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.

Held Aloft And Culled

Sydney dark distorted dreamers Cull have FINALLY have brought us their debut album, Aloft, and they are finishing up their East Coast tour tonight in Brisbane at the Foundry (alongside Sonic Masala band BARGE With An Antenna On It and two SM faves, Spirit Bunny and Blonde Tongues. The album is as anthemic, operatic, awash with gossamer sonics and quirky left-field shimmers and stutters - the magical flourish effect that floats over 'Magi Fuel', the bent faux-yacht warble that permeates 'Truth Bomb', the harped effect that flutters its fiery fingers over the tetchy spaces of 'The Quality Of Being Lifelike'... Cull are a different band, in that it is hard to really pin them down. They have elements of Radiohead's insidious experimentation, the bent pastoral psych of Tame Impala, the slowburn intellectual dreamscapes of Pink Floyd - but then it is none of these things either. The esoteric, shapeshifting nature of the songs on Aloft could come across as too obtuse - and on paper, I wouldn't normally subscribe. But these guys have that hidden apocryphal vial, that untenable talent that is fused in their DNA and no-one else's, that makes them unique and endlessly intriguing. And when they let go with the wall of sound, you know you have been hit - in the chest, in the brain, in the heart, in the psyche. (Plus they are lovely dudes, so that helps). Get Aloft here, get to the Foundry tonight, get Culled.

By The Grace Of A Golden Tongue

I got Blonde Tongues to open up for The Ocean Party back in November 2013 when the boys were launching their third album Split. It was a bit of a strange night, in that only 30 odd people showed to watch what was a superb lineup (also playing was Nathan Roche, Thigh Master and Dag). Blonde Tongues had only played a handful of shows, but they really impressed me that night with their slightly loose, glossy pop noise.

The four-piece are bringing out their self-recorded, self-titled debut, extending from their singles 'SEILU' and 'Hey Good Lookin'. From the shimmering yet cantankerous opener 'Wedding Bells' to the wonky chagrin of 'Beer', the contained maelstrom of 'Glass Cigar' and the brooding 'When You Come Down Blue', Blonde Tongues is a real feat of shoegazing ingenuity. These guys deserve to be playing more shows - they killed it on the Love Junkies show on Saturday (alongside our own Tape/Off).

Lashed By Blonde Tongues

How good is 'Seilu'? The new single from Brisbane band Blonde Tongues. I first heard these guys when I got them to open up an Ocean Party launch at The Beetle Bar November last year. They were good, and good dudes - occupying the pool table for most the night. A year on, and they have provided the world with this great dreamy noise barb -  a drifting miasma of contemplation that sheds the delicate chrysalis in a blistering shower of warm sonic sparks. The flipside is this laidback, sun-dappled gem 'Beer', offering an acoustic-led jangly counterpoint that is decidedly perennial, not linked to Australia yet intrinsically linked to Australia - a blazed chimera. This duality is positive - the intricacy and delicacy the band takes to their approach, whether it be shoegaze-affiliated or in the languid realms of guitar pop, is something to be excited about.

These songs have actually been out since July - when I was moving hemispheres - so I'm late to the party here. Better late than not at all. The four-piece have an album on the way - I for one cannot wait.

Fighting The Curlew Urges

Mark Zian has one of the most unique voices in Brisbane today. He was (is?) an integral part of the intricate machine that was (is?) Knee Chin, but finds his voice (literally) in the likes of solo outfit I Am Not A Nihilist and his “rock” band, Curlew. Not that many people know it – Curlew (Zian on guitar and vocals; Callum Wheeler on drums) have been something of a hermit/recluse for the entirety of their conception. I have had the pleasure of seeing Curlew three times in twelve months (nigh on a record), two times this year (both of which were Sonic Masala shows – hey, if you want to watch bands you really like, best put them on yourself). The duo have just released Animal Urges, and it’s an album of exquisite, and exquisitely painful, beauty – a sparse malaise of contemplation, rumination and ruin, all spun in a instrumental narrative that is both spare and dense, an exercise in steely tension and gallows humour, an extraordinary existence borne from the sweatboxes of suburban Brisbane, spat under hooded eyes and a sly yet weary grin. Zian has a cracked vocal delivery somewhere suspended between The Drones’ Gareth Liddiard and another of Brisbane’s hidden lyrical geniuses, Amateur Childbirth (their kinship came to fruition when Curlew played the launch of AC’s second album, PRIPYAT, back in February).

Animal Urges is a somewhat different beast from Curlew’s other major releases. Firstly the songs are much looser and longer in length – only three of the nine tracks on offer stay under five minutes, and three surpass the ten minute mark. Take as example the title track. Essentially a suite of songs, the tracks has a spluttering rhythm that suits the primal questions, assumptions and experiences that Zian explores. Whether it be a conversation in a café that circles the nostalgic mores that remembering the highs of narcotic highs can bring, the adolescent realisation of the strengths of being a male yet the pull towards the female, or the internal conflicts that such primal mores can cause, Zian’s presence is magnetic, drawing you into his esoteric, conflicted world. From the soft jangle accompanying soft-focus childhood memories to the harsher preamble to a venting diatribe, the instrumentation mirrors the ever-shifting narrative tangle. Curlew is a band that inhabits a singular worldview, drawing you inexorably into the swirling mental philosophising, and never have I felt more in tune to a person’s unchecked experiences and explorations of what the fuck this life might mean before. And for that you should all be eternally grateful. And the story outlaid on ‘Fitness First’ is brilliant – it gets me every time.

You can grab Animal Urges here. One of the best Brisbane releases of 2014, yet its verbosity, obtuseness and bared-vein honesty will scare some away. Be brave; step inside; close the door behind you; and listen to someone who isn’t afraid to breathe life into the confused world they live in. Amazing stuff. Their next show is at Trainspotters this Saturday July 26 alongside Black Vacation, Ciggie Witch, Blonde Tongues and Pare Ohm - an incredible line up for free.

TONIGHT - Sonic Masala & Spunk Records Presents The Ocean Party Album Launch

We here at Sonic Masala have always been big fans of the somewhat innocent navel gazings of Melbourne suburbians The Ocean Party. Their second LP Social Clubs from last year was one of clarity, brevity, and early-middle-twentysomething malaise - not so rail against the world as it was rolling with the genial punches. The band members are best mates, great blokes, and have an even better record in the form of Split. They played in Brisbane recently for the Spunk Records showcase, but tonight is the official launch party for the album - and Sonic Masala is along for the ride. It's cracking off at the Beetle Bar tonight at 8pm - come early to see local upstarts Dag, Thigh Master and Blonde Tongues, as well as Sydneysider Nathan Roche (he of now defunct Camperdown & Out infamy), all for a tenner. See you there - I'll be the guy propping up the merch bar.



DAG - 15.07.2013 from Joshua Watson on Vimeo.