Strange Species on the Galapogos

(Post by Fred Savage Beasts)

Galapogos never got the three minute pop hook memo. Just like the weather here in Queensland never got the memo that we were meant to have conquered it. People poured out into the streets following one of the most intense storms in recent history - windows smashed, cars pock marked - scratching their heads. A lot of people will react the same way to the squalls, shifts and wails that span Galapogos’ new album Strange Species.

Made up of two sprawling jams, Strange Species traverses genre, style, ideas, and, in parts, the madness/genius divide. The record lilts and spills through guitar sounds from waves to jabs, finding and losing its way around sections of repetitive riffs and spoken (yelled and whispered) word. I’ve seen Galapogos live a bunch of times, and it’s when they are doing exactly this that they are at their best. This record is really a statement by its very existence. I listened through it during G20 and it made me more hopeful than any of the politicians. Maybe Galapogos did get the memo, they just chose to write their own manifesto in response.
 
Grab it from their bandcamp. And make sure you check out Dan’s blog Heavy & Weird for someone who does it right.

Do You Believe in Nana Vigilante?

Sometimes living in a uppity little city can get you down. Even - especially - when you get labelled the 'trendiest' uppity little city in the whole uppity little country. But no matter how many boutique beer bars try to charge you an hours wage for a drink or inner-city unit dwellers demand live music venues be shut down, you have to remember that it's all just worthless chatter, that there's no reason to let it all put the hoodoo on you. The beauty of this city is that there's still something under the chatter - little voices, little voices with something to say.

And if the city gets you down, at least you know there'll be people down there with you; people who aren't trying to squeeze you for cool.

I first heard Nana Vigilante on 4ZzZ (saviour of Brisbane's little voices). I was stunned and shaken - it was the most original thing I'd heard for a very long time... and it was from Brisbane. There are ideas here, fully realised and otherwise. There are cracks in the floorboards and stares, vacant and brooding. It is pointed and self-aware and sometimes nonchalant. It is the sound of people making sounds because people must make sounds. Call it Hip-hop if you will. Call it experimental. Nana Vigilante will still call it as they see it.



See Nana Vigilante play this Friday (28 Feb) at a Sonic Masala presents show at the Waiting Room with Galapogos and BARGE with an antenna on it. Watch their mate-made video below.

A Flight to Galapogos

I bumped into an old mate of mine last night and ended up discussing the ethics of horror movies and drinking beer instead of doing all the things I was supposed to. It was pretty great. A decent conversation - where you actually talk about something - is such a pleasure; it takes you somewhere higher than yourself.

Listening to Galapogos's new single 'Parakeet Parachute' is like having a decent conversation. The song is an open statement, an encouragement to fill the void (or leave it empty). It's serious and shy. The guitars make space for you to yell back (or not). The words and drums roll on regardless. Religion, death, meaning (meaninglessness), it's all here. That people make music like this in this city is its saving grace.  Let's go.

Galapogos are playing a Sonic Masala presents show this Friday (28 Feb) w/ Nana Vigilante and BARGE with an antenna on it. Coming along would be the right thing to do.