Part The Primitive

Been listening to Parts Primitive a bit this week. It's the loose jangle punk album of London group Primitive Parts, out now through Trouble In Mind Records. There is a solid pedigree here - featuring members of Sauna Youth, Male Bonding and Monotony - and the album is littered with irascible earworms burrowing down into your soul. What I love about this band is blurring of musical history and geography - 'Troubles' could be a song from the British 80s, while 'Miracle Skin' has been likened to Antipodeans such as The UV Race and The Cannanes, while the artwork mirrors either place, looking at the displaced and abandoned nether regions of urban sprawl. Quality bent slacker ephemera, you can get Parts Primitive here.

Positively Diät

Another cold, harsh, awesome post-punk gem out of Iron Lung Records here through an East Berlin based act called Diät. Positive Energy is anything but - a plodding Total Control channelling Joy Division duality of rigidity and excess. Easy comparisons perhaps, but it is what it is. 'Young & Beautiful' is as dour working class gaze as you can get, while 'Toonie' is far more frenetic yet no less sullen and sour. They even cover The Cannanes of all bands with Blue Skies Over The Ocean, an indie gem given the black denim turned up against the cold punk treatment. This band is incredibly taut and tight, a fierce unit, but there is a drollness here that adds levity to their abrasive worldview - and it makes Positive Energy a fairly accurate moniker indeed. I'm really digging this. Buy Positive Energy here.

Sydney's Local Fathers, Sons, Legends

Mikey and Jack from Sydney band Beef Jerk started their own label recently. Called Local Legends Records (great name), the impetus was on getting out some of the weirder DIY recordings of local Sydney musicians that mightn’t otherwise reach your ears. It’s all pretty rough and ready, but therein lies the charm, and there are some real gems to unearth here. Essentially a cassette release label (in Jack’s words, “we are starting out on cassettes because I found hundreds for pretty much nothing in a shop in Lewisham”). This is true DIY too – the duo dub each cassette themselves before printing the jackets at Petersham Officeworks (probably some legends right there too) then finish off by writing the labels too. As would be expected, one of the first releases features none other than rumpled rascal Nathan Roche, under the moniker The Revisionists. Keeping with the proud Sydney geographic touchstones, the cassette is called Potts The Point, and is touted as the “shortest lived punk group”. It's got some corkers - 'I Don't Need Ya' should be my theme tune.



But it is all of extreme interest as a sort of stream-of-consciousness underbelly archive – a aural microfiche of cast-offs and lightning-in-a-bottle moments of epiphany, never to be repeated. There is the Bad Guys single which sees Randall Lee (of Ashtray Boy and Cannanes fame, and Jack’s uncle) writing music to accompany lyrics inspired by his three year old son, producing raucous inter-generational blasts; there’s Luke O’Farrell (The Laurels) with a bunch of demos highlighting the gestation of that band in his mind; there’s the wild detritus of Wild Cat Falling; there's the jangle-drown of Encrypted Hard Drive; and there's the supposed release of Lincoln Brown (Housewives) going solo and getting all debaucherous in the process, apparently reaching for the Jandek bottle of reclusive blues ennui wisdom followed by a chaser of Axemen untuned angst...I want this to come through guys.






Get it all here - there are some burnt classics here that need serious attention...Oh, and happy Father's Day!

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.

Belated Friday Cover Up(s) - Nadja, Powder Blue, Jack Lee

I'm a bit rusty with the posts - I'm even getting the Friday Cover Up done on a Saturday! Pay no mind, though, as I have three beauties for your perusal... Starting with something a little more psychedelic, with this slow cerebral interpretation of The Rolling Stones' 'Play With Fire' by Canadian quartet Powder Blue. This is the kind of slow-burn, subtle psych that my head needs right now, and the female crown lends this that little bit more melancholy laced with menace. I need to hear more from these girls for sure!

Now let's scruff it up some. Jack Lee is in Sydney's slacker beer swillers Beef Jerk (they wrote that addictive tune 'Schooners' last year) and is venturing out with a solo release on Osborne Again Records. Here is the first taste, a cover of Australian indie stalwarts The Cannanes' 'Stories To Be Kept Under Lock And Key' (we all have an abundance of those...). It's a predictably scrappy affair with a healthy does of sunlit brevity, tilted off-key warbles, and wasted grins. Perfecto.

Finally let's drone ourselves into the ground with the ever excellent Nadja. They have covered The Cure's 'Faith', a 12 minute delving into the underworld that you can find on Berlin label SPÄTI PALACE's second compilation collection, which you can get for free here. It's incredible, and also includes songs from SM fave Crystal Shipsss and also Soda Fabric, who you will hear about also soon enough...but until then, revel in the down.


If you are in Brisbane tonight, get along to either the Mad Nanna show out at Chardons Corner, or Canadian punk reprobates Thee Nodes will be smashing the 199 artspace with help from lurking jerks from Melbourne Gentlemen - you will see me at either/both.