Think So' reminds me of Tuneyards if she was raised on subterranean trip hop and Einsturzende Neubaten), while dislocated woozy RnB inflections litter the electronic landscape. The title track (featured on a Black Metal tape released earlier in the year) is a drone set that is split by shards of chimes, robotic discombobulated choirs, vocals fighting to overcome the metallic sonic tsunami. It's decidedly weird, and wholly entrancing. I love it.

Deck In The Pit is loose anarcho punk meltdown outta Brisbane courtesy of Glen Schenau (Per Purpose, Bent), Steve Rose (Sydney2000) and Phil Hunter. It's the kind of free multilimbed skronk noise that no-wavers and acolytes of Capt Beefheart can embrace - on the verge of imploding, collapsing, incinerating - sometimes tipping over into the abyss - with Schenau's bent and tortured vocals and strings off-kilter, key, rhyme or reason. You either get it or you don't. I haven't been in Brisbane since this concoction crept out of the bottle, but I can't wait to hear more. Also, Glen has a solo record coming out on the aforementioned Paradise Daily label tomorrow, so expect to hear more about that soon.

Lower Plenty have this broken-down malaise approach to songwriting that is often hard to explain - it just needs to be experienced and lived in. Their new album follows in the same fashion and is likely to pip Hard Rubbish as my favourite of theirs too. There is a tiredness to the stories stretched over 'Bondi's Dead' and 'All The Young Men' that is pregnant with lyrical kitchen sink epiphany, wistful hindsight, rustic inertia and isolated existentialism that sound like campfire chatter and alcohol-sodden self-actualisations. It was recorded in a kitchen in Collingwood too, so authentic as well. Compelling.  Sister Sister comes out next week through Bedroom Suck, preorder here.

Melbourne-via-Glen-Innes act Redspencer have really struck a chord with me on their upcoming album Perks. I enjoyed their 'Ride It Out' single of last year, but the languid jams on their debut record are so rich, lush and groovy = it's a big step up. Is that pan pipes and a gong on 'Spare Me'? This is Li-Lo music, just in time for the Aussie summer (or to pretend in the North hemisphere winter...) Get your Kenny Loggins on with these guys at the wheel.

Lets finish with Brisbane punks Cold Cuts (email tag is infinitehangover - tells us a lot...). I mentioned their stuff in the past, but 'Stay' is a bit more unbridled, leaving the lurking post-punk vibes in the boot while they unleash with more propulsive wares. This is from a recording session with Incremental Studios, so I am always interested what will come of this. Hopefully a lot more.

Aural Australia #5 - Equine Circle Jerk

The equine circle jerk of the season has come and gone, the nation resumes its bleary eyed actions, and the music floweth forth.

I do love me a scrappy, thrashy noise pop two piece - No Age, Japandroids, Tiny Spiders - and of course Sydneysiders Unity Floors. Their set at White Rabbit Gallery back in 2012 (I think?) was a random and happy memory for me, and their debut album Exotic Goldfish Blues lived up to the heightened expectations. Their follow up Life Admin doesn't fuck with the formula, taking their Japandroids-meets-PAWS-via-Male Bonding Petri dish and injecting indelible slices of acerbic Aussie wit and gurning grins. Taking pot shots at their hometown, Melbourne, young professionals, the 'burbs, the millennials - basically everyone in the near vicinity - Life Admin nevertheless isn't looking for eviscerating wit a la Andy Falkous, more a cheeky chappy dig in the ribs before downing tins and clapping backs. "Wouldn't it be nicer if we could wake up in a world where we belong?" No - it's better that you are standouts...

I can't say I know much about Sydney scrappers East River, but I stumbled over their album Modular Handshake back in August when I was in St Ives, on the sunny sandy beaches of Cornwall, England (yes, they do exist!) and wanting something new to fit with my feelings of happiness, relaxation and yet unnerving displacement. The trio's warped take on surf rock, paisley psych pop and late-night grooves really strikes a chord. It is such a heaving cesspit of touchstones - Jonathan Richman, Black Lips, The Shiralees, Chad Morgan, Meth Teeth, The Troggs, The Animals, The Locust... OK so I am being silly now. But there is something to these loose, cracked songs that are infectious, warmhearted and imminently likable, despite of and/or because of their unpredictability at taking traditional pop conventions and skewering them through an Adult Swim mindset. My wife kept saying, about half a minute into most of these songs, "What is this? The songs start out quite good, then they become shit." Which is snark short hand for "This stuff is the bees' knees." Whether you get what I am saying or not, just dive headlong into Modular Handshake, you will never know where you will end up.

Not much has to be said about Brisbane youngsters The Goon Sax - the three piece have gone from strength to strength since their inception only a couple years ago (if that - it feels like these guys were fishing for their first gig only a few months ago!) Their debut album Up To Anything on Chapter Music is killer, taking a leaf out of the Flying Nun/Go Betweens much-thumbed playbook (an easy reference seeing as Forster's son is in the lineup, but is also there in the easy, insidious melodies that ooze out of every pore here) and infusing something more, a melancholic brittleness juxtaposed with their youthful exuberance that comes off as confident self-deprecating ruminations of the world at large - like The Pastels in a Battle of the Bands. Their European tour was a real hit too (I missed their sold out shows here in London, although heard that their DIY Space show with Totally was a lot of fun). So in demand that we couldn't hook them for this year's Sonic Masala Fest. But I can't hold it against them - with tracks like 'Sweaty Hands', there is an innocuous, relatable, real likability that most other bands just cannot grasp. Special indeed.

Another group that continues to grow, but in a more subdued way, is Blonde Tongues. One of their first shows (may have even been their first show) was a Sonic Masala show supporting the Ocean Party, and their fuzzed out dream pop was exciting, breezy and surprisingly loud. They have been tempering the noise somewhat to come to a compromise with the melodies, and boy does it continue to pay dividends. '(A Song For) Paula E. Sheppard' is a bliss bomb of a track, a lysergic Galaxie 500 swirl in awe of the actress in cult classics Alice, Sweet Alice and Liquid Sky. An obscure reference maybe, but this dream letter is the perfect precursor to the band's sophomore album, out in the new year.

I woke up Monday morning to the huge news in my inbox that Sodastream have a new song out! It's been a decade - a DECADE - since they last put out an album, but their fifth LP Little By Little is on its way. My uni years are indelibly plastered with drunken/drugged memories that end with the night/morning stretched out on the back deck, 'Fitzroy Strongman' and 'Wedding Day' playing over the Paddington detritus. 'Three Sins' takes me back there - but of course the Melbourne duo are so much more than addled young man rites of passage. Each song hits a nerve you never knew existed, whether the subject matter is about domestic abuse, rustic ennui, social pariahs, the encroaching stigma of mortality, or enjoying the solitude of a darkened cabin with only wine and a dog as company. Whether drenched in frustrations or etched with the promise of redemption, every Sodastream song carries with it a kernel of joy. None more filled with joy than I - and if you like, you should join me and many others in helping crowdfund the vinyl pressing for the album here.

These last two feature Aussies but are based abroad - cheating, I know, but still in the same ballpark, right? London psych goths Bonfire Nights have always been a tendon-pulling presence around the local scene, grasping some great support acts while grafting away at their own brooding, swirling soundscapes of darkness. 'Heart's To Blame,' the single off newly released album Entopica Phenomica, continues the skewering of pop sentimentality with a enticing seduction of the dark side and inexorable squall of harmonic noise, all while still retaining those said same conventions. Think early Black Rebel Motorcycle Club melding with early Black Angels, Moon Duo and Velvet Underground. OK they are big touchstones to throw out there, but this band continually blows my head off while never eschewing the hooks, which is a surprisingly rare thing in this genre. Can't wait to partake in the rest of the album.

Fresh Snow are based in Toronto, and have just released new album One on white vinyl (we all know I like dem dere colours spinnin). A lot of their post rock improvisations are elegant and breathtaking - but then there are songs like 'January Skies' that a thundering Juggernauts, like Holy Fuck Hulking out. Their eclecticism works because it is freeform electricity, nothing done half-heartedly. Why is this ending off this Australian music post? Because one member, Tim Condon, hails from this sunblasted land. So tenuous, but with a track like this, who cares. Grab One here - it is an album of abrupt 90 degree turns, but always a wild ride.

Aural Australia #3 - Feral Ferocity

Life is rough and stuff. Time to get feral.

Ausmuteants won't give a shit what I write here anyway. The Melbourne punk wastoids have made that abundantly clear with their track 'Music Writers' off new record Band Of The Future (out now through Aarght!) - an acerbic vomit that pierces the bubble on critics, both of the page and from within the scene. But you can never take these guys seriously - the album title alone throws shade on their Devo shadings, carving themselves of the Marty McFly's of proto-punk's past, flitting back and forward, changing history by deliberately crushing bugs, ripping off butterflies' wings, and beating mouthbreathers at their own game. Plus BOTF builds on last record Order of Operation's clarity, injecting the slicker sonics with familiar spit, pace and leers. The rants and tantrums are as visceral and zanily ridiculous as we have come to expect, yet even more infectious, like a sandblasted canker, with that rank synth whirr throwing us into the surreal and absurd. Nailgun blasts of punk that leaves slackjawed wonder in its wake, with bumps of T-Rex glam and Boggles wrongness to ingest. In short, brilliant. (But what does any of this even mean? What the fuck would I know? Just listen to it already.)

The Peep Tempel released one of Sonic Masala's favourite albums of 2015, Tales, and one of the most underrated rock acts in the country are back with a killer song and video for 'Rayguns'. A bullshit crazy newslogue purge with rolling-news lyrics, .gif ready stock clips fused to the band revelling in their zero-fucks chicanery. It comes from 3rd LP Joy, which promises to get deep into the human psyche and wade maniacally in the roiling chaos. There are still a great degree of Australian grotesquery and humour in their offerings though - opener 'Kalgoorlie' alone lends whiffs of Wake In Fright horror. And while we are at it, below this excellent video is another taste of the album (out later this month through Wing Sing Records), 'Totality'.

Screamfeeder closing out our second Sonic Masala Fest is still (and will always remain) a defining moment in my life. The band have continued to play together and release the periodic new song since re-releasing their albums on vinyl through Poison City Records, and 'Karen Trust Me' is the latest ebullient slice. They have their miasmic noise pop down pat - every chord change, swelling squall, cymbal crash and Steward/Lloyd harmony is present and accounted for, embedded with myriad hooks of all persuasions that it is impossible to remain impervious to its charms. It's enough to keep the withdrawal at bay until their promised 8th album in 2017.

Back to the insanity then. Melbourne punk messes Mesa Cosa have crafted a pagan travesty for their film clip for new track 'Stone Bone'. Still riding the serrated ridge between raucous psychedelic and fucked-up garage rock, the madmen don marsupial, Ex-President and Simpsons masks while running rank in the wilderness, destroying their instruments, TVs and other paraphernalia to climax in a jerrycan-fuelled bonfire for the ages. The boys spend a good portion of the time with their heads impaled on sticks too. They have sold their soul, sacrificed their body bags, and lost their minds - all for our eternal benefit.

Members of Freak Wave, Iowa and Camp Cope join forces to travel back in time to flannel fuzz Valhalla in TV Haze, an act inimitably indebted to Dinosaur Jr in both rambling guitar rock and dry, warbled vocal delivery. The 90s throwbacks continue, but with this self-titled effort it feels warranted, a welcome addition that climbs to the upper echelons of their contemporaries, yet steeped in Australian music nostalgia. They are playing some massive shows in Melbourne next month too supporting the aforementioned Screamfeeder as well as playing alongside SM faves Pale Heads, Ouch My Face and Summer Flake.

We will finish with post-punks Gold Class who are making their way back to Europe after a successful stint over here earlier in the year. New track 'Kids On Fire' feels (to me at least) a mix between obvious signifiers (Joy Division, The Smiths) and more rugged outliers (slowed motorik Hey Colossus, and The Spinning Rooms - really! - with the little guitar lick that strikes me like Joe's saxophone - maybe I just miss those guys so much). The film clip IS Gold Class - black and white, smoked lens, white on black, Venetian shadow, strobe glare. Urgent earnestness. The guys play in London at The Victoria October 26 with The Bodies - it looks to be a tense affair.

Aural Australia #1 - Catching Up On Lost Time

So much has gone by in the past four months that it is impossible to catch up, really. So I am going to give a series of longer posts over the next fortnight, mainly showcasing the music from Australia that I feel needs to be heard. This first one is Brisbane oriented, unashamedly so. Friends, foes, new and old, it's going to be a wild old ride.

I have been a massive fan of no-wave acolytes No Sister since they burst on to the Brisbane scene back in 2013. Their sudden rise and seeming implosion was the stuff of minor legend, the stuff we didn't think we would see again. But they were not dead - Mino and Tiarney merely moved to Melbourne, roped in some more heathens, and now have released in my mind the best Australian album of the year. Their self-titled debut is nothing short of mind-bendingly brilliant. The thing about the band that has been difficult to describe to others is that there is no half-hearted aping or hacksmithery here - they are earnest about their influences, astute in their constructions and desultory in their deconstructions. Hell, they have a song called 'This Heat' - what isn't there to love? But it is more than that - the incessant motorik rhythms that stutter and shudder in and out of focus, the frayed jangle and throttled feedback, the blood-splattered and screwdriver-molested fretboard, the atonal belligerence, the confident leer, the lack of fear. Disconcerting, manic, nightmarish, and very very present. Closer 'Passing The Divide' is the apex of this - a inexorable downward spiral, evolving as it frays and dissipates, eating its own tail. It's hard to say without sounding ridiculous - but No Sister have crafted an album for those who miss Sonic Youth, Arab On Radar, indeed This Heat, and rather than getting a carbon copy, wonder what they might do if they hit the reset button.

(Sleepwalks circa 2010 - they aren't very photogenic...)

Brisbane's Sleepwalks haven't been the most prolific of acts - their debut, The Milk Has Gone Sour, came out in 2011, recorded with stalwart Steve Albini no less. They play sporadically, usually to friends, barely ever tipping over a twenty minute set time, and otherwise life has gotten in the way. In the meantime the Aussie grunge "renaissance" has fully hit its stride courtesy of hometown stalwarts and Footy Show dividers Violent Soho. Even their latest album, Kingdom, has been around for a while, sitting on the shelf - I did a piece on one of the songs off it, 'Dry Gulch', what seems like aeons ago. The boys are sparser, more angular, wonky, darker-hued, and intelligent than many of their contemporaries though, which makes Kingdom a weirder, much more enriching listen. Their Sonic Masala Fest set was rough-hewn and with a Mclusky cover to boot. Someone oughta put some money behind these guys - they could carve their own peculiar niche in the woodwork.

Another act that started out in Brisbane but have winged their way to Melbourne is Dag, headed by lovely stringbean and font of laconic goodwill Dusty Anastassiou. They are about to launch their new album, Benefits Of Solitude, the recordings of which feature members of Bent, Thigh Master and Sewers. This sounds nothing like those bands. It makes sense that Joe and the Bedroom Suck crew would be drawn to this (seeing Kitchen's Floor, Scott & Charlene's Wedding and Bitch Prefect amongst many others have made it through their hallowed halls), but Dusty has an inimitably iconic voice all his own that, if you believe it, reaches higher than these incredible acts manage to climb. A massive call? True - but listen to 'Staying Up At Night', a magical three minute ramshackle amble that manages to shares echoes of some of music's Antipodean heroes (Paul Kelly? David Kilgour?) and look into the grey of dawn with a melancholy eye, while imbuing all with an aura of hope that outshines such downcast musings. Benefits of Solitude won't be out until next year, but rest assured that we will all benefit from the perennial fight for that lopsided smile in the morning light that tells you that everything will be all right.

Grace Stevenson from 100% (which we will hear from in a minute) has burst out into her own warped spotlight under the guise of Rebel Yell, a ice-laden techno trance dirge that remains somehow euphoric, in a synthetic dungeon fever dream kinda way. The "pop" inverse to brother-in-arms Yaws and DNA spliced with Kirin J Callinan, Rebel Yell both invites and repels; violence and eroticism offered simultaneously. Rice Is Nice seems an atypical choice for label, but her debut EP Mother of Millions is stunning in its stark beauty. Eyelids fluttering coquetteishly in the black UV before the gas filters through the bunker dancefloor - Rebel Yell grabs your cerebral vortex and never lets go.

100% continues the cold synth pop bubbling under the surface of the backwoods heat of Brisbane's musical frontier, and their You Are 100% 12" (out through Moontown Records) manages to both sound intimate, distant, cheesy and otherworldly. Mastered by Roland Hlavka (Cobwebbs, Drug Sweat, Barbiturates), the tracks evoke Angelo Badalamenti, Jenny Hval, Yello, Asylum Party, And Also The Trees, Circuit des Yeux -  but all imbued with a light touch, the drabness eschewed for frosted pastel shadings. Such ebullient touches, rather than make the tracks lightweight, provide a sense of intimate acceptance oft missing from music like this. They are already getting amazing support slots over the course of the year - expect something bigger as this lands.

Finally, and still in the same realm, we have Pleasure Symbols, whose latest release has been picked up for distribution throughout Europe by Avant! Records, so should tell you what to expect. A lethargic coldwave classic, cavernous and clearly at home in Scandi states of mind (ie dark, cold, glittering light shimmering off translucent ice and stylised leather), 'Underneath Your Skin' couldn't be more aptly titled. The monotonous vocals carry an androgynous sensuality to them, the beats a relentless march through the urban gloaming, the guitar pinning down a Gothic tension that is pregnant with foreboding.



This is just the beginning!