Video Vacuum - Dollar Bar, Beach Arabs, Wireheads, Sneers, Peter Escott

I am scurrying around London trying to find a job. Not having much luck to be honest. Still, I'm trying to be patient. Plus it gives me time to sit down and listen to some great music. But then I get stir crazy and need my visuals stimulated too. So here are five vids that are doing the bizniz.

First up are these perennial clownish nice guys, Dollar Bar. They were "big" in some sense back in the '00s, then gave up on the idea of chasing the Triple J buck, before reuniting for a mate's 40th, realised they still dug playing all of these GBV guitar pop games, jammed a bunch, played a bit, and put out new record Paddington Worker's Club. They are playing the excellent looking Blurst of Times festival in October alongside the likes of Blank Realm, Dick Diver, UV Race, Hard Ons, TV Colours, Day Ravies and our very own Roku Music. Word is that Dollar Bar themselves might be joining the SM stable in 2015... Watching this video of '(You're Blind) Baby' (directed by Matt Banham) of guitarist/singer Chris Yates having "the time of his life" and see if this is a good move... What party animals, I feel the hangover kicking in just watching this...

Beach Arabs - "Drifters" from Mouca on Vimeo.

Getting a bit more jumped up (and following in the trend of doing 60s/70s montages as film clips - which I am really digging incidentally) is Liz Hogg's outfit Beach Arabs. Helps that this is a great menagerie of seaside party times. Wild Movement was a good lil album, and Hogg is currently playing around Spain and other parts of continental Europe - well worth checking out if you can.

Wireheads - Five Grand from Format Records on Vimeo.

Damn I love Adelaide idiots Wireheads. Their album The Late Great Wireheads is killer - somewhere between Bed Wettin Bad Boys and more downtuned, downtrodden, dirty fare (Per Purpose comes to mind). This ode to Adelaide showcases the whiny, strained, unhinged vocal delivery of Dom Trimboli and crunched, screwed violin of Tom Spall - and how easy it is to get drunk at a mate's place on Coopers Red and make a killer video. I think I have listened to this song eleven times today - and it's not even close to the best song on the album. Bloody great stuff.

I missed out on writing about Berlin-based nihilists Sneers' last record For Our Soul - Uplifting Lights To Shine As Fires (out through Brigadisco - trust me, you really need this) so here is a video of 'Self-Atoning Apostasy' to get you fanging for it. Watching a couple eating surrounded by red velvet; flashes of goth darkness, domestic violence, blood-caked skin, caressing foliage, self-mutilation, shotguns, prostate sex, all soundtracked by dissonance and fear. I really love these guys. It's all sordid and evil no wave wailings - right up my alley.

And as a final bonus, here is Native Cat Peter Escott doing his own thing. He has just released solo album The Long O through Bedroom Suck (I reviewed the album briefly at The Music over here) - it's a fascinating portraiture of an artist both confident and insecure, flamboyant and subdued. Great lyrics, beguiling compositions. And I really like this film clip too - especially Escott's dance moves. There is something emotionally bare about them, yet hidden due to the secluded nature of the surroundings, that resonates with me. Plus it makes me homesick for Australia. It truly does.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Believe in Devil World in your Mind

Two songs from south and even further south of the ‘Deep North’ that is Queensland. Yeah, the place where we complain about a winter that would see most people around the world stripping to near illegal limits in order to sun themselves in the nearest public park.

Richard in your Mind’s ‘Hammered’ is this kind of song (the turning your white bits into red bits kind). It’s a bit drunk on life and cheap wine. You know those scenes on the front of goon boxes where the Victorian style people (not Melbourne hipsters, the sex-starved, non-ironic corset wearers of the queen Victoria) sit around having an idyllic picnic replete with parasols and blossoms? Well this is for your backyard version of the same thing. Smile through the burn, tongue in cheek, you’re not drowning, just drinking heavily.

Peter Escott’s (of the Native Cats) ‘Believe in Devil World' is not that kind of song. It’s more the reflection afterwards as you examine your burning skin and chapped lips in the mirror. The tongue here is not in cheek; it’s forked. Devil World is that place on the other side of the Victorian picnic (in both the hipster and corseted sense). Tasmania winters are not the time for picnics with your baby – unless you harbour motives ulterior to enjoying yourself by the riverside. Devil World is that place you try to escape when you knock back that third glass of cheap champagne and wonder whether bodies float or not.

Escott's album The Big O comes out on Bedroom Suck in August; Richard In Your Mind's Ponderosa is out next month too on Rice Is Nice.