Through The Storm’ is the newest single from Australian, psych-rock luminaries Stonefield. The single comes from their Flightless Records full length “Far From Earth”, The new single can also be found on a very special 7″ single, featuring an non-album extended b-side, via NYC collaborators Greenway Records. ‘Through The Storm’ video features footage from the bands LA residency.
Made up of sisters Amy, Hannah, Sarah, and Holly Findlay, Stonefield’s sound pays homage to the prog, metal, and psych powerhouses of the ’70s while remaining uniquely their own. Their latest album was produced by Stephen McBean (Black Mountain) and features Rob Campanella (Brian Jonestown Massacre) and Gregg Forman (Cat Power.)
Stonefield is back for another Greenway 7″! This time its taken from their latest LP with A side “Through The Storm” and the B-side is an exclusive 7″ only extended version of “Broken Stone”!
Beaches have an appropriate name, evoking the California coastline where the first psych purveyors congregated. This Australian Melbourne quintet takes their DIY philosophy seriously—everyone plays an instrument, everyone sings, and the various members design their own album artwork and direct their videos. Their third album, Second of Spring, is their most ambitious yet, a double-LP filled with sunny melodies and motorik beats. It swings between brittle post-punk riffing and delightful pop harmonies, occupying that dreamlike state right before sunrise.
Do I need a favourite? I can’t choose one. The entire album is pure class.
Montero is an Australian musician and artist Ben Montero. His New album “Performer” was recorded at Mark Ronson’s Tileyard studios in London. It is co-produced by Ben, Jay Watson of TameImpala/Pond/Gum, and Grammy Award winning engineer Riccardo Damian. All instruments were played by Ben, Jay and Riccardo, save some violin by Emily, a waitress from the studio cafe, and electric piano from Ben’s uncle Jason. Performer glories in the widescreen soft rock tradition, updating the romantic classicism of golden era love songs with a psychedelic pop brush. Montero’s music evokes the extended soundscapes and textures of 70s prog, the easy listening adult weirdness of Jimmy Webb and Burt Bacharach, and the sports arena pounding of vintage MOR rock – sometimes all in the space of one song. With an emphasis on clear vocals, soaring melodies, lush instrumentation and dreamy glam pomp, Performer ventures into gently surreal realms of romance, yearning, and wonder.
As a visual artist, Ben’s much-loved comic-based style highlights the universality of small human moments via a cast of furry (or sometimes slimy) friends. His art has graced album covers, t-shirts and posters for Mac Demarco, Ariel Pink, Kurt Vile, Pond and others. Ben has lost count of the number of fans who have had his drawings tattooed on their body. His Facebook page Ben Montero Sketchbook has more than 80,000 fans.
In Australia, Montero has played with Ariel Pink, Kurt Vile, John Maus, Yeasayer, Sonny & the Sunsets and The Bats. Ben currently lives in Athens, Greece and his live band are made up of members of Greek psych heads Acid BabyJesus, plus other friends. The Montero band tour UK/Europe in November 2017 supporting Mac Demarco.
In 2002, The Vines were on top of the world, having been heralded as “the next Nirvana” during the garage-rock revival that was overtaking the music industry. This success meant the band were given the rare opportunity of being one of the few Aussie acts to perform on The Late Show With David Letterman. Of course, as with most shows by The Vines, it wasn’t going to be a subdued affair.
Frontman Craig Nicholls decided to show off his wild side, writhing and pulsating all over the stage whilst screaming the lyrics to ‘Get Free’ at nearly unintelligible volumes. Having managed to shock audiences all over America, host David Letterman decided to forgo his usual tradition of shaking hands with the band, choosing instead to seemingly cower behind his desk for fear of what he had just witnessed.
If you’ve been listening to Aussie music with sharp ears over the last couple of years, there’s a pretty strong chance that you would have already been exposed to the two members of St. Ives in their solo guises, but now the two talented artists have joined forces to create something especially tasty.
St. Ives is a relatively new collaborative project combining the stunning voice of Perth’s Anna O’Neil (better known as Anna O) and the musical talents of Melbourne producer Arik Blum, as they pay homage to the downtempo trip-hop sounds of the mid-’90s, with a contemporary alt-pop edge.
Their tender debut single ‘Nowhere’ shows the duo’s respective talents coming together to create something brilliant, with Blum’s gorgeous, lush instrumentation the foundation, and O’Neil’s emotive vocals the varnish that makes it shine.With the new project having only been on the scene for a short time, they’ll be continuing to share more tracks with the world over the next few months, and we’re already intrigued to hear what St. Ives have in store for us next.
Liv Cartledge has spent most of her life playing music, busking on the streets of Beechworth, Australia as a child, and playing pub gigs as she got older. All this practice has clearly paid off, with the Victorian singer-songwriter releasing the astonishingly genuine “Timber” EP.
Following the release of her debut single ‘Please Stop Messing About’ back in 2015, she’s been biding her time, honing her craft, and polishing off five tracks of stark, honest, and introspective lyrics. The end result is a beauty, those lyrics brought to life through wistful, folk-styled instrumentation, and delivered with Cartledge’s gorgeous, raspy voice.
With a unique style of songwriting that many accomplished musicians with years of experience would envy, Timber feels like equal doses of talent and hard work coalescing into one, with the potential to take the glowing embers of Cartledge’s early promise and build a bonfire.
Australian alt-rock trio Middle Kids followed up this year’s excellent self-titled debut EP by offering covers of Car Seat Headrest’s “Fill In The Blank” and Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” and now they’ve added another cover to that list: a spare, haunting version of Blink-182’s pop-punk classic “All The Small Things” that they recorded for Amazon’s Amazon Acoustics playlist. “In this recording, we were attempting to re-imagine a pop-punk classic as a sad country ballad,” the band explain. “We kept the beautiful words and the melody, but changed instrumentation to bring out different emotion.”
With her debut album, Don’t Let The Kids Win, still fresh in the memory, Australian songwriter Julia Jacklin is wasting no time in putting new material out into the world. Today see’s the release of her new AA-single, featuring the previously shared Eastwick, and brand new offering, Cold Caller.
I fell in love with Julia Jacklin last year when she released Don’t Let The Kids Win. definitely an album that was well-played. Now she’s ready to release a 7″ tomorrow.
Cold Caller was written as a tribute to Julia’s pregnant sister Emma, as Julia explains, “I know people get pregnant all the time but this was different, this was my sister. Cold Caller is a classic slice of alt-country, gently strummed guitars accompanied by twanging slide guitars and the gentlest of ticking drum beats, as Julia’s emotive-vocals comes across all Nasvhille, with a touch of Caitlin Rose or Angel Olsen. Heartfelt and beautiful, if Julia’s got songs this good to throw out as half a stand-alone single, just imagine how good her next album is going to be.
Here’s some more info on the track Cold Caller.
“I started writing this song when my older sister told me she was pregnant. I know people get pregnant all the time but this was different, this was my sister. The one who explained tampons to me, told me what kissing felt like, convinced mum to let me shave my legs, sung ‘Boys of Summer’ a capella at the school talent quest.
“I went to New Zealand to record this 7 inch and on the first day she went into labor, I was checking my phone every 10 minutes but managed to write the second part of the song. That night I had all these crazy nightmares, where she kept disappearing into the dark and every time I caught up to her she’d slip out of my hands again. Woke up in an absolute state to the news that she had given birth to a healthy baby boy. I went into the studio and recorded this song. So this is for her, my wonderful sister Emma.
Eastwick/Cold Caller is out today via Transgressive Records (UK)/ Polyvinyl (US).
If in a parallel, time, Bruce Springsteen, instead of selling out arenas, ended up singing resentful songs in a dark Las Vegas bar. In our reality, this same person lives in the body of Alex Cameron. We see him in a smart suit with slicked back blond hair, sometimes his cheeks are wrinkled, as is an older version of himself possessed his figure unexpectedly. He is almost kneeling on stage while holding on to his microphone; It’s impossible to foresee if he’s about to burst into tears or into a fit of rage. But nothing happens, the song ends, the action stops. He’s still there, on the empty stage, in the empty room, and you can’t help but keep thinking of his words, his voice, his hopelessness.
“And I’ve sat here thinking, I hate my god damn life/ I used to be the number one entertainer, now I’m bumpkin with a knife/ I’ll never get my show back.” he sings, in one of his tracks, titled “The Comeback.” Oddly enough, despite what you might think, “The Comeback” isn’t the opening song on Cameron’s debut album: the first place in his record titled “Jumping the Shark” is, indeed, for a song named “Happy Ending.” It’s as if we are taken backwards in the life and the career of this unfathomable music business man from a timeless place. the fact that the record in question, “Jumping The Shark”, was actually sneakily released by Cameron way back in 2013, and merely saw a wider U.S. release last year, with the record getting a proper release this year from new label SecretlyCanadian and producing some of the best video clips this year, Alex, who knocked it out of the park this year with a aforementioned string of brilliant videos taken from the record,
“I’ve got, everything I need/ It’s a strong connection, that’s high-speed/ Got two modems, and a fax machine/ I got receptionists, they keep my office clean/ I’ve got, a master plan/ I’m my own boss, I’m the man/ I got business cards, you can find me;” .
His narrative is evil and repulsive, yet we can’t help but listen carefully to the stories he sings, fascinated by this corruption and determined to save his poor, self-destructive soul, always concerned to find out that its us he’s talking about. The electronic arrangement, made of straight synths and guitars, remind of the new-wave, post-punk era – vintage or out-of-date, it’s difficult to tell. But the result is an album that sticks in the listener’s mind, persistent in the thoughts, coming back when least expected; impossible to give up on, just like a crushing addiction.
The Australian musician and 21 year old Sydney indie-folk singer songwriter known as Gordi recently covered her Jagjaguwar labelmate Bon Iver’s “00000 Million.”
On the decision to do an acapella cover, the musician says, “I think words can be best understood when they are all you can hear.” Listen to Gordi’s beautiful and haunting cover
Gordi will support Bon Iver at his upcoming Hammerstein Ballroom show in New York on December. 10th. Leading up to that show, she will support The Tallest Man on Earth for a string of Australian dates.
Well, I'm dyslexic so writing about something I love: Music, might help but it's most likely just full of mistakes. That title is also lyrics from The Drones song called I Don't Want To Change. Oh, my name is William and thanks for having a look.
