Young sister duo Charm Of Finches have just released this gorgeous little composition, a folky mixture of pop and chamber music, with a slight undercurrent of electronic influence.
Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes play each and every instrument found on this delightful piece, which was co-produced with Nick Huggins of Two Bright Lakes. Their harmonies are immaculate and stirring as they move through an honest and, well, charming lyric.
Their debut album Staring At The Starry Ceilingwill be out on July 29th,
Charm of Finches, aka sisters Mabel and Ivy, aged 16 and 13, emerge from an eclectic musical environment of classical strings and Celtic folk, and have been likened to artists as diverse as Danish chamber songstress Agnes Obel, First Aid Kit and Gillian Welch.
Their debut album “Staring at the Starry Ceiling” features the duo’s signature angelic sibling harmonies, with a distinct chamber-folk flavour coming from the instrumentation: cello, violin, guitar, ukulele, lyre, banjo, piano, glockenspiel: all played by the sisters, now aged 16 and 13.
The “singing finches” have played Australian folk and roots festival stages since releasing their debut EP “Home” in 2016.
Charm of Finches aka dream folk sister duo Mabel and Ivy from Melbourne, Australia, peddle honey-dipped harmonies, gently picked strings. Music to gaze at the stars to.
After two critically acclaimed EPs, Flyying Colours are set to release their debut album ‘Mindfullness’ in September on Club AC30. Residing in a dream-world that sits somewhere between psych, indie, grunge and shoegaze, the Australian band’s beautifully dynamic new offering showcases their talent for uniting a delicate vocal melody with a satisfying thick wall of abrasive drums and guitars.
Leading track and first single It’s Tomorrow Now further stirs the melting pot. Opening with a chaotic looped squeal, the knockout punch of the frenzied opening riff and steady, driving drums sets the bar high for the nine tracks that are to follow.
Formed in 2011 in Brunswick by school friends Brodie and Gemma, they played every show they could week in, week out in Melbourne’s bustling inner north to finesse their sound. Debut single Wavygravy (2013) perfectly set the scene by truly capturing the unhinged essence of a Flyying Colours show. But the recent addition of the impressive abilities of Andy on drums and Mel on bass have taken that unhingedness to undreamt-of-levels, making the beautiful trip of their live show, something to truly marvel.
The Melbourne quartet have since spent the last year touring with label mates pinkshinyultrablast as well as Johnny Marr, Brian Jonestown Massacre and A Place To Bury Strangers, whilst singles Not Today and Running Late taken from their second EP, ‘ROYGBIV’ garnered heavy rotation on enormous radio stations worldwide,
“It’s hard not to crush on the extensive, encircling sound of Melbourne’s Flyying Colours”
NO FEAR OF POP
“Chances are that this tune from Flyying Colours is going to make a fan out of you…these guys are belting out a noise that instantly pricks people’s ears up.”
SOUNDS BETTER WITH REVERB
Haunted, self-indulgent yet “incredibly alluring”, Beauty Already Beautiful would best be heard while “driving alone in some unnamed desert in the middle of the night, driving hard like someone or something is after you”. They “push against the tide” of “fractured multi-faceted” music popular currently, with “an elegant, melancholy, pompous, brash entry in modern guitar music”.
Sydney outfit Spookyland have been busy lads in the past couple of years, showcasing their wares overseas at SXSW and rocketing onto the Lollapalooza stage in 2015. Now they’ve consolidated their rise with a debut full-length Beauty Already Beautiful, The beginning touches of Beauty Already Beautifulwere put together while Spookyland engaged in their American sojourn of Lollapalooza, visiting Conor Oberst’s Nebraskan studio to plant the album’s creative seeds.
The album captures the band’s idiosyncratic style, lyrics steeped in metaphor delivered with an uninhibited vocal style – all backed up by solid rock ‘n’ roll chops. First taste of the album came in the form of singles ‘Bulimic’, ‘God’sEyes’ and ‘Big Head’.
After joining Gang Of Youths on their sold-out tour last month, Spookyland will launch their debut EP with in Sydney early May
Last year celebrated Melbourne singer-songwriter Liz Stringer headed over to Portland, Oregon to record her fifth studio album “All The Bridges” with engineer/producer Adam Selzer (The Decemberists, Jolie Holland, Fleet Foxes, M Ward) to be released on the 1st July 2016.
We now have the first taster of that album in the form of 80s rock throwback with a superb drumbeat driving the song titled “Anyone”.
“It’s a song about friendship and loyalty,” Liz Stringer explained. “I wrote it as a direct message to my friends because I wanted to let them know the gravity of my feelings for them. It just felt like the right time for this song to happen.”
Geelong lads The Murlocs cover the Hot Chocolate classic ‘Every 1’s A Winner’ for Like A Version on triple j. Like A Version is a segment on Australian radio station triple j. Every Friday morning a musician or band comes into the studio to play one of their own songs and a cover of a song they love. Just what constitutes a great Like AVersion. Some say it’s all about the performance itself, others say it’s all about how well the band or artist succeeded in making the song their own, meanwhile others think it’s all about how different the rendition is from the original.
Like A Version is supposed to be fun, and if a band or artist can have fun whilst totally owning a famous song, that’s about perfect.
Case in point, The Murlocs hit the triple j studios this morning to take on Hot Chocolate’s ‘Every 1’s a Winner’. The Melbourne psych outfit not only owned the tune, transmuting the 1978 funk classic into a garagey epic, they clearly had a lot of fun doing it.
Since 2004, many artists have participated, including Lorde, Arctic Monkeys, Tame Impala, Dirty Projectors, Ben Folds, The Temper Trap, Alt-J, Regina Spektor, Bon Iver, The Kooks and Hilltop Hoods
Australian indie-folkers The Paper Kites have just released their new video “Renegade” and announced dates for a national tour. The Paper Kites “Renegade” from the album Twelvefour
Taken from their amazing 2015 album twelvefour, “Renegade” is both visually stunning and instantly catchy
Sydney upstarts Green Buzzard haven’t played a show yet, haven’t released any songs and haven’t any glowing album reviews to quote… yet, they’ve just been signed to Melbourne’s I Oh You, home to such rabidly successful acts as DMA’s, Violent Soho and DZ Deathrays.
To celebrate, the five-piece will be releasing their debut on a double A-side 7″ vinyl through I Oh You in Australia on 21st August and on Mermaid Avenue/Mom+Pop over in the States, which will include their first single Zoo Fly.
Having filmed their first video for Zoo Fly with Sydney director Matt Dempsey at a house in Chippendale, the band are also playing their first show
Keep an eye on these up-and-comers, because if I Oh You’s other bands are ones to go by, the label certainly have their finger on the pulse.
Brisbane band The Creases let the music do the talking in the clip for brand new single ‘Point’.
Packing a heftier sound (including strings) and more hooks than ever into the song’s three-and-a-half minutes, the four-piece improvised when their more ambitious plans for the video fell through.
“We were going to do something that involved more of a concept and story but we had a few strokes of bad luck and in the end had to quickly organise, film and edit the video ourselves with the help of a couple of friends,” singer Joe Agius “The only thing we knew we wanted for the video was for it to go hand-in-hand with the music and feel and look very natural, clean and simple and represent a fresh new start in our sound and be a clean slate for everything new to come.” The Creases, who released their debut EP Gradient last year,
King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard finally got sick of fans asking them when they’re going to release another album already, because they finally pulled their fingers out and are about to drop album number eight, Nonagon Infinity, on 29th April.
After dropping the largely acoustic Paper Mâché Dream Balloon last year, the band revealed their eighth album would instead be an ambitious tribute to the heyday of heavy metal, with influences like Slayer and Motörhead and they’ve just unveiled the LP’s latest single.
After whetting our appetites with the raucous, fuzzed-out ‘Gamma Knife’, the band premiered ‘People Vultures’ accompanying the track, which is a similarly fuzzed-out but far more brooding affair than its predecessor, with a whacked-out but prudent statement.
As King Gizzard frontman Stu Mackenzie explained :
“Our blue planet is parched and cracks are forming underfoot and the sweat drips from our collective temple onto the citrine sand and a feathered doom encircles us from above and there’s a pulsing in our breast telling us there ain’t nothing any mere mortal can do when the sun retreats and blackness sets in. Call upon God to deliver us from our peril.”
In other words, ‘People Vultures’ is a raw meditation on the impact we meddling humans are having on the planet, with gripping lyrics like, “People vultures crowding at my door, parasites are eating even more” sung over a menacing guitar and organ interplay.
The band premiered ‘Gamma Knife’ last month alongside pre-orders for the vinyl edition of the new album. Just 1,500 copies were available for pre-order and the band managed to sell every single one in less than two hours, forcing them to release another 1,500 limited edition vinyl copies.
In addition to the healthy record sales, the band were also chuffed to get props from none other than Godfather of Punk himself Iggy Pop when the rock icon played two cuts from the band on his BBC Radio show, even offering up some kind words of appreciation for the band.
It’s a shame Patti Smith left Australia off the schedule when planning her Horses 40th anniversary tour, but then again, it would have meant that the pearl of this year’s Melbourne Festival program, a tribute concert performed by Jen Cloher, Courtney Barnett, Adalita Srsen and Gareth Liddiard,
So appealing was the idea of four of our finest musicians interpreting Smith’s landmark proto-punk debut, organisers had to add a second matinee show to next Sunday’s performance at Melbourne Town Hall.
It was Cloher who came up with the idea after attending a tribute to the Beatles’ White Album at Hamer Hall last year, “It was packed to the rafters, I was like, ‘wow’, but I also thought it would be so good to do an album by a woman,” says Cloher.
“And when you think about iconic rock ‘n’ roll albums by women, there are iconic albums out there but I think Horses is considered one of the great rock ‘n’ roll albums.” .Barnett wasn’t so willing to go to that place until recently. She recalls considering covering Horses for the Summer of Classic Albums series hosted by St Kilda’s Pure Pop Records last year. After a closer look at Smith’s lyrics, she chose INXS’ Kick instead.
“I also think that’s why that album is so famous and why Patti is so famous within that world of rock ‘n’ and roll, because she does invest her entire being when she’s on stage performing, she doesn’t hold anything back.”
Nothing like a dramatically lit pipe organ to imbue a classic rock recital with portent. It felt like a cathedral we’d packed to the balconies as the first, slow piano chords began cycling and Adalita paced the stage to intone Patti Smith’s immortal opening line. “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.”
By accident and/or osmosis, Adalita’s booming timbre struck an uncanny resonance with the hellfire stridency of Smith’s Gloria as she stalked and glowered in skirt, boots and bracing command.
Hunched by contrast in grunge flannel and jeans, Courtney Barnett howled Redondo Beach at her own distinctively defiant pitch, with the schoolyard-scrap indignation that makes her such a compelling one-off.
Gareth Liddiard’s advantages included a guitar and premeditated chemistry with fellow Drones Dan Luscombe and Steve Hesketh, but most of all a song that fit his shredded larynx like he’d gargled it as a baby: Birdland erupted in slashing waves as he threw every sinew into living its shamanistic dream.
Speaking of commitment, Jen Cloher had the toughest part and maybe the most triumphant with the escalating palpitations of Land, its long lines delivered as faithful homage but with an air of exaltation that was all her own.
An all-in thrash through My Generation threw a last can of fuel on an act of slow combustion that felt like it had been simmering for 40 years.
Performed by Gareth Liddiard
Guitar – Dan Luscombe
Drums – Jen Sholakis
Bass – Ben Bourke
Keys – Stevie Hesketh
The Fat Angel Sings 