Arrive Alive With Wireheads

I didn't speak enough about Big Issues, the second album from Adelaide's crazy kids Wireheads. Out through Tenth Court, it was an album of rough and ready, vital disheveled rock, somehow devoid of the trappings of place and space (Adelaide can do that to you, for good and bad). It is mostly sold out though - Tenth Court have no more, I have a couple floating round my house, and the rest are in record stores both around Australia and London. Find it!

Well we don't have to wait much longer for a new album - their third winner Arrive Alive is out soon. 'Arrive Alive' is the perfect wonked guitar grind, a psych sidewinder that wings its way from the Bight into your mind, preaching safety and survival and the futility of fate while emanating narcotic debauchery. The film clip is excellently at odds with the music also, yet somehow in tune - the band play and play around in a quarry, swinging baseball bats in the air, sitting next to landfill, driving diggers and watching planes fly over electric pylons, guitar solos in the middle of the road, sculling from orange juice bottles... In short, it's brilliant. The line about the people on the plains behind the Great Dividing Range being pretty strange anyway? That's where I am from, and I can attest to how true a statement that is. Arrive Alive promises to be up there with the best records of the year.

Racing The Chooks To Your Door

The beginning of last year Melbourne's Chook Race finally brought out their debut record, the aptly spun About Time. I really liked it - it had the right mix of The Clean, Electrelane, Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Dick Diver coursing through its veins. Well the trio aren't sitting on their laurels this time around - they have linked with the excellent Tenth Court Records (Wireheads, Thigh Master, Mope City) for their follow-up Around The House later this year. The first taste of it is 'At Your Door' - not really a Paul Kelly nod, but there are some similarities when you consider the lyrics - the plaintive Aussie blue-collar Romanticism of grafting out your own patch, from the ground up. The difference here is the wistfulness is palpable - this house built out of wood and clay may be a short-lived Valhalla, if not a perennial pipe dream. The ramshackle nature of Chook Race's delivery makes things feel loose and carefree, but that just helps to further underscore the melancholy shadow underneath. Australia has this bright spark instrumentation/maudlin content delivery down pat - I think it's a good thing, it's dry, it's unsentimental. Can't wait to see what else is dredged up around the house.

Wallowing In Vintage Violence

After that interview with Liam Kenny last week, I thought I would continue with another Adelaide funk out that features a Liam Kenny that isn't Liam Kenny. The drone in the punk synth wail of Vintage Violence (not to be confused with the Italian punkoids of same name) evokes John Cale (seeing as they cribbed their name from one of his albums, that is a fair if obvious make) and more insidious gothic synth lurkers like 'Desert' and 'Nerve damage'. This Liam Kenny (of excellent unhinged boozehounds Wireheads) is joined here by fellow Old Mate old mate (and a Peak Twin) Ben Quici. The seven-track album moves along at a oozing pace, the industrial crawl emblematic of the bleak Gothic claustrophobia Europe continually pumps out of the pores of its desecrated earth. Especially when you hear 'Back To You', which is as desolate and dead-eyed as they come. It's brooding, barren, brilliant. Out through Format Records as a digital download or 100-run cassette, both from here.

Wireheads Spend 8:19 In Tenth Court

Brisbane scrappers Tenth Court Records have been pumping out some great releases since kicking off this year - with the likes of Thigh Master, Martyr Privates and Dag (plus others yet to mention) putting out tapes. The newest edition is Country Space Junk, the new EP from Adelaide loose cannons Wireheads. Coming off the back of their excellent record The Late Great Wireheads that came out earlier this year (we loved it), here are seven wonky tracks of - well - cowboy space junk. This clip is for opener 'Eight Minutes & 19 Seconds', complete with "space outfits", "space helmets", "space ship", "cowboy drummer" - Trimboli's lyrics about explosive machines and scientific magazines suitably hypnotic and laconic, whilst his vocals are as scratched and unrelenting as ever. It's a great song, a great film clip, a great band.

You can (and should) buy Cowboy Space Junk here.

METRO SCHOOL REUNION FOREVER!

(Post written by Fred Savage Beasts)

Adelaide - home of the severely underrated genius. Right where Australia balances between the currents from the Antarctic and the wide, brown desert. Wide streets, trams, Jamie Siddons, Crows and now this… The Metro School Reunion. This is the reason you’ve been looking for to take your beat up VK Holden on its final legendary drive.

Get a load of the bands on the list, dammit! TV Colours alone would make this worthwhile. Like the Crows say, “FAAARK…” All these bands should be in the test team.

TV COLOURS★CONSTANT MONGREL★HIT THE JACKPOT★NATIVE CATS★LAKES★SCHOOL OF RADIANT LIVING ★BITCH PREFECT★PEAK TWINS★OLD MATE★RULE OF THIRDS★WIREHEADS 

On at the city's stalwart Hotel Metropolitan on October 5. Wind down the windows, rubber band your teas towels round your frozen water bottles and get yourself there. Any way you can.

Video Vacuum - Dollar Bar, Beach Arabs, Wireheads, Sneers, Peter Escott

I am scurrying around London trying to find a job. Not having much luck to be honest. Still, I'm trying to be patient. Plus it gives me time to sit down and listen to some great music. But then I get stir crazy and need my visuals stimulated too. So here are five vids that are doing the bizniz.

First up are these perennial clownish nice guys, Dollar Bar. They were "big" in some sense back in the '00s, then gave up on the idea of chasing the Triple J buck, before reuniting for a mate's 40th, realised they still dug playing all of these GBV guitar pop games, jammed a bunch, played a bit, and put out new record Paddington Worker's Club. They are playing the excellent looking Blurst of Times festival in October alongside the likes of Blank Realm, Dick Diver, UV Race, Hard Ons, TV Colours, Day Ravies and our very own Roku Music. Word is that Dollar Bar themselves might be joining the SM stable in 2015... Watching this video of '(You're Blind) Baby' (directed by Matt Banham) of guitarist/singer Chris Yates having "the time of his life" and see if this is a good move... What party animals, I feel the hangover kicking in just watching this...

Beach Arabs - "Drifters" from Mouca on Vimeo.

Getting a bit more jumped up (and following in the trend of doing 60s/70s montages as film clips - which I am really digging incidentally) is Liz Hogg's outfit Beach Arabs. Helps that this is a great menagerie of seaside party times. Wild Movement was a good lil album, and Hogg is currently playing around Spain and other parts of continental Europe - well worth checking out if you can.

Wireheads - Five Grand from Format Records on Vimeo.

Damn I love Adelaide idiots Wireheads. Their album The Late Great Wireheads is killer - somewhere between Bed Wettin Bad Boys and more downtuned, downtrodden, dirty fare (Per Purpose comes to mind). This ode to Adelaide showcases the whiny, strained, unhinged vocal delivery of Dom Trimboli and crunched, screwed violin of Tom Spall - and how easy it is to get drunk at a mate's place on Coopers Red and make a killer video. I think I have listened to this song eleven times today - and it's not even close to the best song on the album. Bloody great stuff.

I missed out on writing about Berlin-based nihilists Sneers' last record For Our Soul - Uplifting Lights To Shine As Fires (out through Brigadisco - trust me, you really need this) so here is a video of 'Self-Atoning Apostasy' to get you fanging for it. Watching a couple eating surrounded by red velvet; flashes of goth darkness, domestic violence, blood-caked skin, caressing foliage, self-mutilation, shotguns, prostate sex, all soundtracked by dissonance and fear. I really love these guys. It's all sordid and evil no wave wailings - right up my alley.

And as a final bonus, here is Native Cat Peter Escott doing his own thing. He has just released solo album The Long O through Bedroom Suck (I reviewed the album briefly at The Music over here) - it's a fascinating portraiture of an artist both confident and insecure, flamboyant and subdued. Great lyrics, beguiling compositions. And I really like this film clip too - especially Escott's dance moves. There is something emotionally bare about them, yet hidden due to the secluded nature of the surroundings, that resonates with me. Plus it makes me homesick for Australia. It truly does.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!