Premiering on triple j’ Radio Sydney garage pop four-piece Flowertruck releasetheir new single “Dying To Hear”
Its the first taste from the band’s anticipated debut album. The single comes as Flowertruck prepare to head out on the road for a slew of festival shows and a Melbourne headline during this March and April.
A hybrid of infectious guitar riffs, singalong choruses and devastatingly honest songwriting, “Dying To Hear” charts the agony of anticipation and an uncertain future. Lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Charles Rushforth says the track “was written in my bedroom one night as I awaited a call from my soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend. My phone kept doing that thing where you think you feel it vibrate, which was slowly sending me a little bit insane.” Taking the track to the rest of the band, Rushforth explains, “we wanted to make something that was big and dramatic and kind of desperate – to match that feeling.”
We are very pleased to announce the debut album for Airling -“Hard to Sleep, Easy to Dream”, out April 28th. Hannah had begun writing for a new EP, but the creativity was flowing and before our eyes she crafted an album. Collabs include Tom Iansek, Emma Louise, Fractures, Graham Ritchie & Greg Chiapello. The first couple of tracks ‘Not a Fighter’ and ‘Move Me’ are out digitally everywhere.
When asked about the album Hannah told us: “Creating this album has been the most fulfilling thing that I’ve done with my life so far. I feel like I’ve been writing more than I ever have in my life, and more honestly than ever before as well.
These songs and stories have been a big part and a product of me getting to know life, death and my myself, my hopes and fears – while at the same time expressing myself to others. Aligning my thoughts and emotions with songs and words. Trying to live life free of fear while still acknowledging its existence and exploring its pain. Learning to love myself so I can explore my ability to love others and my potential to create. I am insanely proud of this record.”
Today sees the release of Everything Is Forgotten, the new album by Australian band Methyl Ethel.
Those in the know back in Australia have been talking up Methyl Ethel for quite some time. Their home city of Perth has a way of breeding artists both talented — it’s given us Tame Impala, The Drones, and The Triffids, amongst others — and also somewhat odd. Methyl Ethel’s singer/mastermind Jake Webb definitely ticks both boxes. This is a polished, sparkling record that’s often startlingly radio-friendly — lead single “Ubu” is so catchy but it also comes with an undercurrent of strangeness.
Methyl Ethel’s second full-length, the record is a vivid, compelling and mysterious creature, all curvaceous pop nuggets and enigmatic currents. Written and recorded by Perth-based frontman Jake Webb, it was brought to life by acclaimed British producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Foals). The pair’s collaboration has infused Methyl Ethel’s shoegaze dream-pop palate with electronic and polyrhythmic flourishes, allowing Webb’s keening, gender-fluid vocals and searing poetry to take centre stage.
“A mind brimming with ideas and inspirations” – FasterLouder (9/10)
“One can only stand back and gawp at the strength of Webb’s songwriting here, the talent pouring from these tracks… a tight, exciting, stonker of an album.” – Loud & Quiet (8/10)
“By turns weighted and buoyant, half darkness and half shimmering light.” – DIY ****
Since the announcement of their new album “Everything Is Forgotten”which comes out next week via 4ADRecords, we have been chomping at the bit for some new material. Luckily following the brilliant ‘Ubu’ the band have released new track ‘L’Heure des Sorcieres’.
The track is a dancefloor hit, merging the great and the good of Methyl Ethel with a nuanced electronic sound which spells only good things for the forthcoming album. The Perth band have given us a real glimpse of their artistic heart and it looks like a beat we can all enjoy. Everything Is Forgotten is out on March 3rd via 4AD Records
L’Heure des Sorcières’ by Methyl Ethel.
New album ‘Everything Is Forgotten’ is released 3rd March 2017
Sydney trio Middle Kids released their impressive debut single “Edge Of Town” earlier this month, The song is anchored by Hannah Joy’s gripping vocals and some of the most natural and non-overpowering slide guitar work I have heard to date. It all builds to a gradual tempo change that brings the track to a blistering finale. The video, directed by guitarist Tim Fitz together with Ro Miles, cuts back and forth from a steady shot of Joy walking down the street, interspersed with clips of the trio performing the song in a house, drinking tea, and Joy singing to her reflection in the mirror. A statement from the band:
We wrote the video clip and filmed it with friends. We wanted it to be interesting without being too distracting, something raw and casual like a Pixies clip. It also contains a loose narrative of what happens when a mysterious visitor shows up at your door wearing a crown. But it is predominantly a series of domestic images with a surreal undertone: the watering of dead plants, the closed door, the ticking of a metronome, a lonely man playing slide guitar, a woman walking at twilight.
Methyl Ethel’s new album “Everything Is Forgotten” is a macro-dose of those enjoyable parts of a dream. It’s an album that makes you want to crawl out of your clammy skin, but in a way you sort of like it.
And like a fever, the Perth band’s third album consistently teeters the line between wanting to bare down and give up, resulting in the audible hot anxiety of a split decision. Riddled with controlled forward motion and head-spinning wonky ’80s dream pop melodies, “Everything is Forgotten” nods to psych rock and electronic influence glossed in an art rock exterior.
Bouncing from influence to influence, frontman Jake Webb skates from the slumped shoegazey pop of first single “No. 28” to steady thudding electricity of tracks like “Hyakki Yakō” or “Summer Moon” with ease. Despite the stylistic ground it covers, the songs are erratic, but the album as a whole is anything but. In fact, it’s their pointed erraticness that creates the kind of sticky atmosphere which allows each track to exist together. “Groundswell,” for example, is a modern take on a more conventional brand of ’80s synthpop than some of the other tracks, but it keeps the album’s dark, sweltering tint alive, even in its most glittery moments.
In their anxieties, the songs aren’t non-committal, but rather committing to existing as a bunch of closely moving parts. “Schlager” intentionally pushes tempo with repetitive guitar syncopation that moves past drum rhythms with aching closeness, never touching. The exasperated lyrics pour out anxieties like “sighing and nervous, awake in the dark” and “who would not sympathize with a wrecking ball?” They encapsulates life’s chaos and churns it out into calculated song. Another highlight, “Ubu,” moves in a steadier direction with a rock-solid bassline and consistent beat, but maintains the mess in its amplifying repetition of vocals restlessly asking “Why’d you have to go and cut your hair? Why’d you cut your hair?”
Methyl Ethel has also mastered a strange dichotomy between glam rock influence and anxious subtlety that comprises this album. The result is an unassuming draw. They’re the party guest that shows up dressed head-to-toe in diamonds, speaks in near-poetry, but shyly refuses to make eye contact. Tracks like “Drink Wine” and “FemmeMaison/One Man House” lean more toward glamour and melodic revel, but uncertainty still seeps from their cracks—in the cinematic cumulation to which “Femme” summits or in the consistent spitting synth in “DrinkWine.” If Everything is Forgotten maintains a youthful relevance in its showy alt-pop tendencies, it does even more so in its fidgety discomfort.
Methyl Ethel made an album that pushes a tense step beyond the baseline; it’s pop for odd and anxious times. Their undeniable catchy embrace acquaints you with familiarity, but their artistry spikes your temperature and all you can do bite your lip and let go. Sometimes the only way to break a fever is to ride it out, but Everything is Forgotten will assure you’ll be dancing too hard to notice when it does.
Australian three-piece Middle Kids first came to public attention with the release of their debut single “Edge Of Town” in May last year. Elton John declared himself a fan, Triple J placed the song on high rotation, and across North America the track received significant radio support on over 30 AAA/Alt stations.
To date, ‘Edge Of Town’ has accumulated more than 3 million streams on Spotify. Not bad for a band that, when they recorded the single, hadn’t played a single show. Now, Middle Kids have shows in Australia, America, and Europe under their belt; and they’re preparing for a major tour across the US with Cold War Kids, with headline shows and a stop at SXSW also plotted – big achievements for a band that is destined for so many more, starting with the release of their debut EP, out February 17th on Domino Recordings.
Sydney folksters All Our Exes Live In Texas have just unearthed a new musical gem from their soon-to-be-released album, When We Fall. Dubbed ‘Boundary Road’, the sweet little single comes packing a sweet music video that showcases the gals’ on-stage chops.
The clip was shot during the group’s Sydney single launch at Oxford Art Factory in October of last year, and will likely bring a smile to your face as the song brings a tear to your eye.
“Boundary Street is a street in West End – a suburb in Brisbane that I spent a lot of time in as a uni student,” explains singer and guitarist Katie Wighton, who reckons the idea for the song was sparked by a brekky date with her mum. “My Mum and I would often eat brekky there on a Saturday morning,” she says. “We had this one… ‘discussion’ that got quite heated and ended with her saying ‘What if I want to be the one to fall apart once in a while’. She’s a singer/songwriter which means she is generally accidentally poetic. So I stole those words and made them into the chorus for ‘Boundary Road’.
Boundary Road from All Our Exes Live in Texas debut album ‘When We Fall’.
Catchy melodies and cool grooves, and an individual style that mixes plenty of influences – Melbourne’s TheBaudelaires impress with their debut. An alt-rock/psych/pop sound that deserves wide attention.
Musk Hill is the debut full-length from Melbourne’s The Baudelaires. Stomping through the dreamy, substance-induced house-party haze of their previous EP Be a Baudelaire! (2014), the new album delves into the crunchin’ boogie of psych-garage territory. Recorded over 3 days on a property of the same name on the Mornington Peninsula, Musk Hill was mixed by Baudelaire’s own Grischa Zahren and mastered by Melbourne music legend Mikey Young.
Having toured South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales on several occasions, been invited to play such festivals as Chopped Rod and Custom, Happy Wanderer, Rolling Stone Live Lodge and shared the stage with the like of Cosmic Psychos, Cash Savage and the Last Drinks, King Salami and the Cumberland 3 (UK), Peep Tempel and more, The Baudelaires are eager for their album’s release.
Skegss have a new single available just as they go on tour with the Gooch Palms and the Dune Rats their nostalgic youth-drenched jam ‘Got On My Skateboard’.
It’s a lovely melancholic tribute to the regrets of not taking the opportunities you’re given, and the rewards that come with those you do. A driving rhythm denotes the relentless push of time, as the boys sum up the track in a single melancholic hook: “you’re young once and old forever”.
It’s the second single we’ve heard from their upcoming third EP, “Holiday Food”, due out on April 7th through Ratbag Records. You can get a copy of the track for free if you pre-order the EP from this Friday onwards, and it’ll be available on a special double vinyl too, as well as digitally. Until the record drops, they’ll be busy on their sold-out Australian tour with Dune Rats and The Gooch Palms throughout March.
The Fat Angel Sings 