Dollar Bar (NOT At Paddington Workers Club...)

Brisbane's premier purveyors of sardonic yet whimsical guitar pop Dollar Bar have returned like the fabled phoenix. It seemed that you couldn't step out your front door in the early 2000's without falling over the band. Yet after a series of slick releases and a debut eponymous album, the boys left us in 2004. But the last three years has seen the fire back in the bellies of the four-piece - there is no sense of purpose here other than for the band to get back together again, hang out as mates, just like you're supposed to. Why be in a band if you hate everyone unless you are 90s Lou Barlow, amirite?

Dollar Bar are launching 2nd album ten years on from the debut, and it's called Paddington Workers Club after the now sadly defunct establishment that many a Brisbane band of the 90s and early 00s cut their teeth and drank their weight in the amber stuff. Its fitting that as their "comeback" record, unlike Farnesy, actually means something - its self referential as always, but is looking forward as well as looking back, and what made things tick. The boys are older, worldlier and (assumedly) wiser, yet the cheek, wit and cagey shambolism remains intact. Tattooed hipster Canadian girls on bikes, sterilised currency, overdue bills, people from Brisbane moving to Melbourne to hang with people from Brisbane, Pollard and Salter references - these things only skim the surface of why this album is the shit. And it's short, so it's a bliss bomb as well.



Dollar Bar launch Paddington Workers Club tonight in Brisbane at the Beetle Bar. The supports - Roku Music, Tape/Off and Undead Apes - is outta this world too. This is seriously going to be one of the most fun music nights of the year, so you better be there, fools. Here's their great new video too. It's good to have you back, lads.

VIDEO VACUUM - Ben Salter, Ganglians, Wooden Shjips, TV On The Radio

Only a couple days now until the inaugural Sonic Masala Presents... launch, and you can see how excited we are here on the ranch - that's a real life photo of me above... But we aren't dropping the ball, no siree! It still gets us to the grind, so here are four vids that should grease up those wheels - with music attached, of course...

Ben Salter is a Brisbane musical mainstay, his stints with the likes of Giants Of Science, The Gin Club and the Young Liberals speaking for themselves (is that even a grammatically correct sentence? Salts, can you help me out on that one?) Anyway, he brought out his long-awaited debut solo rekkid, The Cat, earlier this year (produced by none other than Gareth Liddiard of The Drones, no less), and it's a real doozy. Here is the video for leading single off it, 'The Coward' (which is so old it used to be called 'Yellow', but when Coldplay brought a certain song with the same name he deemed it necessary to change it. Wow...) I love it because it's on the Brisbane trains. And Salter looks like many of the crazies you encounter on the train to Ipswich at any given hour...



Wooden Shjips' latest effort West is pretty killer. Just to show HOW killer, the San Franciscan psych dwellers have gotten together a video for spiky number 'Lazy Bones' - directed by none other than Black Dice! You can't get more excellently referential than that. We saw Ripley Johnson in his other form as Moon Duo last weekend - excellente! - and we get to see Black Dice touch down in a couple months. Still waiting on an actual Wooden Shjips tour though...

Wooden Shjips - Lazy Bones from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

Im kinda hot and cold when it comes to Ganglians. They are one of those acts that tend to drag me in with their recordings, then disappoint when it comes to the live arena. This is a pretty unusual dilemma, but it occasionally happens (Real Estate have also led me down this path...) Anyway, John Hinckley's video for Ganglians' latest single 'Bradley' is pretty ace. Ill probably keep giving these hipster hippies the benefit of the doubt til the day they die...

Ganglians - "Bradley" from John Hinckley on Vimeo.

TV On The Radio have had a tumultuous year to say the least, but they continue to roll on, and that adds more stars on their lapels as far as Im concerned. Their fourth album Nine Types Of Light may have perplexed some, but I liked it more than their last album. Go figure. They are playing in Australia next month, so here is a track to get us all lathered up for it...



NOW GET BACK TO WORK!