Countdown To Heart Beach A Blissful Relief

Tassie heartthrobs Heart Beach are sharing the love around. They are handing out this 7", Counting/Relief, through Rough Skies Records on Tuesday (pre-order it here). It is quintessential HB - an ebullient amble underscored ('Counting') by a shadow of restraint (Relief'). The clarity of this production though - there is so much echo on the drums on the latter track, the vocals feel like they are ensconced in a velvet cavern, the bass is succulent, the guitar tremors seductively - seriously, everything is in its right place. The second release to have the Neil Thomason touch (he also recorded the half/cut record Ecco Locale coming out soon), and with Mikey Young's Midas touch (possibly more in tune with his Lace Curtain productions), this two-track wonder is one of the best-sounding releases to hit my ears for some time. The trio may say they "don't want to be here anymore" in 'Relief' (sung with a wonderful round-vowel Aussie accent - how I miss thee) - but I want to stay on Heart Beach forever.

Falling Behind The Lace Curtain

We meet once again, Mikey Young. Seriously, do you not have a home to go to? Always loitering with ne-er do wells. Making any old racket, as long as it is loud and interesting. Sure, you pal around with your buddies (in this case, Dave West (he of the excellent Rank/Xerox) and Total Control alum James Vinciguerra). Sure, you've parted your hair and brushed the dandruff from your shoulder pads, washed the gunk out of your eyes and brushed your teeth. You even mince around with a genteel presence like Lace Curtain. But we know you, Mikey. You and your brethren are responsible for garage sweat, punk desperation, the itch of abandon. No veneer of hypnotic trance will hide the fact that rock is fused to your soul...

That said, Lace Curtain is enough of an about-turn to irk your purist acolytes, turning from you and your new persona as a personal affront, whilst garnering a fresh set of feverish do-gooders to your cause. Your junkie-centric need to create music is truly something, and with Falling/Running, Lace Curtain's new 12" coming out through Mexican Summer, you and your cronies have chiseled out something that embellishes the kraut rhythmics whilst submerging into glistening pools of synth. Free may you roam, kemo sabe.

Pre-order Falling/Running here.

Oogain' And Boogain'

Mikey Young has the Midas touch. If he isn't killing in Eddy Current Suppression Ring or Total Control, he is producing half of Australia's most interesting, derelict rock music or appearing in further fragmented side projects like Brain Children or Lace Curtain. This may seem like a ridiculous notion/statement/whatfuckingever, but the self-titled LP from yet another of his bands, Ooga Boogas, could be up to the task of eclipsing all that he has done thus far.

Why? Because this is a culmination of all the things that are right with slacker boredom blue-collar rock from backwater Australia, this is an album willing to step out from behind shoddy production values, excessive reverb and indecipherable lyrics, this is the sound of a band deftly integrating a myriad of influences into their own indelible image, like an Ooga Booga cookie cutter. No matter what is thrown into the deep fryer - the Lou Reed saunter of 'It's A Sign', the New Wave pheromones oozing from 'Sex In The Chillzone', the skipping out of town with your degenerate best mate 'Archie & Me' - the album meshes seamlessly together, a insidious construction of Babylonian proportions.

The key here is frontman Leon Stackpole. Whilst each song swings from style and tone, his presence and voice permeates throughout, ensuring us that we are always within his world (and sometimes his mind too). The humour inherent in 'Studio Of My Mind' or 'Mind Reader', the chagrin of 'Ecstasy', the dazed malaise of 'It's A Sign' - it is all iconic, idiosyncratic stuff, yet amiable too - there's no airs and graces, nor seedy aspersions. Rather than being downer or designer, this is - well - true; an honest sense of storytelling, backed by killer songs.

Ooga Boogas isn't an album of scattershot ideas - there is no smash-and-grab laziness or sleight-of-hand, just four guys who have crafted ten songs that all stand alone, but together (sewn together by Young's guitar and  Stackpole's laconic, comfortable vocals and knife's-edge amusing/incisive/stupid/inconsequential lyrics) Ooga Boogas defies description - because it surpasses them.

Ooga Boogas is out through Aarght! Records.. It's an incredible record that exudes class whilst explicitly shunning such a thing, and is bound to be held aloft of one of the truly exhilarating records of 2013. You've got to do it for the kids...and your kids' kids.

Ooga Boogas - Circle Of Trust
Ooga Boogas - A Night To Remember