Video Vacuum - Big Ups, Black Vacation, Smile, Food Court, Bad Vision, White Lodge

Lots of people are back at work today. Not me. This post was written and posted last Thursday, my last day of work for a while; I have altered some of the stuff here to make it more "prevalent". Hope it gets you out of the back to work doldrums, for a little while at least...

Big Ups play tomorrow night, which I cannot make because I have my own gig on at The Victoria with Shitwife, Nitkowski and Girl Sweat (not even sorry about the promotion here - seriously, come along, it's a fiver for three of the best bands going around here). I am bummed to miss them - their last album 18 Hours Of Static has been a favourite, and the new one Before A Million Universes looks to be just as good. 'National Parks' has a severe Slint complex in the first half before launching into the Big Ups diatribe that we are more familiar with. The film clip is glossy, with plenty of interpretive dance and a heavy undercurrent of tragedy.

It's been a while since I have seen or heard new stuff from Aussie down-and-outers Black Vacation, but Dan Ford surprised me with this newie. 'For Fear' sees the man with a form of forlorn roto-scoping - an injection of Waking Life into the Melbourne slackersphere. The reverb-heavy vocals can't hide the mourn and malaise, and even animated he remains - well - inanimate. But again, as always, Black Vacation nail it. When's the next release coming out already?

Speaking of inanimate objects/people/faces in Melbourne - Smile have released their video for 'Holiday' featuring a sexy full-size mannequin, getting ready for work, dealing with PPTs and synergy, smashing mid afternoon tins and dreaming of that much-deserved city break. It's a great song, made all the better with the Tim & Eric meets Lynch coda.

Jumping up to Sydney for a bit now with Food Court. 'For The Morning' shows the band in true sporting and synchronized dancing mode - is there anything they cannot do? As you will see, there is quite a lot. Features the best appearance from a bear since The Bear (that one that ripped up Leo is such a poseur...) I love that it comes together (helps when the song rollicks along like a train with Seagal on board), but also looks incredibly half-arsed. Sometimes things work in spite of themselves.

Which brings us back to Melbourne, where Bad Vision take their jauntier punk approach to a house situation that looks classy (look at that stocked bookshelf! is that a clean 4WD in the driveway?), volatile (fusbal fisticuffs!), and jaunty (spinning unbrellas!). These guys are one of the most fun bands in the city, and their upcoming album promises to keep pushing the ante.

And we close out with the VHS stylings of 'Labour of Love' from Gold Coast woozy garage goons White Lodge. Basically this is looking back at the good times, a time capsule compendium of the band's wildness and idiocy. The album is out soon (watch new single 'Bella-Union Creeps' also below) - their stagger assault on the world continues...

Now get back to work!

Wot WOD

Jesus, WOD are a mess, aren't they? The Melbourne four-piece have finally brought out their album I'm Gonna Tell Everyone We Slept Together, Even If We Didn't through Pissfart Records and it's a blistering, dumb blast. Most people will have heard 'What A Drag' - one of the most hilarious pisstakes on being a slack prick that I've ever heard. (Although I totally agree on the chicken salt/regular salt conundrum...) The album alternates between more aggressive punk meltdowns ('Top 5', 'Bad Smell') and barely-awake drunken drawls ('Not Again', 'Monday Morning'). Its all lowest common denominator stuff - the kind of punk that actively encourages drunken belligerence and idiocy but will laugh at you when you hurt yourself. Grab it here and get smaaaaaaaaaashed.

You may have missed the launch and their early Cosmic Psychos support, but they still have a couple dates up their sleeves this month, as they are halfway through their Tote dismantling/residency, and support Food Court at the Gasometer too:

JUNE 20th

THE TOTE HOTEL

COLLINGWOOD

W/KING CHOONGA

JUNE 26th

THE GASOMETER HOTEL

COLLINGWOOD

W/FOOD COURT

JUNE 27th

THE TOTE HOTEL

COLLINGWOOD

W/TOMB HANX

Video Vacuum - METZ, This Will Destroy You, Johnny Telafone, Food Court, The Ocean Party, The Body & Thou

I'm trying to mark 120 assignments on my holiday, so here is a six-pack of A/V viscera to take my mind off it - come, sit down, take a load off, enjoy.

METZ is back! The Toronto noiseniks have a new record on the way, imaginatively titled ii, and are cooking up a special treat in the form of 'Acetate'. A pancake artiste puts his special spin on things, throwing dice, marijuana, pine cones and a glowing anal egg to create a incredibly tasty dish, with added product placement (I definitely want that MAD ripoff tee).

Still heavy but in a mellowed ambient sense, we have 'New Topia', another cut from Texan titans This Will Destroy You's Another Language album of last year. The psychedelic animations combine well, bleeding into each other to make this a mind melter of infinite value.

Melbourne's premiere underground crooner Johnny Telafone has smashed it out of the park with his dour 'Inferno', a lurking lounge number that wouldn't be too out of place with Dean Stockwell lip-syncing this into a lightbulb. As it stands, you have washed out apocalyptic fare swimming across a sheet while Liam "Snowy Nasdaq" Halliwell (The Ocean Party) cracks out a stellar guitar solo on an unplugged guitar. I know a lot of people don't get Telafone, but for everyone's sake, try. This is the real deal.

Speaking of The Ocean Party, they also have a new video out - 'Floodlights', one of the best tracks on their brilliant fourth album Soft Focus. Seeing Snowy wandering around the countryside is bemusing enough - seeing the others take Venetian splits as they wander the Melbourne streets heightens the laconic meander.

Up to Sydney and down by the river with Food Court. It's typical rollicking fare from the four-piece, the kind of marching forth frivolity that comes from getting daggy down on the water, faffing about on boats you have no idea about, with nothing to do and no place to be. It's a perfect ramshackle jam into the sun.


But we can't always have sunshine and lollipops - and that's where The Body & Thou comes in. Their grainy B&W video for 'Beyond the Realms of Dream, That Fleeting Shade Under the Corpus of Vanity' plays out like a VHS serial killer video diary. Combine this with the bands' typically annihilating industrial noise, and you have a feverish nightmare that just won't quit.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

The Food Court Keeps You Young

Sydney's Food Court continue to impress. I dug their Smile At Your Shoes EP, and off the strength of it I convinced Tape/Off to include them on their album tour bill back in June. They stand a little apart from most of their Sydney brethren - mainly because their brand of fun involves slack jawed grins, cars with the windows down and no a/c, head banging good times. Well, actually that could fit with much of what Straight Arrows do - but seeing as they are one of the most fun live bands currently on this wide brown land, it's a great feeling to know they have support. And whaddaya know - SA's Owen Penglis recorded the sucker! And Mikey Young (*trademark*) mastering to boot. You can't get more Aussie garage rock than that. Except they're named Food Court, so... maybe more Aussie Hungry Jack's rock. You can catch em play alongside Yes I'm Leaving and Black Zeros at the Sly Fox in Sydney on September 4 before they officially launch the single on September 20. An EP is in the works. Tasty.

Hits From The Box #82 - 24 Hour Spiral Party

See that above? I got stuck in that... The start of a weird, costly, annoying week. Just when I was starting to think Sydney was OK, I got financially raped by the environment, the train system, a "jovial" cabbie, and a collusion between Tiger and Qantas Airways. But it finished with a Sonic Masala showcase on Friday night with three of the best young bands I have seen in a long long time - seriously keep your eye out for No Sister, Hypnotic Bedrooms and Cassette Cathedral. I also heard newly recorded tracks by Curlew (NOT the dude who writes for the Thousands by the way - might need a new name dude), Bremen Town Musician and Tape/Off, and have locked down releases three and four for the label.

I also slept for 12 hours today. The first time I have had more than 7 hours for over a month. So no more spiral. I'm refreshed and ready for more! So come along, let's check out some new tunes.

Doorbells is Ohio dude Nic Berlin. Afterlife is a beautifully understated EP that echoes with exhausted malaise, yet with a glimmer of hope shining through. Berlin wrote these songs whilst living with someone he was on the cusp of leaving them. 'Dancing With A Ghost' is pregnant with meaning after this knowledge, and all the more euphoric for it. The dissolution of a relationship is never nice, but when the emancipation that comes from getting out from under a situation that has become untenable, whether mutual or exclusive in nature, it makes for joyous expulsion of pent-up anguishes. And Afterlife presents such complicated feelings in an indelibly beautiful way. Kudos, Doorbells.

Canadian garage dwellers Betrayers have a rollicking killer on their hands with new album Let The Good Times Die (out through Perfect Master Records, in green wax no less). Two drum kits ensure the rumbling engine room keeps chugging on like a punishing psychedelic juggernaut, and an organ is firmly wedged onto the thirteenth floor elevator. It's got some T-Rex glam there too, hence the comparisons to King Tuff that are littered around the place, but Betrayers are much more moody and entrenched in the backwaters of a undulating kaleidoscopic mind melt. And 'Hey Now Mary' is a goddamn cool song with all these elements at their redlining best. Lackadaisical psych rock for pick-me-ups and put-me-downs - a trip for all the family.

Let's get reckless. Remember when Coca-Cola brought out the new Coke, and it was all kinds of shit? Why screw with a world-conquering formula, right? Florida's New Coke have chosen the right moniker then, as their three-track Duct Tape Your Mouth EP 7" through Black Gladiator/Slovenly Records. Danny Morales' vocals are almost post-punk glam, on top over razorblade lyrics and thundering, ramshackle garage scuzz instrumentation with more than a few schizophrenic shifts of tone and delivery to throw you off the game. 'I Am Drunk, I Have A Gun, I Want Names' meanwhile is not only a great song title, but an insidious noir lurker of a song hidden within a dirgey garage rock tune. The band sound like how New Coke should have tasted - dirty, weird, and a little orgiastic. New Coke...is...PEOPLE!

Sydney continues to surprise me with the bands that are coming forth, shirking the indie art fare that littered the joint for some time for more interesting guitar based music (at least to me). One of two bands that are really impressing me lately (the other being You Beauty, of which we will talk at length soon) is Food Court, who despite the name are eschewing the dolewave malapropisms for a more raucous, 90s guitar rock drive. There is nothing serious here, it's a lot of silly fun with a build up of scum, just what the doctor ordered. Hopefully we will hear a lot more from these guys soon - including another venture up north perhaps?

Now here is an interesting one. New York collective Sun Looks Down offer up a contemplative, gossamer soundscape with the operatic wavering vocals of Diana Flanagan, and each song on their Sungaze EP feels like it's moving more into the type of art-pop that the band George used to specialise in - shudder... But then the instrumentation builds and coalesces to a heady summit before it explodes in a cascading miasma of controlled yet forceful noise, and the songs are turned on their head. It's like post-rock brutality for the mainstream, or unhinged chamber pop noise, or something... Or maybe it's what George should have been all along. In fact, it's like another long lost Brisbane band - Gota Cola. Not as good, mind, but if you liked those guys, a good chance you will like Sun Looks Down. I wouldn't normally like this kind of thing - in fact, I often think this kind of "experiment" shouldn't work. But it does, and I do.

Let's finish up with some scrappy guitar pop from Wimps, a lil Seattle band that has some serious pedigree. Featuring former members of SM faves The Intelligence and Meth Teeth, Wimps have brought out a 7" EP in the form of Party At The Wrong Time, and it's a lot of fun (as you'd expect). 'Secret Message' is a killer opening track which is worth the purchase alone. Get it now.




Happy Sunday everyone!