Faux Seattle Has Fallen

After taking in the jagged exorcism that is Brisbane band Clever's new track, it feels a jump to be launching into Fall Seattle, the eponymous debut record from the North Virginian quartet. Out through the excellent Faux Discx label (Sauna Youth, Monotony, Hookworms, Tense Men), it is a lucky dip of  the past, reappropriated in bedrooms, kitchens and basements, crystallising into a sonorous sojourn sparkling with jangle and noise, introversion and extroverted emulsions. There is a Deerhunter-meets-The Raincoats-meets-Grandaddy esoteric clarity to opener 'Carol'; a sundrenched meander through Lotus Plaza's back garden on 'Wanda Jackson'; a Yo La Tengo hopped-up malaise to 'Time'. 'New York' could be Ratcat trying their hand at Dinosaur Jr, a suitably fractious racket with cavernous space that still feels intimate amid the throat-tearing catharsis. The twang and meandering space of 'Boyhood' has me entranced - it is the central song, and the centrifugal force of the album, somehow slowing everything down but bringing it all into focus. The opening drums for 'Blau' is ominous before the onslaught, a shimmering menace not unlike the inimitable Women (which is why it is probably my favourite track here); 'Suburban Stain' is a guitar dream, off the books via the Books; the jumped up yet broody pop of 'Nothing You Can Hold On To' meanwhile sets it all free. 'Demon Son' takes us into black-spark shoegaze territory, albeit with bottom-of-the-well reverb sparseness in fits and bursts (another great song). Fall Seattle close up shop with 'Separation Anxiety', a mild, contemplative that burbles and percolates, a sepia-burnt daydream rumination on all that has come before. This is an incredibly strong record - there have been some Real Estate comparisons (which I can see in part), but despite my constant attraction to band signifiers above, the bowerbird genre splicing here makes the album a unique and highly rewardable listen. I really like this one - you should all grab Fall Seattle here.

Going For Gold Weathers

Just to show how skewed the scene is in Tasmania in Australia is Wrong Place Right Time Records. The Native Cats, Bi-Hour, Steven Wright (of Bi-Hour fame), Naked, RBP, Treehouse, Mess O' Reds - they have shone a light on them all. The latest release they have unearthed, excavated, dusted off and thrust into the light is 6 For Gold by trio All The Weathers. Kicking off with the irascible, off-kilter clusterfuck that is the baiting, bracing 'ABC', with Georgia's hyperventilating howl demanding centre stage, things bleed into more sinister realms with elongated tracks 'Wipeout' (with screaming, desperate sax solo) and '1838'. Think of bands like Bent or Girls Pissing On Girls Pissing for a semblance of the desiccated, rural gothic avant deconstructions on offer here. There is even a little of the Raincoats/Trash Kit about their shout-and-response fanaticisms and altered-state percussion, all done with tongue buried alive in the cheek. 'OH And Yes' though is the epitome of the band in my opinion - a heady mixture of chaos, texture, expulsion and implosion. Always deliciously unhinged, regardless of (all) the weathers.

Buy 6 For Gold on vinyl here. All the Weathers play tonight in a church (St George's Church in Battery Point, to be exact) alongside Adventurers, All The Best and Filthy Little Star - sounds bloody amazing.

Wringing Out The Broken Water

Olympia's Broken Water have always been a pretty exciting band for me - one of the first entries into the Night People label for me, their mix of atonal distorted quicksand and opaque melodic pop evoking Sonic Youth or early days Blonde Redhead with a bit of Widowspeak colouring the edges. New record Wrought certainly upholds this sounds - listen to the sonorous squall of '1984' or the spoken word and no wave guitar squall histrionics of 'Choice' for example - but there is a cleanliness and effortlessness to some of these tracks that suggests the trio may not have waded out of the deep dark waters of distortion, but have at least found cause to don their Raincoats. Opening gambit 'Hi-Lo' is the clearest indicator that sunshine permeates the darkness, even if opaque ('Am I right or am I wrong/All I know is I do not know'). 'Love & Poverty' is a song in the same world - imagine a Fortuna Pop alum covered by Electrelane at their most pop esoteric. 'Close' floats in on a percolating wave of shoegaze fuzz, before Kanako Pooknyw's vocals takes a downturn, things grind to a low rumble, before we amble along to a wistful close. Elsewhere we see Jon Hanna take vocal duties on the likes of 'Wasted' (whose gravel-ripped round-voweled vocals feels like other 90s progenitors of alternative rock (when that was a positive term) Screaming Trees and Social Distortion) and 'Psycho Static' which feels more akin to Thurston Moore having a narcoleptic dream, eyes at half mast, slight left jaw paralysis, simple strumming, late sun dreaming, before the requisite distortion kicks the needle into another direction but still feels like an amble at its feverish height. Hanna's vocals find another sideways slide on 'Set Free', carved out of a Mascis drawl and a Vedder howl. 'Stone' has more in tune with the lo-fi machinations of Veronica Falls coupled with a high, ragged tempo that Vivian Girls often conjured up. These somewhat obvious touchstones may read as lazy observations, but they help assuage the idea that Wrought and Broken Water themselves are steeped in recognition while upholding their subversions - railing against the surveillance police state of '1984', the soul-crushing monotony of low-level jobs on 'Close'.  The elongated closer 'Beach' though gives us the truest sense of where the band has ended up - on the waterline as day starts its transformation into night, at first ethereal, before the cold whips at the edges of your bones, the stars prick holes in the darkness and start to swirl, convex lines of light, before they shatter and fall to the earth in cacophonous glory. A dreamscape? A nightmare? Reality and fantasy, originality and familiarity, fuse together into one main constant - that Broken Water lapping at your feet. Pick up Wrought here.

Double Dogged

It feels like ages, but warped London trio Wetdog have finally followed up their Frauhaus! album of 2009 with new LP Divine Times (out through Upset The Rhythm)...and its as eclectic, frenetic and kinetic as you could possibly expect. Fourteen tracks of sudden scuzz, tetchy tension, garish gurning and arrhythmic rhythms - they wear their Raincoats more snugly this time around. There are delicious detours - the erred esoterics of 'Ridgway Crash', the ska-lite swing and ebullient nature of 'Jym Fingers' or the hushed choral contemplation of 'Twilite' - but they are at their best when they ratchet up the tension with post-punk stop-start atmospherics, before bursting the bubble with kaleidoscopic abandon. I've always seen Wetdog as the warped half-sister of Trash Kit, and Divine Times accentuates that outlook.

And I thought I would double up on the dog motif with Holiday, an EP out through Soft Power from Brighton duo Dog Legs. A thrashy punk bliss bomb, the title track blast open the doors; 'Ugly' takes on the 50s cutesier guitar pop staples and roughs them up a bit; 'I Trusted You' is a scuzzed-out mantra; 'Ice Cream Cone' is thirty-six seconds of the same idea. My favourite track is the ominous Cramps-lite crunch in the 'Xmas Cookie', before the weirdness rears its head on 'Messy Cloud' and the excellent 'Things I'll Never Be' rounds the whole thing out. It's a fun release that reminds me of when I heard Slowcoaches the first time back in 2012. Hurry up there is only one cassette left! GET IT.

In The Beginning, There Were Astro Children...

Ive been a little burnt out of late. The "real" world has me running in circles, writing relentlessly on pieces of paper, ticking generic statements in countless matrices, listening to ill-founded diatribes on Australian identity, preparing self-serving diatribes of my own, rinse and repeat. Staring down the barrel of potential unemployment from atop a veritable mountain of looming debt, manuscripts and report cards. Job hunting amongst the heaving masses of the have-nots, trying to prove my worth as being more worthy than you.

Dunedin duo Astro Children's Proteus is the kind of melodic yet atonal, young-kids-screaming, everything's-all-right-when-the-music-is-all-wrong album that I intravenously syphon into my inner core, knowing that happiness can come from the simplest things. There is a schoolyard petulance to these new tracks that not only eschews the band's previous sugar-twee stance on noisy guitar pop, but belies that there are positives to the world being a little hostile. Millie Lovelock's vocals sway from schoolgirl screeching ('Shoe') to floating babble a la Raincoats ('Gaze'), showing the duo's newly formed dexterity, but it's the mid level groovers like 'Jamie Knows' or 'Big Muff (Strikes Again)' that Astro Children beeline to the core of what is enjoyable about deliberately off-kilter, slightly lo-fi, muted, horizontal-slacker pop. I thought I was going to drown today, but Proteus proves that sometimes to get to the end, you need to start at the beginning. Nice work, kids.

You can buy Proteus through Muzai Records now - pick it up here.

Wild Movements In The Arabian Dunes

About this time last year I gave a little lip service to Brooklyn wonky popheads band Beach Arabs. They finally have a full-length out, also called Wild Movement, and it's jam-packed full of frenetic, off-kilter, sunny concoctions that rock and/or roll. Liz Hogg is a happy amalgam of Screaming Females' Marisa Paternoster and Kim Deal in a dialled-down Breeders mode, whilst Nathaniel Sabat's droll, Lee Ranaldo-esque drawled deliveries offers a poignant counterpoint, two roughies that rub together to make a diamond. The focus remains the manic tempo shifts and Hogg's pitch-perfect noodling however, the math-lite precision (see closer 'Under The Whale') that underpins these lo-fi ramblings and elevates them beyond mere garage also-rans into something more appealing, a whispier Deerhoof, a American slacker take on Trash Kit or an East Coast Raincoats. Not that Beach Arabs are scaling those heady heights just yet - but with Wild Movement, they have at least made it to base camp.

You can grab Wild Movement through Mouca Records here.

Friday Cover Up - Flat did classic

Its been one of those weeks, once again. Fridays that feel like this are the very reason why a cover version fit the bill so well but for those extra special Fridays I try and save the extra special cover versions. The track might be more of a classic, the covering band might be a bit more special, or maybe its just a damn fine tune. So this in my book is an extra special cover version, The Kinks classic Lola by The Raincoats, form their 1979 self titled debut L.P. Let me know if you agree in thinking its a bit of a special Friday cover up.

The Raincoats - Lola