Melbourne Can Handle The Moonlight Malaise

There is something poetic about the way Melbourne Cans construct their music. It’s probably more the nostalgic quality of their sonic tapestry – the way I'm made to think of lazy afternoons, the birth of my love of The Wedding Present, the warmth of the guitar tones and keys on songs like ‘Boys’… There is a deliberate sense of wistful recognition on debut LP Moonlight Malaise (out through Lost and Lonesome) though, especially the shift in vocal duties from the dulcet croon of Ian Wallace (ex-Pageants – whatever happened to this excellent band??? - and the Edwyn Collins affectations are not missed here!) and Nina Renee. It’s like a sleepier, Merseyside-via-Northcote version of The Cannanes – with a hard crush on the Big O. With all the doo-wop pretensions that are thrown about in this day and age, you cannot get more to-the-bone than ‘Fallen Angels’ – I could feel the tears of my imagined prom date soak through my shoulder-padded suit jacket at my graduation in 1965. The fact that such ruminations come to bear, despite the fact I was born some sixteen years later, belies the power that Melbourne Cans hold in their hands. Plus the urgency that penultimate (and lengthy) track ‘Hot In The Head’ holds is the kind of incessant brooding guitar-solo-heavy slowburner that fires up the cockles in this “old” man’s heart. Melbourne Cans are a square peg/round hole proposition in this day and age – but when geniuses like Lehmann B Smith make a living out of crafting perfect melodies that happily sit far outside the common scene denominators, why shouldn’t these guys too? 

You can grab Moonlight Malaise here.

Burning Angels Make No Witnesses

When I heard 'Forgiven/Forgotten', the heaving, chugging mid tempo rocker that was the first taste of Angel Olsen's latest record Burn Your Fire For No Witness (out on Jagjaguwar), I was stunned. Not because it was a great song - it is a damn fun one with a great bassline though - but because it seemed so at odds to everything I had come to hold dear about the Missouri artist. This was something that Best Coast or one of the bands with Girls as in their name would churn out, albeit with a dark wistfulness percolating underneath the surface; not the artist whose last longplayer was the esoteric, slowburning Half Way Home.

But this seems to be an elliptical curveball, as the album proper, whilst having other robust tunes like 'High & Wild', is more akin to the crafting of haunting pastoral causeways, ebbing and flowing in the mist of melancholy half-memories, that Olsen is becoming famed for. The husky, eerie 'White Fire' is one of the best songs she has ever written because of the use of her voice, bruised and burnt, mingles with the damaged narrative over a simple guitar line that it feels like a reverie spiralling out of solitary confinement, Olsen's lament her Last Supper before eternal redemption. And the timbre of her beckoning voice on 'Lights Out', a psyched soul number, has an overabundance of verve and confidence - this is no nervous, damaged wraith here, but an artist starting to truly harness her powers. Dammit - 'Hi-Five' reminds me of the Big O, Roy Orbison! Wow.

Love, loss, languishing dreams - all buoyed by Olsen's soaring compositions. If she wasn't already a blazing comet in the dark dark night before, starting looking to the sky for Angel Olsen's burning fire - this album is a cracker.

You can get Burn Your Fire For No Witness here - it's a great record. And if you can stay strong through 'White Fire' - you're a fucking liar.