Emma Russack & Friends In A New State

A couple years ago Emma Russack (Hot Palms, Lola Flash) put out a stellar solo album, You Changed Me. She has been a little quiet of late, studying and working and such, but she is ready to enter these sonic waters again with her sophomore record In A New State. 'My Own Friend' is the first cut from it, and immediately it's obvious that she has gone down a decidedly more guitar-centric route here, with a sonorous, crystalline, enveloping production. It also evokes a state of comfortable balance for Russack - that she truly has become her own friend, in more than one way. it's a quietly brooding yet ultimately buoyant song, which bodes well for the album when it comes out in June.

PREMIERE - Soda Eaves Announces 2nd Album Murray, Darling

Like Drapes Either Side, Melbourne songwriter Soda Eaves' debut album, was one of my favourite records of 2013. It's the kind of experimental lo-fi  introspection that echoes well after its finished, plucking at the mind, an eloquent thinkpiece on 21st century urban existentialism, rooted in Australian Gothic ruminations. Soda Eaves (AKA Jake Core) is a restless rambler - when I first met him, he was travelling up and down the East Coast of Australia playing songs, working and playing shows where he needed cash. His lyrical complexities extend to poetry - he has a few books kicking around the place, all of which take skewed looks at the mundane and the sublime happenstances of life.

Murray, Darling is the follow up LP. It was recorded in the beautifully stark environment of the Atherton Tablelands; again feeding into the melancholy state that SE finds so evocative. His hushed vocals on tracks like 'Benny & the Jets', the stuttering, muffled percussion, the crackling-AM-radio guitar, all combine to create a flickering pastiche of pockets of life - writing songs about writing songs, about the sunset's hue as it hovers above the searing bitumen, about how a song hits the ear and transports to another place, someplace clearer, greener, before dropping you back into the banality of it all. There is a hushed fragility throughout Murray, Darling that is nonetheless imbued with a steely resolve, an intelligence that locks onto these nuggets of ingenuity and beauty amid the daily malaise and minutiae of life and makes it his own. Everyone needs to wade into these waters and be made clean.

You can pick up Murray, Darling on limited edition vinyl through Brierfield Flood Press in Australia, and Fluff here in the UK. Soda Eaves embarks on a national tour of the album later this month - the dates are below.

17th Brisbane - The Junk Bar w/ Feeding Fauna & Mark Zian

21st Melbourne - Polyester Records w/ Tayutau

22nd Melbourne - 471 Brunswick St w/ PiO, Yffer & Truly Holy

23rd Hobart - The Grand Poobah w/ Walt & Mess o’ Reds

24th Hobart - MONA

28th Canberra - The Front w/ Dog Name & Alphamale

29th Sydney - The Record Crate w/ Joseph Liddy & T.S.H, Betony Dircks & Adam Gibson

30th Thirroul - Franks Wild Years w/ Alan Wearne & Solid Effort

Totally Mild Down Time

One of the albums I'm anticipating in 2015 is Down Time, the debut longplayer from subdued pop chanteuses (and boys) Totally Mild, who are the latest converts to the Bedroom Suck religion. I saw them play at Bar Open back in 2013, directly after obliterating my headspace all day at ATP - I think TM were supporting Liam 'Snow Nasdaq from The Ocean Party' Halliwell's solo thing The Menstrual Cycle - I don't truly remember, I was pretty shattered. The band is the brainchild of Elizabeth Mitchell but also enlists the aid of Lehmann B Smith (if you haven't heard his stuff before, goddamn rectify that asap), Ashley Bundang (Zone Out, Hot Palms) and Zach Schneider (Full Ugly). The first taste off the album is 'Christa', and it's a languid corker. The band are about to embark on a national tour with best buds The Ocean Party (I feel like a mouthpiece for those guys!), and you can catch 'em at the following places:

Thurs, Jan 29 – The Phoenix, Canberra, ACT [w/The Ocean Party, Black Springs + Eadie and the Doodles]

Fri, Jan 30 – The Lansdowne, Sydney, NSW [w/The Ocean Party, Black Springs + King Single]

Sun, Feb 1 – Black Bear Lodge , Brisbane, QLD [w/The Ocean Party, Workshop + Curlew]

Sun, Feb 8 – Ceres, Melbourne, VIC [10am, w/The Ocean Party, two sets each]

Sat, Feb 14 – Brisbane Hotel, Hobart, TAS [6pm, w/Bitch Prefect, Peter Escott, Old Mate, Superstar, Pines, Small Black Lambs + All the Weathers]

Tues, Feb 24 – Howler, Melbourne, VIC [w/The Ocean Party + Real Estate]

That Brisbane show with Workshop and SM faves Curlew looks fantastic... Get along you donkeys!

Quaffing The Healing Crystals Down For Those Cool Sounds

Barely six months have passed since Melbourne dudes Cool Sounds brought us Melbourne Fashion, and yet here is another album to light up and take in. Healing Crystals is eight songs of blissful, sanguine pop, an easy glide down the backstreets of your town. Snowy (The Ocean Party et al) has become more of a fixture on this album, his saxophone lending a warm hum that at once refreshes and lightens the load. There are additional vocals lilting in the background too from the likes of Amanda Roff (Harmony), Ashley Bundang (Zone Out, Hot Palms, Totally Mild) and Zac Denton (The Ocean Party, Ciggie Witch) to add to the wash of sultry sounds. In fact this reminds me a lot of last year's Ciggie Witch record, Rock and Roll Juice. There is an ease and familiarity with all of this, that doesn't feel as put on (or put upon) as other players in this crowded tavern. Especially when they get into storyteller mode, like closer 'Pizzas', which plays out like a vignette of a bit player from Edward Scissorhands, if the film was shot in Coburg. Which to me should be the focus of more jangle rock albums - concept it the fuck up.

Seriously though, Healing Crystals is a lovely record. The fact that French label Beko Disques (who put out the Excusers EP I mentioned recently, as well as Day Ravies and Nathan Roche releases) are putting this out is doubly exciting - grab it here. The boys have had a residency this month down at the Tote - and are finishing up this Sunday with Palm Springs and Tam Vantage in support - get along.

Pencil Pushers

Yet another Melbourne act branching out of the Osborne Street crew that's spawned the likes of The Ocean Party, Velcro, Hot Palms, Zone Out and Andre, Pencil is the wonky pop brainchild of TOC bassist Liam Halliwell (AKA Snowy Nasdaq, who amongst moonlighting with Mining Boom and doing his own things like Menstrual Cycle, as well as recording and mixing stuff, is a busy boy indeed). Halliwell is joined in Pencil by Ashley Bundang (Hot Palms, Zone Out), Jordan Thompson (The Ocean Party), Andre Vanderwert (Andre, Hot Palms), and Zahra Khamissa (Hot Palms, Zone Out) - a petri dish of the Osborne Again/Why Don't You Believe Me? rota. It's more blissfully laid back than The Ocean Party (if you can believe that possible), and deserved of their own spot on the shelf of an already overloaded Melbourne soundscape.

Pencil have a few little releases to their name, most recently their Good Excuse EP. It's sold out, but you can pick up the digitals (and a limited number of their earlier self-titled and Sydney Weekender EPs) at their Bandcamp.  What will these guys come up with next...

Something Less To Zone Out About

Another great little release is Something Less, the debut EP from Melbourne's Zone Out, and it's the perfect way to see out the night. The quartet features members of the bands Hot Palms, Pencil, Totally Mild, Scotdracula and is the bedroom daydreams of one Ashley Bundang, and each release gets decidedly more wistful and sepia-toned - a cloud of nostalgia, heavy burdens, metaphysical fatigue and the light touch of hope. It saunters along absentmindedly, a dancehall slowdance for those about to drop out, but the tracks here never feel listless. There is a majesty here that hints at a lot more substance just around the corner. That shimmering guitar on 'Greeves Street' also imbues a wasted elegance - being opulent and sundrunk on a VHS rerun.

Something Less is out now in cassette (through Osborne Again) and CD (Why Don't You Believe Me?) forms.

Don't Palm The Novo's

I did an awesome interview with Leroy from Newcastle's finest/worst (I think it's the same thing) The Gooch Palms. Why? Because they are finally bringing out an LP. It's called NOVO's, which is shorthand for Novocastrians (the name given to people from Newcastle), and I think it's a derogatory slang. Don't be hatin' if I'm wrong - go the Newcastle Knights! Ahem. So yeah, this album coming out on Anti-Fade is pretty special. Now, live this duo (Leroy sings, plays guitar and gets nude) and Kat (stand up drums, sings) are a crazy bunch - it's the kind of manic performance that seems like it'll implode at any second, but underneath the sloppy exterior is a tightly calibrated machine of garage rock and soul. Yes, soul. Leroy may act the goat, but the dude has lungs - just listen to 'You' and wrap your head around the fact that it's a Gooch Palms stone cold original. The beauty of these two? They know their limitations, and are able to continually find ways to fidget and squirm within them, contorting and reforming into myriad sordid pop gems. They may not take over the world - indeed, they are more likely to get mugged for their bum bags and their Mariners commemorative T-shirts on the Hunter Street Mall - but they don't need global domination. They've got music, and beers, and each other. They'll see out their days content on the Gooch Farm -it's a true blue love story, strewth.

Grab NOVO's here. The Gooch Palms are launching the album in October, coming up here to play at Greenslopes Bowls Club (where Sonic Masala hosted Velcro and Hot Palms, yeah?) Saturday October 19. Oh, and the interview will be out soon, promise.

Zoned Out In This Place

Oops - I somehow posted this as the email I received from Lachlan at Osborne Again Music - MY BAD. So here is the actual post...

Enough people have mentioned to me in the past month the "fact" that too many people play in too many bands in this day and age that their efforts are wasted IE they should focus on making one thing the best it possibly can, rather than hedging bets with a plethora of acts that are variants on the same theme. I see their point - there are bands that are filled with half-formed ideas, merely because friends wanted to play together and it's so easy to record stuff rather than work and work on it until you have the money to go into a studio and make it right. Osborne Again Music is the kind of label that will fall into this category for some, seeing as every band on the "label" have a member or members from the same Osborne Street house in Melbourne. Beef Jerk, Velcro, Feline Fine, Shark Alarm...they all have that jangly, slacker, wasted suburban debasement vibe. 

Then there is Zone Out. Featuring members of Hot Palms (who are playing our September 6 gig extravaganza alongside the aforementioned Velcro crew' and hence the co-release of the EP through Hot Palms' Why Don't You Believe Me? record label), Pencil, Totally Mild (who I got to see the last time I was in Melbourne, they were pretty rad) and Scotdrakula, Zone Out has more of a considered, cosmopolitan touch (IE this doesn't feel burped out after a half carton and box of pizza has been consumed on a Tuesday morning). Their upcoming EP Something Less is one of spatial awareness - the band know their limits but are willing to surpass them, travel out into the glacial wilderness, their noise exacerbated by their willingness to drift and dream. 

Something Less is out on Friday. I'm quietly confident that this one will be a slowburner that will light your fire.

Feline Fine Under The Soda Eaves

Here are a couple of small Aussie releases that are deserved of everyone's attention, from members of a number of other bands - isn't that the way these days?

First up we have Soda Eaves, the project from Hot Palms guitarist Jake Core (he also has some tomes of poetry out there). Like Drapes Either Side will be his debut release in his solo venture, and 'Doll' is the first taste. It's a more raucous affair than the studied emotions that Hot Palms plumb, but that isn't to say that this rocks. It hulks, sulks and saunters into the fast approaching twilight, sucking furiously on a tailor-made cigarette, collar up against the wind, eyes stormy. Core clearly has a way with words, and with his distinctive Aussie drawl, blown-out fuzz and cheap production, he sidesteps the suburban slacker rock revolution by being resolutely maudlin and obtuse - and therefore, ironically, a genuine article. I cannot wait to hear more - and will get a chance to, when Soda Eaves plays the Waiting Room Saturday September 7 with McKisko.


Another band from the Osborne Again label (of Velcro and other Ocean Party offshoot Shark Alarm, mainly because these bands all come from the same house in Osborne Street in Melbourne's Brunswick) is Feline Fine, made up of members of The Ocean Party and Beef Jerk. Sunny twang, cat puns, boozy ramblings, vocals everything and nothing, existence meaningful and meaningless. When ARE you coming back?

Australian Nonchalance

Are you as laidback as this character? I hope so. And many of our current crop of killer Aussie bands are too. Let's check some out.

Andre is the band of Andre Vanderwert, who is one of the carousel players in Hot Palms (I wrote warmly of them only last week). Andre isn't alone on this endeavour though, incorporating Jordan Ireland (The Middle East), Marc Requeiro-McKelvie (New Estate, Popolice, Teeth & Tongue), Hot Palm's Alec Marshall and members of The Ocean Part amongst others. The band has put out a helluva a lot recently: Too Much Talk was a cassette that came out in November; the Do Watchya Want CD-r in February; and the Mend b/w Have 7" this month (all out on Why Don't You Believe Me? Records - they are all available here). This shit is golden - more sonorous and accessible than some of their contemporaries, raucous, maudlin, grungy, gritty, funny - it's just damned fine. Get onto it, NOW -  these guys need to be playing much more often.

Speaking of The Ocean Party, one of their members Curtis Wakeling also moonlights as Velcro - his Wagga Wagga EP was one of my fave short-form releases of last year (check that out here). Well he now has a new lineup, and the trio are backing up with 'Bottle Shop' - distinctly Australian in tone and demeanour, with a perfectly calibrated pop composition ensuring this sticks like a burr. So easy, so effortless, so whimsical, so so good. There's promise of a full length later this year - consider all extremities crossed for that one.

Velcro - Bottle Shop

Now I'm cramming three bands in at once here, but they all contain the Ford brothers, Daniel and Matt. These Brissy-based siblings are the nicest, coolest dudes who are also cornering the market up here with excellent bands. The most prominent at this point in time is scratchy dreamers Black Vacation - so much so that they have scored recent supports for Wild Nothing. Their Scarred Glass EP is fantastic, if rough, and their newer material is much stronger - making them a deliciously dangerous proposition indeed. Not to be outdone, there is Kids Cryptic, a stomping, shambolic slice of garage flights of fantasy; and newest incarnation Thigh Master (man, these guys should be band name generators!) which is darker, dirgier, and also filled with sparkling gems (and are on the support bill for King Tuff tomorrow night here at the Primitive Room). If you haven't heard of these bands, or these boys, guaranteed you will have by year's end.

Black Vacation - Scarred Glass
Kids Cryptic - Shore

Here's footage of Black Vacation at the last Sonic Masala show...

And here is some footage of the excellent Thigh Master, filmed at Rics around the same time...

Whilst Greg Boring may have been better suited in my first post (and was, in fact, meant to be there), the Brisbane noise mumblers slot into the transient debris and shimmering sweatheaps that make up the Queensland capital's 'burbs. The band is not really a band - it's a happening, an anachronistic algae, an osmosis. It springs out of the cracks, delivers short stabs of melting casiotone combustions and wilting malapropisms before disappearing once more amongst the cigarette butts, vomit stains and saliva sprays. Yet they have also got an album out - Heavy Syrup - and the fact that its received an European release (through the ever excellent Critical Heights - grab it here) is unfathomable - and yet prescient. And while the molasses-paced tracks capture the band in "full swing", it never truly intimates how destitute, how coagulated, how haggard, yet utterly of its moment their live shows are. Fucks me when the next one will be either - I don't think even they know.

Greg Boring - Denuder
Greg Boring - Alvin

Great Earthquake is Melbourne's Noel Symons. The one-man looped-up melody maker has just released his sophomore record, Mind Maps, and its a quivering miasma of sounds, using a wide variety of instruments and samples to augment his own eclectic drumming patterns, and what is left is an album fully in tune with its master's whims and wishes. It swells and crashes in such a diverse fashion, weaving a meshed curtain of pastoral warmth, pagan rhythms and soaring vocal chants. Great Earthquake launches Mind Maps officially in May, starting with a show at the Tote in Melbourne Saturday May 4 and finishing with a show at The Waiting Room Friday May 17 (supported by the equally impressive McKisko and Sadglint) and taking on a supporting role under a Ghost Notes single launch out at Southside Tea Room the following evening.

Great Earthquake - Do. Make

I'm yet to see the wistful quirk of Wonderfuls play the traps yet, but based on the limited output the Brisbane outfit has bled onto tape, it would be a woozy, lysergic mess of an epiphany. Salty Town is a cracked malaise, washed down the sink into the underbelly of desperation and despair, all masked by a gauzy air of sun-damaged hope. Bobby's voice, flat and monotone, is the centrifugal force, and what pushes everything over the crumbling edge into the abyss of confusion and inertia - Harmony Korine via literary touchstones Praise and The Dead Heart for the ears. Can you escape? And if so, will you want to? Salty Town will be coming out on vinyl soon.

Wonderfuls - Freezing Cold
Wonderfuls - Relapse

Let's close this shop up with Pearls. I was shown this band by close mate Wilk, proclaiming their burgeoning talents, and he wasn't wrong. They slipped a self-titled EP out into the ether December last year without many people noticing, which is diabolical because these four tracks are damn fine. People are noticing though - they toured with A Place To Bury Strangers earlier in 2013, and have picked up the support for the muchly anticipated Bardo Pond tour in August. Not bad at all.

What Would Hot Palms Do?

I've been digging the new stuff from freshly-squeezed Melbourne collective Hot Palms. J.C. (out through Why Don't You Believe Me? Records, who have also put out gear from Lehmann B Smith and Velcro in the past) is the new EP, featuring three musical adaptions of poems by Jake Core (from his book Expecting to be Loved for Nothing), with Alec Marshall responsible for the instrumentals, playing and recording it all with Emma Russack writing and performing vocal duties and Jordan Ireland (The Middle East) on back-up. This novel approach is augmented by the band's fluctuating membership - much like England's Action Beat or Brisbane's Secret Birds, shows have been anywhere from a duo right up to the full eleven-person-deep rollout, with variants of this done based on who is available when.

J.C. itself plays like a strung-out mirage, skewed and medicated - Picnic At Hanging Rock with goon bags and paint huffers. 'Sunday In Milan' is a masterclass in subtle eeriness; 'Adelaide' lurks in the corners, a wraith in gossamer synth and gauze; 'Benny and the Jets' a wasted dream that wakes you in an acrid sweat, fearful, yet afraid that you will never fall back into it no matter who long you sleep. The ethereal wafts over everything...

You can buy J.C. in CD-R or digital form from here. Hot Palms aren't likely to play many shows in the near future as they hunker down to write and record a new 7" and hopefully an LP. 2013 is looking like a blistering year.


Normally I'd have a Friday Cover Up here, but in lieu of that, let's use a track off the EP that is named after a famous song. Not a cover, I'm assured. Hmmm...well, Beastie Boys had that covered ages ago anyway. This song is just so damn rad. Enjoy.

Hot Palms - Benny And The Jets