Surfing Still

Tonight NZ band Surf City hit The Stillery in Camden Town as a precursor to their shows as part of The Great Escape festival down in Brighton. They have just released their new record Jekyll Island (out through Fire Records), which alongside Melbourne band Chook Race’ s About Time has been the first “summer” record to spin incessantly at my house. The album seems more indebted to reverb wash and psych inflected tangents than their last sojourn We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This (at least in my opinion), it is clear that the four-piece is solidifying this approach and becoming a stronger unit because of it. What I like the most though is that there is unashamed attraction to the traditional pop structure aesthetic, as it is with a country of talent that are consistently indebted to the Dunedin years, and of which I am eternally grateful. When looking for gnarled and diseased subversion of such an approach to an electric guitar led son, it’s easy to forget why guitar pop is popular in the first place. Putting out Dollar Bar’s third album Hot Ones this year (with their avid love of all things Robert Pollard) alongside living with one of the world’s greatest fans of Stephen Malkmus last year has really hammered that home to me – and I warmly embrace Surf City with open arms (plus their penchant for Krautrock aspersions is truly present and accounted for on the album, which everyone knows is one of my many vices). You should too.

Video Vacuum - Yes I'm Leaving, Surf City, The Fauns, Batpiss (NSFW)

I wanted to do a thousand different posts today - and I started about twelve - but standing on top of Brian Chippendale's drumkit with lots of Coopers Pale Ale but no earplugs as he loses his mind for an hour as meant my attention span is minuscule. My brain has been burnt to a crisp! I did get to speak to him about the band Human Beast before the show, and something afterwards but I could barely hear the Fugazi/Fu Manchu playlist that was booming over the PA...So let's watch some videos!



Yes I'm Leaving are pushing their excellent record of this year Mission Bulb into the States thanks to Drunken Piano, and this has seen their newest video for album track 'Four Chorder,' a threadbare set letting the trio tear the place apart, hit the Spin website. Nice work guys! Helps that the song is a ball tearer worthy of so much more. This album is still killing at the business end of 2013 - a sure-fire sense of electric these boys are. And they are re-issuing their first couple of criminally under-heard releases too. Expect for the Sydney band's cred to rise - and for Billy and the boys to not even notice nor care (OK, just a little...)



NZ garage/surf/pop/raconteurs Surf City are another band that surreptitiously keep kicking goals. On latest single from album We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This, 'NYC' (which feels like a mixture of sunnier Sonic Youth, Women and seminal Aussie band Underground Lovers), the band are running around having a reckless time with skateboards, ice-cream cones and stolen fast food and booze (popped open with a Bic lighter, of course) in what is a subversion to these guys' true demeanour - but also makes you want to just have one mid-summer day in their shows. This song is a dream, and fast approaching one of my favourite tracks of the year.


The Fauns - Seven Hours from Mintonfilm on Vimeo.

Bristol dreamers The Fauns are preparing to launch second album Lights on Invada Records in December. The first taste is 'Seven Hours', a five-minute stretch in a cryogenic tank, ambiance pumped through the speakers, time stretching immeasurably (except for the fact I just said it went for five minutes...), the sun neither rising nor setting, forever caught on the horizon. Such wistful meanderings are in bountiful supply this day and age, and yet when The Fauns hit their stride it elevates them to another celestial plain. I'm looking forward to listening to Lights as I travel the English countryside this December...


Look, to be honest this is the video I think everyone should see. I wanted to put it into a post all on its own, but chickened out. Why? Well, by nestling it here behind three other bands my mother may not find it. The vid is of course Batpiss' 'Loose Screws', a short film about a supermarket trolley-pusher that is pushed over the edge and lets everything out, one skewered screwdriver at a time... It's incredibly NSFW, what with all the blood, shivving, garroting and infanticide (it may be Thomy's face, but that is still a baby being stabbed), before a awesome twist that turns into the bloodiest male-on-male heavy petting I've ever seen. Fucking Batpiss, man - gotta love em.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Surf City Knew It Was Going To Be Like This...

We here at Sonic Masala are big fans of Kudos, NZ band Surf City's debut record of 2010. The follow up is on the doorstep, and we're glad to report that We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This (the title pilfered from an overheard snippet of conversation in a South Korean bar) is another cracker. What sets Surf City up as an impressive act is their propensity for psychedelic meanderings and barbed outros, adding steel and vice to their guitar pop mantras, and We Knew... is even stronger for this sense of bolstered, distorted bravado. There is more of a sense of autobiography this time round - NYC is a raucous growl that explicitly highlights songwriter Davin Stoddard's stay in the Big Apple trying to write and record the album on his own, whilst It's A Common Life alludes to a society of transience and half-ways, people being run on the hamster-wheel whilst others gloat and stuff their ruddy cheeks. This anxiety, rather than tone the vibe down towards a maudlin internalisation, only serves as another outlet for Surf City's innate sense of melody and hooks - there is nary a track here that doesn't have at least one moment that makes you grin and think "yeah, that's how you nail it". Whether reflecting with cheer or chagrin, Surf City are in charge, out front, and on top.

We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This is coming out in two weeks through Fire Records - pre-order it here.

Surf City - It's A Common Life
Surf City - NYC

It's A Common Life In Surf City

We here at Sonic Masala quite enjoyed New Zealand band Surf City's last album, Kudos. They have another on the way called We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This (genesis for title - a snippet of conversation overheard in a crowded South Korean bar - brilliant). The excellent and Antipodal guardian Fire Records (Blank Realm, Scott & Charlene's Wedding, Lower Plenty) are pushing it, which can only be a very good thing. The first track released off it is 'It's A Common Life'. Now, it's pretty grim today here in Brisbane. I work next to an army barracks, and today they have had army choppers going back and forth over my head, probably innocuous, yet still foreboding. Yet the warm fuzz of 'It's A Common Life' helps to shut the shit out, a swirling guitar pop gem that glimmers defiantly amidst the murk and the muck.

Leader Davin Stoddard has been around the traps since Kudos - holed up in a basement in NYC, teaching English in South Korea, lots of isolated moments both without and within. It really sounds like it's paid off in spades - I'm really looking forward to this one... We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This is due out in August.

We'll Give You Black Eyes, Twerps!

Melbourne's The Twerps are slowly rising the ranks of the garage rock movement, their twanging guitar, laconic vocals and infectious lo-fi instrumentation becoming a staple across the Australian music scene. Hopefully that adulation will rise to other continents (their first EP was recorded by Eddy Current Suppression Ring guitarist Mikey Young and was re-released via Night People). This Black Eyes 7" precedes an impending debut LP very soon (both out through Underwater Peoples), which is very exciting indeed. This is precocious yet ambling indie rock, something that Kiwi compatriots Surf City deal in a similar vein, though a little more "pretty"... It's laidback rock, not lazy, and that's the charm. It will be interesting to see if they can pull off the laconic fare across a full length album though. Still, The Twerps are an exciting little band, and that album is worth waiting out for...

The Twerps - Black Eyes

Kudos To Those Who Sight Surf City Of Straws

Talk about two disparate bands...but Ive spent the last week mulling over these two albums, and whilst both came out last year and garnered their fair share of praise. I felt that Id give them lip service.

New York's Sightings have been doling out their expansive brand of abrasive noise for about ten years now, and City Of Straw, whilst not their best album, revels in elongation and sonic crawl unlike no other. Its an invasive listen, attempting to get under your skin like bamboo reeds under the fingernails, and as teeth grittingly painful as that may sound, it is just as morbidly fascinating. I think this album is damn good, and the fact that they played an apparently incendiary show in London earlier this year has me ruing my place in the world - thanks Si for rubbing salt into the wounds with that pearl of wisdom...

Sightings - Saccharine Traps
Sightings - Weehawken

Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum, New Zealand's Surf City brought out Kudos, an album of melodic, skewed shoegaze pop that is accessible as it is discordant. It borrows from the Flying Nun stable of Kiwi pop that everyone labels a band from New Zealand with, but also has an eye and ear on 80s British Midlands wall of sound sonics and the current trend of tin-can garage production, and the end result is one of giddy addiction. If you are in Brooklyn tonight, they are playing with X Ray Specs at Brooklyn Bowl - get down there you lucky devils...

Surf City - Crazy Rulers Of The World
Surf City - Autumn

The two albums played back to back is like darkness and light, and that's what's working for me. How about you?

Listen To T54, "Because I Told You To..."

Over the past month or two Ive been mentioning a slew of NZ acts that I think are pretty special - Surf City, Secret Knives, The Mint Chicks, Die! Die! Die!, Paperghost, Glass Vaults, FATANGRYMAN, Popstrangers... But what people outside of New Zealand may not realise is that the majority (OK, all) of these acts come from the North Island. Now, Ive spent my fair share of time around Christchurch and the South Island, and there didnt seem to be much of a burgeoning music scene bubbling under the surface - unless you're into dub, then you are pretty much set. (I must admit though that I havent been there since 2006, so that is a lot of time between drinks of Speights...)

T54 are determined to prove me wrong, and if they are anything like the Russian tank they are named after, I best get out of their way. They have an EP on its way on Christchurch label Gold Sounds called Drone Attacks, and if 'Julie K' is anything to go by, they have a record collection solely made up of My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth, along with a healthy fixation on Japandroids' Post Nothing and Male Bonding's Nothing Hurts. Which is fucking great. Where were you guys 5 years ago when I had to gnaw off my own arm in Christchurch just to have some aural anarchy? Sure, its beautiful and all, but still...Im a convert. I had dreams of moving to the Canterbury region back then, and if there is a scene like this being mustered, I may just go back to that dream...

Head over to their bandcamp and not only can you pick up 'Julie K', but a list of demos (which features some Dick Dale-isms along with their no wave love) they did under the name Superdicksystem, a play on a 90s album by NZ band The Feelers. I agree with the sentiments...

T54 - Julie K

Surf City

Auckland's Surf City have two obstacles to overcome before they even strike a chord -firstly, the past year's penchant for beach pop has unnecessarily placed them in that genre due to their moniker, and secondly because they are from New Zealand. The Flying Nun label, the Clean, the name - they are automatically coming with baggage. However, if they had been able to hold on to their original title, rather than cutting the 'Kill' from the front due to an existing UK band, it would give a truer sense of their influences - Jesus and Mary Chain opens the door to the Zombies, Sonic Youth and current quirky noiseniks Animal Collective. They have been ruffling global feathers for a couple of years since their self titled EP. Now these boys are stepping up again with their debut LP Kudos coming out on Fire Records next month. The title track sums it all up nicely – circular drone, guitar jangle, off-kilter melody, and a ray of sunshine pushing relentlessly through the clouds. I expect big things from this release - cant wait.

Surf City - Kudos