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.

No Lightweight Guesswork Needed

Another year, another Ocean Party album! The Melbourne six-piece don't know how to quit, yet this isn't a bad thing - each album has shown incredible growth and (dare I say) maturity as they continue to rise from their ill-monikered dolewave Petri dish into something altogether different but nonetheless quintessentially Australian. After the 80s yacht rock flourishes filtered through last year's excellent Soft Focus, we have 'Guess Work', the first taste off Light Weight (coming out in October (Aus/NZ - November for the rest of us) through Spunk. The track starts off with a reverberating snare and guitar, and echoes of 'I'm On Fire' era Boss stirs the loins, before the shimmering guitar, somewhat ruminative vocals about a futile shooting and some barroom piano spices up the batter. We keep walking on down the line/Cos no-ones giving us a sign, Lachlan Denton intones - but on the strength of this track along, The Ocean Party don't need anyone's help. (And don't even get me started on the sax - serious Australia, killing the sax inclusions!)

PS This is my favourite Ocean Party song, hands down.


The Ocean Party will hit the road as they love to do with a series of seriously amazing shows all over the land in October/November - check out the dates and band supports below and get to at the very least one of them!

Canberra - 8/10/15 - the Phoenix With Wives & Cool Sounds 

Sydney - 9/10/15 - Vic on the Park With Mere Women, Cool Sounds & Weak Boys 

Byron Bay - 10/10/15 - Treehouse 

Lismore - 11/10/15 - See Space With TBC 

Cairns - 13/10/15 – Sing Sing Cafe With Sam Wright 

Townsville - 14/10/15 - The Rec Room With Sam Wright 

 Rockhampton - 15/10/15 - The Workshop Rockhampton With Weathered 

Toowoomba - 16/10/15 - The Spotted Cow With TBC 

Brisbane - 17/10/15 - Black Bear Lodge With Cool Sounds, Martyr Privates, Keep on Dancin's & Dag 

 Nambour - 18/10/15 - The Time Machine With Dag 

Wollongong - 22/10/15 - Spunk Records with Stolen Violin 

Yass - 23/10/15 - Thyme To Taste with TBA 

Melbourne - 24/10/15 - The Tote with Superstar, Free Time, Caroline No and Zone Out 

Wagga Wagga - 25/10/15 – Birdhouse 

Ballarat - 30/10/15 - The Eastern With Cool Sounds and Robot Fox 

Adelaide - 31/10/15 - The Metro With Wireheads, Cool Sounds, The Yabbies and the High Beamers Tolmie – 1/11/15 - Lawsfest 

Perth - 6/11/15 - The Bird with METHYL ETHEL & Verge Collection 

Fremantle - 8/11/15 - The Newport Hotel with Dream Rimmy, Erasers & Big Jesus 

Hobart - 14/11/15 - Brisbane Hotel with Day Ravies, HEART BEACH and Peak Body 

Launceston - 15/11/15 - Fresh with Heart Beach

Seeing The Ocean In Soft Focus

There are many reasons I love The Ocean Party's fourth album, Soft Focus. I have been a fan since 2012's Social Clubs; I put on their Brisbane leg of their launch of 3rd album Split (and first on Spunk Records) Split. I have even had the enviable pleasure of sleeping on the floor of their Osborne Street premises in Melbourne (alas, no more - the boys have flown the coop). The five piece are a great group of guys, who love their beer, their taylors, their VHS collection and their Snood. In fact, back in May when I was in Melbourne for the Gazar Strips Sparkling EP launch, I heard a couple of tracks that eventually made the album, and the lusher, "lounge" sounds, the pastel notes, it all seemed like a confident step in the right direction - a new dawn. It was The Ocean Party in soft focus (yes, the album title works incredibly well here). But from the warm opening moments of 'Went Out', the first song on Soft Focus, I knew without doubt that they were onto a winner. The trumpet is warm, sonorous, enveloping. The jangle doesn't feel lazy or commonplace (not saying that this has ever been an Ocean Party aesthetic), but an effortless extension to Lachlan Denton's warm, laconic vocals - a Go-Betweens sojourn down Brunswick lane. It's a warranted and welcome comparison. Not many songs - on this album, or in 2014 - reach this height of wide-eyed, creaseless gaiety and relaxed, free abandon. All worries wash away. It's an incredible thing. There is more to Soft Focus than this 3:16 minute corker though. Single 'Wading In' comes next and it's following in the laconic slipstream of its predecessor, with added synth and lazy calyspo New Wave drum machine... Yes, I could see the boys decked out in white suits and loafers. But that countrified swagger that imbues 'Taylors & Sharps' and the genre tinged shift is welcoming. 'Head Down' has that watery guitar warble but keeps up a more energetic gait; 'Bed As A Grave' takes a melancholic dive (even with Ashley Bundang's golden backing vocals). Nothing truly develops into anything other than an amble though, and remains inoffensive. But here's the thing - I have stated in the past that there is nothing more offensive than inoffensive music (and I maintain this wholeheartedly). But Soft Focus somehow becomes the exception that proves the rule. The word of the day here, as drab and lazy as it may be, is "warm" - the production is sublime and glows, lending these eleven songs with elegance and wondrously humble gravitas; and the shifting vocals (all boys are heavily involved) remains a effortless yet horizon-broadening masterstroke. But the sombre outro 'Still Stuck Out Here' probably sums it up best. Soft Focus shows that despite the myriad musical outlets these guys have, it's as a collective unit that they truly grow - they are pushing themselves further from shore, they are getting wiser, and it's a matter of time before everyone notices what a treasure they have on their doorstep. And as Denton murmurs to that brooding Cars-esque score (complete with lush sunset synth and sax solo), 'Ill be still out here in ten years or so, just wait and see.' I bloody hope so.

Soft Focus is out now through Spunk and Jigsaw Records.

Trust These Punks To Get Us In Gordian Knots

Auckland tetchy malcontents Trust Punks are preparing to launch their debut LP Discipline (through Spunk Records)on a widely unsuspecting world later this year, and 'Gordian Knot' leads me to believe that they intend to hypnotise and paralyse in equal measure. Offering up an off-kilter pop stagger in the first third, the five-piece laugh and howl in our faces, the guitars interweaving with that piano-wire precision that Canadian band Women mastered so well (yes, I STILL am harping on about them), all making for a mesmerising yet disconcerting listen. Then there is the crunch of the vocal less middle, that marches forward with hooded intent, before bringing us full circle, an agitated ouroboros eating its own tail. Like geographical brethren Popstrangers, Trust Punks are taking melodies from a skewed angle, something I am incredibly happy with.

Nothing Boring About Ice-Cream Dreams

Let's start off the week with a laconic bunch of ice-cream dreams. Melbourne's Bored Nothing has taken to a lysergic sugar-rush take on the slow burn narcoleptic guitar pop that Kurt Vile has been making his own of late - except without the stoned extended wigouts. Fergus Miller doesn't exude cool as much as excrete dreams - a drifting melange of half-remembered fantasies, eyelids at half-mast, always on the border of waking life and the subconscious.

Bored Nothing's Some Songs comes out in October on Spunk.

Partying In The Ocean Wading Pool

I spent the nights of Gazar Strips' tour of Melbourne back in May on the floor of a little house in Brunswick. I watched a lot of 90s desktop games getting played on the television and spoke a lot of shit to a lot of great guys. These guys all form The Ocean Party. I got a sneak peek/listen at two of the tracks of their upcoming album, including this one, 'Wading In'. You can see the laconic nature of this ensemble's outlook and playing style still remains firmly in check (check the lyrics "It's all the same/Nothing really ever changes/Wading in through/The mess that was made/Is this it/Is this how it goes" or the imagery of cigarette ash on once-white bedsheets), but there is a decidedly layered about-turn in the aesthetics here. The 80s synthetic sheen that permeates 'Wading In' is a welcome extrapolation on the band's early-twentysomething malaise, and judging on the words tumbling forth about it globally, I certainly hope this is the song and album (coming out soon on Spunk Records) that gives these great guys their due.

Bearhug’s with Borders

(Post by Fred Savage Beasts)

New Bearhug. Nuff said. But, yeah, any band that releases a track like this to promote their upcoming album is two things: fucking awesome and okay in my books. Actually, I take that back, this is more than OKAY in my books - it’s rad. This is sounds against reality TV! Fuck you nationally airing karaoke programs, this is sounds, and tone, and energy, and noise! Take your sheen and stick it. Damn am I looking forward to the album ‘So Gone’, out through Spunk soon. Not soon enough in my books! (ED - The album is soooooo good Fred!)
 

Searching For The Innocent White Fence

Tim Presley cannot get out of the Sixties, even if he tried (which I'm pretty sure he hasn't). The only difference in his oeuvre as White Fence has been the alterations in production, culminating in the relatively high fidelity evident on latest release For The Recently Found Innocent. Presley pays huge props to his astral brother-in-arms Ty Segall - here he records and mixes the album as well as drums here and there - and you can tell why - this sixth album as White Fence is the most cohesive and focused sojourn into the paisley outer realms yet. The album focuses on more confident realms, such as anguish and anger towards the state of the world today, although still willing to turn the light inward in his recognised falsetto waver.

I will admit though  that White Fence rings truer to a spot-on tribute band, emulating the likes of The Kinks (ESPECIALLY The Kinks), The Troggs, The Who, The Mama & the Papas...the cream of the pastoral crop, sure, and done incredibly well. But it's hard to love an album wholeheartedly when there are touchstones that you can go back to and embrace more honestly. This is a disparaging remark, sure, but I do still like Presley's worldview and what he offers, and I will always catch him live when he trundles my way. I just wish there was something a little more iconic and unique in what Presley offers. The clarity is one step, but it also shows up the comparisons more readily (hence why he may have wallowed in the white noise no-fi for so long before now...) You will enjoy this record for sure, but more original, secret ingredients need to be thrown into the brew before it becomes a bona fide addiction.

For The Recently Found Innocent (with excellent self-portrait artwork) is out through Drag City and Spunk - grab it here and here (soon).

Stephen Malkmus Still Wigging Out With His Jicks

I'm not the best person to be writing about Stephen Malkmus. I love just about everything he has committed to tape - even deemed weaker titles, such as his self-titled 2001 album, still has many killer hooks and turns of phrase. And it must be said that latest album with his Jicks, Wig Out At Jagbags, is a tighter affair, more loose in relaxed delivery than musicianship, with spaced jams kept to a minimum (which I always find a shame). But I at first found this album a little too quiet, self-assured in its faux-modesty. Of course, I'd been listening to Blank Realm all week, so the juxtaposition there is always going to be jarring. So today I have kept an open mind, thrown Jagbags on - and guess what? Yep, I'm a fan.

It's nothing overtly new - it's just another Malkmus gem. Im finding more and more that he is something of a Turkish delight amongst music lovers - a sweetly acquired taste. But when you can be so steadfast in your own unique vision, becoming a musical auteur with your skewed euphemisms and wayward approaches to life (I've been tripping my face off since breakfast/Taking in this windswept afternoon as on 'Cinnamon & Lesbians' or referencing ELO in the crooner 'J Smoov'). Malkmus is an icon - one of the greats - and Wig Outs At Jagbags only helps to affirm this. Just listen to the man play guitar, drawl weary rejoinders and witty rambles, and enjoy.

Wig Out At Jagbags is out through Matador and Spunk Records - get it here or here.

Mogwai Goes Mumblecore - It's All Subdued In The Rave Tapes

This is a tough thing for me to say. Sonic Masala is a blog built on the love of music, something that has been fostered within me as a child, and with each earth-shattering discovery it continues to build. One of the major progenitors of my particular predilections for music is my utter devotion to all that is Mogwai. The Glaswegians have been responsible for some of the most jawdropping, life-altering musical exchanges of my life - from inadvertently buying the My Father My King EP in a record store sale, to seeing that very song played at the sadly-defunct Livid festival, to feeling my heart skip beats when first experiencing 'Like Herod' in the flesh, to listening to Happy Songs For Happy People on an abandoned highway at 4am in 2006, to seeing them play in the middle of an industrial wasteland in Luxembourg in 2008, to watching them play at the Botanical Gardens in Brisbane in 2011 at twilight as a flock of bats flew overhead - the list goes on and on.


Last year saw two exciting Mogwai releases - the sublimely sombre yet sinister score to French zombie series Les Revenents (The Returned) - an album I forgot about until fellow founder of Sonic Masala Paul got the vinyl for me for Christmas - and 'Remurdered', the first taste of the band's seventh LP, Rave Tapes. The album itself is coming out next week. I've had it for about three weeks now, and...well...

I just don't know.

The bits where the band go away from the template the most - the sinuous electronics of 'Remurdered', the morbid orchestral organ of 'Deesh' - feel energised; yet the tracks that whisper to the thundering band of yore ('Hexon Bogon'), the Pajo spoken word histrionics ('Repelish', 'Blues Hour') or even the ethereal electronics of Barry Burns feels exactly that - a whisper, a shadow cast from the past. Tracks like 'Master Card', whilst sound raucous, feels deliberately tempered, deliberately calibrated - just deliberate. The combustible rage, energy and emotion that makes Mogwai one of the strongest, most destructive bands on the planet is that sense of palpability - that everything was being played, chanced, railed against, embraced. I actually enjoy Rave Tapes - but it isn't enough to enjoy it. Mogwai releases for me have always been about abject feeling and emotion, a powerful gut punch or soul wrench. Rave Tapes is more...comfortable. And for me, I don't find that comfortable at all. Anyway, here it is in its entirety - what do you think?

You can pre-order Rave Tapes here, and is out next week in Australia through Spunk Records. I will still buy it - will probably buy the deluxe box set too, it looks incredible. Expect tours soon too - they play two sold out show at Royal Festival Hall in London in a fortnight. I will always kill to get to their shows - their 06 show at The Zoo in Brisbane is still to this day the best show I've ever witnessed. And I'm sure this will be the album I listen to the most over the next month/s as I'm studying, reading, cooking, smoking - but is that good enough? We shall see.

TONIGHT - Sonic Masala & Spunk Records Presents The Ocean Party Album Launch

We here at Sonic Masala have always been big fans of the somewhat innocent navel gazings of Melbourne suburbians The Ocean Party. Their second LP Social Clubs from last year was one of clarity, brevity, and early-middle-twentysomething malaise - not so rail against the world as it was rolling with the genial punches. The band members are best mates, great blokes, and have an even better record in the form of Split. They played in Brisbane recently for the Spunk Records showcase, but tonight is the official launch party for the album - and Sonic Masala is along for the ride. It's cracking off at the Beetle Bar tonight at 8pm - come early to see local upstarts Dag, Thigh Master and Blonde Tongues, as well as Sydneysider Nathan Roche (he of now defunct Camperdown & Out infamy), all for a tenner. See you there - I'll be the guy propping up the merch bar.



DAG - 15.07.2013 from Joshua Watson on Vimeo.

A Bearhug Is Easy

Sydney slacker rock aficionados Bearhug brought a killer record last year with Bill, Dance, Shiner. Their mixture of Pavement hooks and Archers Of Loaf melodies (with more than a dash of Wilco whimsy) has seen them take SXSW by storm, and the US fanbase continues to swell. Yet they still find it difficult to gain leeway in their own country - it's ridiculous how this world works sometimes...

Bearhug brought out the four track Over Easy EP earlier this year, so this isn't a new thing, but they look set to make a sojourn up north soon, and have murmurings of new materials in the works - so it's a good time to get reacquainted. Seriously these guys should be the biggest thing coming out of Sydney right now. Its about time you need to get on board. Grab their albums here through Spunk Records here.

Bringing Back The Love

Wowee Zowee peeps! Sorry about the downlay in musical mayhem here at Planet Masala - its been quiet here due to the ridiculousness in the "real world" (AKA I accidentally maxed out the home Internet fund - sorry Luke and Sal...) Plus searching for work, getting work, getting more work, getting heaps of work, and uni has meant that I was on the cusp of believing I had too many fingers in too many pies. But if there's anything that those cinematic genuises behind American Pie taught me anything - and they taught me a LOT - its that you can NEVER have too many fingers into too many pies - you just combine it all in an orgiastic piefest (I think - maybe if I had caught the fourth and fifth sequels Id understand more...)

SO I am rorting the university by using their sizable Internet access to keep the SM dream alive. And as this has been some time in coming, here are a few tracks for you to sink your teeth into.

First up there is The Raveonettes, whose Sharin Foo is still hands down the hottest woman in rock. It helps that their first EP Whip It On is one of my all time favourite releases EVER. Really. Anyway, their fifth album Raven In The Grave comes out next month on Vice, and if this is anything to go by its going to be another hit, especially after hearing what other member of the due Sune Rose Wagner thought of its genesis:

"I think we have finally hit on something quite important and different for this album. This is the first Raveonettes album we've done which doesn't feature the signature Raveonettes surf drumbeat. None of the tunes have any real sunshine to them. It's all very un-Rave. It has a mood of ethereal defiance. It's dark but not bleak, like the single minded determination caused by crisis that is not quite hope but just as powerful. It's the perfect winter soundtrack just in time for spring."

The Raveonettes - Forget That You're Young

White Denim are another band with a hotly anticipated album in the wings. Gorilla Vs Bear have named them the best band at SXSW for the fourth consecutive year - a bit of love there mayhaps??? We've already sampled 'Drug' from D here - now try "Anvil Everything"!

White Denim - Anvil Everything

One of my favourite finds of last year was Tampa nutjobs Merchandise, whose dark distorted pop has entranced me for some time (check out my thoughts on last year's (Strange Songs) In The Dark LP here). They have just released a 7" on Katorga Records, Schoolyard b/w Graveyard, showcasing an amazing remix of the A-Side which has me even more sweat-lathered. These guys know how to weave a warped rhythm, and with the beats interlaid here they have a bona fide club hit - from the guys responsible for Cult Ritual? Anything's possible...

Merchandise - Schoolyard (Club Mix)

A band doing amazing things this side of the Equator is The Middle East. The Townsville, Queensland quintet have a cultivated, lush ambient folk sound with the slightest tinge of darkness, and its been going down a treat globally. They are releasing I Want That You Are Always Happy on Spunk Records April 8th, and "Black Death 1349" is off it. (Can you tell this was recorded at Midlake's Denton, Texas studios? Nah, me neither...)

The Middle East - Black Death 1349

Darlings are a NYC garage pop band whose song "Spit It Out" off EP Warma (out now on Famous Class Records) has been on incessant replay since the SM downtime, so was pretty much a sure thing to be on this lil playlist. Its decidedly heads in the cloud whimsy crossed with Pixies nerd punk, which has helped get me across the line on a few days this past fortnight.

Darlings - Spit It Out

"Zeppole Ben" is off Hello, Nice Evening. We Are The Everymen, an EP by The Everymen (weirdly enough). Its two and a bit minutes that reminded me of why Rocket From The Crypt were great. The rest of the 7" is radness - lots of different genres (with help from Kurt Vile no less!) all infused with cigarettes, sweat and more than a few regrets, readily forgotten...but I like it most when Sarin McHugh is shredding his vocals to next to nothing Buy it here.

The Everymen - Zeppole Ben

Last on the comeback playlist is a band that many have been biting their nails to the quick in anticipation for, Crystal Stilts. Their Alight Of Night was at the very crest of the lo-fi, scuzzy as fuck euphoria of DIY noise pop shenanigans. Now we get to see if the lightning can strike twice, as In Love With Oblivion comes down out of the sky April 12th. Its a Slumberland release, so that will tell you a lot with what to expect... Also, here is the admittedly perfunctory video to accompany the song "Through The Floor"... (Also the Brooklyn band are playing Cargo in London March 30th - although it appears to be sold out!)

Crystal Stilts - Through The Floor

Crystal Stilts "Through The Floor" from Slumberland Records on Vimeo

Welcome back...welcome back, welcome back, welcome back...

What's In The Box, Akron/Family?

Portland, Oregon’s favourite psychedelic freak-folk noiseniks Akron/Family have carved out a very unconventional musical path since their self-titled debut. My first introduction to them was the track 'Running, Returning', which was on a Spunk Records EP sampler. Then when I went to purchase Akron/Family, I was perplexed by the plaintive ambiance that was spat back out at me. It wouldnt be until I heard 'The Rider (Dolphin Song)' from 2006's Meek Warrior, before I would quickly revisit the band and henceforth become a fan.

Nevertheless, there is a lot of frustration with Akron/Family, not half because they can be incredibly unconventional and obtuse. Still, their creative output is impressive, and some 6 years later, with segues into folk strumming, experimental glitches and sprawling bursts of guitar abandon, they have provided the world with their second self-titled release, with the ambiguous subheading The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT. Their record label, Dead Oceans, put out in their press release a bizarre notice that the first copies of this album arrived at their offices in a brown cardboard box with SHINJU TNT and AK DETROIT scrawled on it. From a short note and a video that arrived days later, it becomes "apparent" that the album was written in a cabin built on the side of Mt Meakan, an active volcano in Akan National Park on the island of Hokkaido, Japan. It was then recorded in an abandoned train station in Detroit, after a year out studying Bent Acid Punk Diamond fuzz and Underground Japanese noise cassettes, then chopped up their results into thousands of minute imperceptible samples interlaid with fuzzed-out rerecordings...

Whether you believe the elongated, secretive and surreal genesis of this album or not (also including leaking the album themselves in a looped, sampled and slowed down fashion so as to seriously confuse file-sharers worldwide), the end result is something that has managed to bridge all of the more out-there components of the Akron/Family aesthetic whilst making their best effort yet to bridge the mainstream with the obscure - and its this eclecticism that makes S/T II very nearly a resounding success.

Starting with ‘Silly Bears’, we are thrown into a joyous musical rocket ship that hurtles towards an ever-expanding sun – it is jubilant, infectious, and teetering on wanton self-destruction with its distorted effects, guitars and strange vocal harmonies (alongside lyrics about fun-loving bears). This is the best introduction to Akron/Family in general and S/T II in particular – there is verve, quirks, space and a pervading sense of silliness throughout. We have emotive atmospherics (‘Island’), Devendra Banhart via The Black Keys (‘So It Goes’), shoegaze via Vampire Weekend (‘Another Sky’), bizarre vowel harmonizing (‘A AAA O A WAY’) – and that’s only the first half of the record! You name it, its here – garage hoedowns, 60s elegiac pop, dream pop, blues rock… However, there are no pretensions here – Akron/Family are just ambitious and fit to bursting with musical ideas that they attempt to shoehorn into any given musical mould. It shouldn’t work, yet this menagerie does work in myriad ways. A flawed, yet fundamentally fun, release.

Akron/Family II: The Cosmic Birth And Journey Of Shinju TNT is out now.

Akron/Family - Silly Bears

Akron/Family - Island