Review - Beast & Flood's Lanugo and Tour Dates

Sydney trio Beast & Flood have graced the pages here a few times over the past twelve or so months, ever since I saw them play an energising set at Blackwire Records supporting Roku Music on their national Collider tour. The band are finally bringing out debut LP Lanugo and it's as chaotic, guttural, twitchingly melodic and fearlessly verbose. Opener 'Gold Maids' is indicative of the piano-wire strikes and emotive strangulation that these guys deliver in sonic cyanide capsule form. There is an affinity with Adelaide's Sincerely, Grizzly and Texan titans At The Drive In and ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - the frenetic fretwork, the bearing of sinew and soul, the anguish, ambiguity and absurdity of life. Adam's vocals will be an acquired taste to some - each word is ripped from the throat, an involuntary expulsion of pent-up existentialism and ennui. but there are moments of synchronicity amidst the gnashing and gurning.

Lanugo is out June 22 on No Safe Place Records. They tour the album through June/July/August - see below for dates and supports:

25/06 - RAD, Woollongong w/ Milkk, Solid Effort
26/06 - Blackwire, SYD w/ Hannahband, Polyfox & the Union of Most Ghosts

09/07 - Rics, BRIS w/ On VHS

10/07 - The Bearded Lady, BRIS w/ Ghost Notes, Draining Pool, Low Season

11/07 - Beatdisc, Parramatta w/ Carb On Carb + Bare Grillz + Sweater Season

16/07 - Phoenix, Canberra w/ Primary Colours + Mind Blanks

17/07 - The Metropolitan, Adelaide w/ No Action + Great Oceans + David Crosby's Sinus

18/07 - Vice Bar, Melbourne w/ Worm Crown + Nun of the Tongue

24/07 - The Brisbane Hotel, Hobart w/ Naked + All The Weathers

01/08 - The Hamilton Station Hotel, Newcastle

07/08 - The Old Manly Boatshed, Sydney w/ Ruth Carp & The Fish Heads

Sincerely Giving Both Halves, Grizzly or Otherwise

Sincerity is on trial. The Prime Ministers getting away with saying that they never actually meant what they said. The blinking mass appeal of shops already cramming their aisles with cheap plastic tinsel made in factories by people who have zero idea who Saint Nick even is. Music that has had every ounce of substance sucked from its crevices and replace with costume makeup. There are still people everywhere, but this place is a ghost town. Turn the telly on, bugeyes - you’ve got your very own window seat to hell.

And you can let that get to you until there’s nothing left of you to get.

Or.

You can make a sincere, heartfelt record that gnaws back at all the bullshit. And you can play it loudly around the country to see if anyone has a heart anymore. I don’t know what the thought process behind the naming Halves was but it strikes me as oceanically ironic. From the outlet this record sets out, not so much to traverse the seas, as swallow it. To take everything that’s outside and turn it inside; to jump around while it’s all in there just to shake the goddamn thing up a bit.



This record is as beautiful as it is aggressive. It’s harsh and mild and fucking Franz Kafka gets name-checked. And it’s an album, from start to finish. An actual, sit down and listen to this album. Forget the costume makeup and the clowns in parliament forget the tinsel waving from every orifice trying to sell you something useless, sit down and listen to this.

Australia is giving way to some kind of guitar band Renaissance and Sincerely, Grizzly just brought the cavalry. Halves is thoughtful, interesting, and sincere. A record worth listening to, one half after the other.

Out now through brothers Black Night Crash Records. Available with what may also be the greatest band shirt of all recent time.

Beast Singing, Flood Dancing

Wollongong rabble rousers Beast & Flood came across my radar late last year, their ramshackle and angular take on indie rock striking a chord. They supported Roku Music when they played at Blackwire Records on their national tour (also joined by the legendary Sounds Like Sunset) and really impressed. They are more akin to another of the Sonic Masala stable, Tape/Off, in their propensity to infuse sunshine and stupidity into serrated off-kilter guitar pop shenanigans, a noisy melange of desperation and elation. Other bands such as Adelaide's Sincerely, Grizzly mine these Pavement-via-woodchipper depths, and I wish there were plenty more.

'All Singing, All Dancing' is the most atonal yet sonorous I've heard the trio on record, and to balance such a disparate act is a hard task. OK, so there were some bands in the late 90s/early 00s in Australia that did similar tricks - but if you are mentioning names such as Gaslight Radio or Bluebottle Kiss, that is an inherently great comparison to make. The toy-effect underlay reminds me of the former; the unhinged march through the early stages of the latter. All up, 'All Singing, All Dancing' makes me happy to yell out the window of my south London flat in the waning hours of oncoming winter at bewildered pedestrians who aren't accustomed to any outside interaction other than jostling, dog-eat-dog arseholery (and the more-than-occasional eccentric) - so all boxes have been ticked in bold red.



The trio support the excellent Yes I'm Leaving on their Slow Release tour at the Imperial Hotel in Sydney 24th October - get yourselves along to that.

Take the Road with I, a Man

I saw I, a Man when they played in Brisbane last time they were up this way. I thought they were fucking fantastic. Layers like the maple leaves; different yellows on top of each other, crunching underfoot, letting you know you're going were no-one else has (at least not since yesterday). There is something like the seasons in 'Less Travelled'. At the root of it all a "trying to try", a commitment to the vague scenes we all find in front of us - morning air lolling through the holes in the corrugated iron, waking you and melting the Robert Frost.

You can catch them as they take the road in August: 16th at the Tote (Melb), 23rd at the Exeter (Adl), 29th at Brighton Up Bar (Syd) and 30th at Alhambra Lounge (Bris). The first couple of shows with Sincerely, Grizzly.