Australian band Spacey Jane have shared their new single ‘Lots Of Nothing’, marking their first release since their 2020 debut album.
The song, which premiered on triple j also marks their first release since they came just one spot short of topping the 2020 Hottest 100 with ‘Booster Seat’ as the highest ranking Australian song this week. In addition to the new single, the band have also unveiled a Matt Sav-directed music video,
‘Lots of Nothing’ is about wrestling with the parts of yourself that you don’t like and how you can see those traits as a whole other person,” said frontman Caleb Harper of the song in a press statement.
“It’s about trying to accept all the parts of yourself, good and bad, before you are able to work on the person that you want to become.” While it’s unclear whether ‘Lots Of Nothing’ will appear on a full-length release in the future, SpaceyJane revealed in January that their songs for the second album was completely written.
“We’ve actually recorded a few tracks off it already, and we are about to start recording the rest of it,” Harper said to triple j at the time.
“As to when it’s coming out, I have no idea. I’m the wrong person to ask about that…”
The forthcoming album will follow on from 2020’s ‘Sunlight’, which was “huge” though “never at the expense of their heartfelt honesty”. “All the jagged edges of conflicting genres are somehow smoothed out under their command and there’s not a moment of their ambitious vision that feels uncomfortable,” he wrote.
Having just wrapped up a nationwide tour, the WA band will be returning to Sydney at the end of next month.
Australian heartland rock/alt-country-leaning punks Amends have shared a new single off “Tales of Love, Loss and Outlaws”, and this one finds the band harmonizing and duetting with Against Me vocalist Laura Jane Grace, whose voice is perfect for a song like this,
Starting in the mid 2010s as an emo-rock revival outfit, Amends have expanded to incorporate a sound more focused on alt-country, heartland rock and folk-punk. Building their style across EP’s and their debut album ‘So Far From Home’, led them to support acts such as Lucero, The Menzingers and Luca Brasi. The strong development of the band’s style and sound is evident in their new record, ‘Tales Of Love, Loss and Outlaws’.
Joining in on the record are Murder By Death Cellist Sarah Baillet and Against Me! leader Laura Jane Grace. The former contributes strings on the ballad “I Gave My Heart Away A Long Time Ago,” while the latter duets on “Walking Backwards.”
‘Tales of Love, Loss, and Outlaws’ demonstrates and solidifies Amends status as one of Australian music’s most unique and endearing prospects.
Taken from our album “Tales of Love, Loss and Outlaws” Out on the 23rd of April via Resist Records.
The Murlocs have announced their fifth studio album, “Bittersweet Demons”, to be released June 25th, 2021! On the band’s most personal and boldly confident work yet,TheMurlocs share a collection of songs reflecting on the people who leave a profound imprint on our lives, the saviours and hell-raisers and assorted other mystifying characters.
New Murlocs We are thrilled to announce The Murlocs will be released on June 25th on ATO Records. Watch the official clip for the new single “Francesca”, out now,
“Francesca” was written as a celebration of the life of frontman Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s mom. With music written by Murlocs’ keyboard and guitarist Tim Karmouche, Ambrose says of the lyrics, “The song is about my mother and how she had been lost for love since the separation from my father when I was 10.
In the last year and a half or so, she’s found love again, with a very close family friend of ours, someone who has always been a godfather and mentor to me in many ways. This has changed her spirit immensely for the better. You can really see the pop in her step as this enormous weight has been lifted off her shoulders.” Citing some of his favourite songs as being odes to impressive women―like Van Morrison’s “Gloria”― Ambrose explains, “Francesca is my mother’s middle name and I’ve always loved it so much.” Of turning his song writing lens to his mother, and celebrating her rediscovered joie de vivre, he adds, “It’s probably the most positive, feel-good song we’ve ever done. It’s also the closest we’ve ever come to having an 80s phase.”
Directed by Alex McLaren, the “Francesca” video was shot at the end of April 2020. The band’s hometown of Melbourne, Australia was coming out of one of its first COVID lockdown periods and restrictions had eased for a short period of time. The band and director quickly jumped on the opportunity to shoot while they had the chance.
Says Ambrose, “I remembered being at a festival and bumping into our longtime video-clip collaborator and friend, Alex Mclaren. I had brought him back to our campsite and he played the song “I Love LA” by Randy Newman which ultimately brought the tents down and got the party started.” Newman’s 1983 classic soft-top music video informed “Francesca”, with the car footage being shot along Ivanhoe Boulevard in Melbourne where Ambrose’s mom grew up.
“Bittersweet Edition”•Limited-edition of 500••Tangerine, black and white colored vinyl. A-side/B-side effect• Blue Eyed Runner Edition” White vinyl with baby blue splatter, Custom inner-sleeve and lyrics insert
Empowering Australian indie punk trio Camp Cope have announced an 11-date UK tour this September. Last September saw them play a sold out Tufnell Park Dome at their first ever London show, having upgraded from the smaller room after they sold it out in a matter of hours.
Camp Cope have become somewhat of a force in music since forming in a Melbourne backyard over home job tattoos a few years ago. They’re a band whose work far extends that which happens on stage, or in the recording studio. They use their resilience and strength to fight for the betterment for the music industry and related communities, and have proven that they aren’t afraid to put their heads on the chopping block to do so.
They share this experience on their acclaimed second album ‘How to Socialise & Make Friends”, which was released in 2018. It features the standout opener ‘The Opener’, a rally cry which called the music industry to task on its sexist and inequitable structures, and ‘The Face of God’, a harrowing account of sexual assault at the hands of someone whose art you admire.
On ‘How To Socialise…’, Sarah Thompson lays powerful drumlines that rise steady, laying a foundation for Kelly Hellmrich’s driving, winding bass riffs (that exclusively centre around the G and D strings – much to the dismay of men in basements around the world). Their watertight rhythm provides the platform from which singer and guitarist Georgia McDonald stands with strength and ferocity, taking listeners on a trip through the pages of a personal diary, thriving in the uncomfortable and the unspoken.
The energy at a Camp Cope show is rare. Not just because they write good songs that have the audience on their feet. They’re a band that takes action – they say no, they stand their ground, they take up space, and the audience can feel the power from those words. They unite in a space that is truly equal as they scream back every word, arms in the air, veins pulsating. You can feel it in the air. It doesn’t just feel a show – it feels like an uprising.
Eight years after Stone’s last solo record, Sixty Summers arrives as a powerful rebirth for one of Australia’s most prolific artists. Emerging from the wildernesses of folk and indie-rock, with “Sixty Summers”Stone dives headfirst into the cosmopolitan, hedonistic world of late-night, moonlit pop. The stunning album brings us the grit and glitter of the city, with all its attendant joys, dangers, romances and risks.
It is Stone at her truest, brightest self, a revered icon finally sharing her long, secret love affair with this vibrant and complex genre. Recorded sporadically over five years from 2015 to 2019, Sixty Summers was shaped profoundly by Stone’s key collaborators on the album: Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, and Annie Clark, the Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and producer known as St. Vincent. Bartlett and Clark were the symbiotic pair Stone needed to realise her first pop vision.
A wizard of production and song writing, Bartlett helped coax Sixty Summers’ independent, elemental spirit from Stone, writing and recording over 50 demos with her at his studio in New York. Itself a thoroughfare for indie rock luminaries, some of whom, such as The National’s Matt Berninger and Bryce Dessner, ended up on the album, Bartlett’s studio was perfect fertile ground for Stone’s growth.
Julia Stone’s forthcoming album ‘Sixty Summers’, released 30th April:
Australian rock band King Gizzard & The LizardWizard released a new single entitled, “Pleura”. The latest recording from the workhorse rock band follows previously-shared “O.N.E.” which was released late last month, and “If Not Now, Then When?” shared back in December. All three recordings will appear on the band’s forthcoming 17th studio album, “L.W.” which is set to arrive on digital formats next Friday, February 27th.
Similar to the songs heard on the band’s 2020 surprise K.G. album, the melodies heard throughout “Pleura” were evidently influenced by classical music from Eastern cultures. The dynamics heard on “Pleura” also cover a winding range of peaks and valleys throughout its 4:11 minute runtime, resulting in a mesmerizing, almost entrancing listening experience.
According to the band’s album announcement on Thursday, L.W. can be considered a companion piece to the recordings heard on K.G., so fans should be able to hear a sonic connection between the two projects.
The album is available to stream on digital platforms like Spotify, and the band will donate $1 from every download of L.W. on Bandcamp to Greenfleet, an eco-friendly organization that plants native biodiverse forests in the band’s native Australia and New Zealand. “We’re aiming to make 2,000 downloads which is enough to revegetate 1,000m2 at Pearsons Block in Central Victoria, King Gizzard singer/guitarist Stu Mackenzie said in a press statement. “Some of the species endemic to this region include Yellow Box (Eucalyptus melliodora), Varnish Wattle (Acacia verniciflua) and Sweet Bursaria (Bursaria spinosa).”
“For me personally, making a record is always a certain percentage of fun and a small percentage of agonizing over it too,” Mackenzie continued in regards to the process of writing and recording the two companion albums during this ongoing downtime from touring and playing live. “But there’s always a wild alchemy going into it. Like, you don’t really know what you’re doing, you’re just kind of throwing all of your emotional energy into nothing, which becomes…something?”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are a psychedelic machine gun, having now released 17 albums in just nine years, maintaining a level of production only rivaled by Oh Sees and Robert Pollard. The latest was only officially announced a couple weeks ago and is the third record in their “microtonal” series where they explore the “notes between the notes.” It’s also clearly the second part of the record that started with last year’s K.G. Not that it needs to be spelled out, in this case literally, but the titles together are the band’s initials, the cover art for both are variations on a theme, and both feature microtonal instruments that give everything a sitar kind of vibe.
The microtonal element colours everything, but King Gizzard apply it to a wide variety of styles on L.W. which makes it both high concept but also all over the map. That sound obviously suits itself to standard definition “pysch” and the band are clearly masters of that as heard here on the bongo-fueled “O.N.E.” and big ripper “Pleura.” But the album is more interesting when it applies microtonal instruments to things like the nearly nine-minute prog-metal opus “K.G.L.W.” which closes the album with some serious fireworks and sounds like a certain set-closer once shows can happen again (which is soon in their native Australia). More interesting, though, are songs that take them into new territory. “If Not Now, Then When?” builds like it’s going to be a rager, but then turns into a groovy ’70s style number with funky electric piano and falsetto vocals. Hopefully that’s an area they’ll continue to explore on future albums…which are probably being mastered as we speak.
For their latest recording, King Gizzard also shared its affiliated video which was impressively performed live, filmed, recorded, edited, and uploaded to YouTube all on February 18th.
The Australian psych band’s 17th album in nine years flies between the funky and the ferocious
After a break of over four years between album releases, Australian duo Big Scary announce fourth LP ‘Daisy’. Their most playful collection to date, the tracks are full of drama – a little bit spooky and a little bit silly. It’s ok to LOL when you listen (and do a little boogie), but equally there is a thoughtfulness to be discovered within the themes and arrangements. The pair of Joanna Syme and Tom Iansek reflect broadly on superficiality, naivety and fantasy, compared with the complexities of reality, and the ongoing exercise in thoughtful living. Dynamic relationships are explored, between lovers old and new; and with the voice in your head.
Since releasing their last album ‘Animal’ in 2016 the pair have dived into broader creative projects. Tom has released three albums across solo project #1 Dads and duo No Mono, and produced or engineered releases for Maple Glider, Tom Snowdon, The Paper Kites, Airling and Bec Sykes. Jo created a second label imprint Hotel Motel Records (the first being Pieater, run with Tom Iansek and manager Tom Fraser); releasing four LPs, eight EPs and many singles; and toured Australia and Canada with the likes of Quivers and Cool Sounds, as well as working the Pieater releases.
All songs written and performed by Big Scary, except for “Bursting At The Seams” where extra percussion was performed by Jim Rindfleish and live strings were performed by Emma Kelly
There’s a certain beauty within Angie McMahon’s music that’s always present, but never quite the central focus of her work. It’s something that underlays the potent emotion of her earliest work in 2017 – “Slow Mover’s” strange mix of uplifting ache; “Keeping Time” soaring choruses – right through to her 2019 debut record “Salt”, an 11-track collection of songs that encapsulated AngieMcMahon’s charm as both a musician and storyteller in a similar vein to some of her biggest comparables and influences – Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks.
However, this remarkable and almost unexplainable pocket of beauty is something that really reaches a fever pitch in Angie McMahon’s live show, at the points where her live band step away for a moment and leave Angie alone in the spotlight. It’s here where Angie becomes her most brilliant; the lyricism and storytelling that underpins her work’s emotional richness entering the forefront to the point where you can’t brush it away or focus on anything else – you simply have to stand there and take it all in.
It’s something that really shone in this video filmed with her in 2018, where Angie – amidst a tour with Canadian musician Leif Vollebekk – stripped back the then-unreleased If You Call to its most subtle and remarkable, backed by the greenery of Victoria Park florist/plant store Green Bunch. With the production of the single’s recorded form replaced by only gentle piano, guitar and Leif Vollebekk’s devastingly-beautiful vocal cries, the moment is something that can draw you to tears from the get-go, even an entire year following its original release:
As it turns out, the acoustic live cover was the catalyst for the now-arriving “Piano Salt EP”, a stripped-back collection of tracks from her 2019 debut LP Salt, along with a few covers too. “The version of “If You Call” on this EP was recorded by Pilerats in Perth when we toured Australia with Leif Vollebekk,” she explains. “It was this wonderful day where we set up inside Green Bunch, a lovely plant shop/cafe, and filmed and recorded the duet. That was probably the seed being planted for this EP, because by the start of this year I was practising new versions of other songs off Salt too and was able to find a place for all of those with this release.”
The full collection of tracks that form “Piano Salt” ahead of its official release tomorrow, October 2nd. It’s a gentle seven songs that really flesh out this aforementioned beauty that swirls around Angie McMahon’s work when its stripped back to its most raw and subtle, indulging in the richness of Angie’s vocal and how she’s able to turn the emotions of Salt – and a few other special songs too – into potent, devastatingly beautiful moments that encapsulate Angie’s talents as one of Australia’s most brilliant songwriters and vocalists.
It opens with a swirling, piano-backed cover of Soon that feels almost like a modern-day reimagining of classical music, and its ability to tell stories and emotions even at music’s most minimalist and acoustic. This trait really shines amongst Piano Salt. When Slow Mover is pulled back to its most subtle, the soft sense of cathartic release that floats amongst the single’s cries are replaced by an almost-haunting presence that on a surface level, makes you feel the track’s lyrics underneath a new emotional lens. Keeping Time provides a similar moment – a favourite of Angie’s catalogue that many would associate with their introduction to the Melbourne musician painted in an entirely new light – while the EP-closing Pasta aches in a way that’s conveyed in the original, but emphasised this time around.
The EP also gives the opportunity for Angie McMahon to shine in another area she’s long-adored: covers. “It’s been a real treat to release second versions of some songs, and have an excuse to do more covers too,” she says. “I love covers.” Her Isol-Aid set early on in the festival’s existence seemed to encapsulate the whole event’s beauty , and a big part of that came through two covers that Angie performed; one of Bruce Springsteen’s The River, and the other of Lana Del Rey’s Born To Die.
TheBorn To Diecover is a highlight of the EP, joined by a video also premiering today, filmed The Perch Recording Studio, Castlemaine. It’s a cover that pays tribute to Lana’s distinct performance style, and how she – like Angie – are really capable of highlighting this deep sense of emotion through their work. “This cover of Born to Die was just so fun to play. I love the way Lana sings, so deep and emotive, and I wanted to pay tribute to that way of performing because it has inspired me as an artist in the way I write and sing my own songs too.”
The whole EP – and the covers included within it – are a coming full circle moment for Angie too. “Piano is the first instrument I learnt and the one that made me first love singing. My favourite piano song when I was young was k.d lang’s cover of Hallelujah. So this EP feels like a return to my piano-cover-loving inner kid,” she explains. “It’s been a really nice creative opportunity to recreate the feeling of some bigger songs off my first record, give them a new life, and cover some of my favourite songs too. It gave me something to do when we went into quarantine.”
The end result is something remarkably brilliant.
This is a mixture of footage from my home in lockdown, when everything went slow, and the Hozier tour that I joined in November last year, when everything was moving so fast. We were travelling around America, my sound engineer Jono and I, following the Hozier bus and having our own adventures every day. I’m so grateful he kept the go pro on for that month, and that the audiences were so warm, and that I have a safe and comfortable home to slow down in now. Thank you to our friend Lewis Parsons who edited all of this together so flawlessly. this version of Soon almost made it onto the Salt record, there has been a band version and a piano version floating around for a while, and in the end we decided on the band version. It’s so nice to be able to bring this one out now, and I hope it connects with people.
“Slow Mover” by Angie McMahon under exclusive license to AWAL Recordings Ltd Released on: 2017-10-09
The pandemic continues to have a profound impact on Intervention’s key partners. Earlier this year both Stoughton Printing, the company that makes our amazing jackets, and our pressing plant RTI shut down for a period, and have struggled to catch up since. Earlier this week Stoughton announced it has suffered a small Covid-19 outbreak and needs to close again until February 1st. When Stoughton reopens it hopes to be at or near full capacity. Where this affects Intervention and its fans and friends is that The Church “Starfish”release is delayed since we can’t get the jackets completed for several more weeks. There is something of a domino effect here, as we cannot get in RTI’s queue until the jackets are done and delivered. Starfish is the fifth album by the Australian rock band The Church, released in April 1988. The band’s international breakthrough album, “Starfish” went gold in America and has remained their most commercially successful release.
The high guitar priests of the Australian band the Church have been making pretty much the same record for nearly eight years with twin guitars overlapping in crystal formations of pinging harmonics, staircase arpeggios and clarion twangs and singer-bassist Steve Kilbey’s voice walking a thin line between a melancholy drone and an embittered hiss. Yet no two Church records ever actually sound alike. At its most compelling, the band scrambles the real and the surreal with ease, rattling its stately guitarchitecture with howling north-wind echo and the troubled undertow of Kilbey’s enigmatic lyrics. It’s like being in the middle of a recurring but constantly evolving dream where only the faces remain the same.
The first single, “Under the Milky Way”, charted in the US Billboard peaking at No. 24, leading to significant exposure of the then relatively underground Australian act. “Under the Milky Way” was recorded/produced in Los Angeles including renowed L.A. session musicians Waddy Wachtel and Greg Ladanyi. The recording is more sparse and open than its predecessor, Heyday, which featured orchestral arrangements with brass and strings. Many of its songs have seen heavy rotation in live set lists, and the album remains a favourite among many fans. The song “Under the Milky Way” was co-written by Kilbey with his then-girlfriend Karin Jansson of Pink Champagne. When drummer Richard Ploog was unable to find the right feel for the song, the band played to a click track and session musician Russ Kunkel was brought in to add the drums and percussion later.
The album’s title was taken from singer/bassist Steve Kilbey’s nickname for friend/ musical partner Donnette Thayer, who signed herself that way on postcards she sent to Kilbey. Kilbey contributed a long untitled poem to the album’s liner notes. “Hotel Womb” has dream-themed lyrics relating to an imagined wedding. Music videos were filmed for “Under The Milky Way” and “Reptile.” The fifth season of the US TV show, Miami Vice, featured two songs from the album. “Under the Milky Way” was used in an episode called “Asian Cut” and “Blood Money” was showcased throughout the episode “Heart of Night”. Starfish, The Church’s sixth and possibily their best LP, is about the spaces between the faces and about the tensions that fill those spaces. “Our instruments have no way/Of measuring this feeling,” Kilbey sings with edgy resignation in “Destination,” heightening the icy picking of guitarists Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper with visions of musty old bones, stormy weather and “clapped-out swingers. “Blood Money” could be about nothing more sinister than a whore and her john (“She says, ‘Why can’t you get hard/Because you paid for this now in cold hard cash?'”), although the dripping sarcasm in Kilbey’s voice and the metallic sting of the guitars hint that this sexual transaction has more to do with emotional piracy.
There is certainly a lot of betrayal “Reptile” and dislocation “Lost” on tap on this album. At times, it’s hard to reconcile Starfish’s richly appointed production – pillowy strumming, aqueous reverb, the sunshine blast of synthesized bagpipes in “Under the Milky Way” with the negative energy charging some of these relationships. But it’s the very contrast of otherworldly ambiance and sly baroque lyricism with the earthy erotic tug that lights up songs like “Hotel Womb” and Willson-Piper’s “Spark.” On “Hotel Womb” the urgent guitars stoke Kilbey’s vocal despair like a “White Light-White Heat” for distraught young lovers.
For a number of other dates on the American tour, the band was paired with another of their heroes: Tom Verlaine of Television. Verlaine supported The Church. For their encore every night (“You Took”), they brought Verlaine on stage with them for a three-way guitar duel. Some fans consider the Verlaine/Church shows to be some of the best live performances they’ve ever witnessed. Starfish set up the band’s well-deserved breakthrough in the States,” and added that the performances throughout “are at the least fine and at the most fantastic.
During the tour drummer Richard Ploog became gradually disengaged from the band during this tour, even though he stayed with The Church for another two years. The exact nature of his malady is unknown but most agree that LSD exacerbated his condition. There were degrees of internal strife within the band and a high pressure of expectation from Arista Records. Because of this, Kilbey smoked more pot on this tour than at any other point in his life – such large quantities that he routinely coughed up blood. By the tour’s end, The Church had performed 94 shows across the US, Canada, Europe, the UK and Australia.
The Church:
Steve Kilbey – bass, lead vocals
Peter Koppes – guitars, lead vocals
Marty Willson-Piper – guitars, lead vocals
Richard Ploog – drums, percussion
Additional musicians:
Greg Kuehn – keyboards
Russ Kunkel – drums and percussion
David Lindley – mandolin
“Awesome Welles” – Synclavier
Waddy Wachtel – Guitars backing vocals
What sets Starfish a notch above other distinguished Church hymnals, like 1986’s Heyday and the 1982 import beauty The Blurred Crusade, is its remarkable musical unity and refined dramatic poise. “Under the Milky Way” is the closest the band has come to adapting its expansive guitar chorales to potential-hit-single form since “The Unguarded Moment” .
While my hope at this point is that these LPs are in stock and shipping in June, I’m calling it summer of 2021 and crossing fingers and toes that it comes sooner. I am so sorry for this delay! The test pressings sound AMAZING, the artwork will be stunning and you will be thrilled!
Artist-Approved 2X LP Expanded Edition!, 8 Bonus Tracks Not Included On Original Vinyl Release!
As unexpected as it is to find Luluc closing out 2020 sharing a producer with pop behemoth Taylor Swift, it seems like a fitting end to this liminal, otherworldly year. The kinetic Aaron Dessner beat that opens the Australian duo’s fourth album is as much of a departure from the more muted tones of their previous work as its siblings brought to folklore – and yet, just as those propelled Swift’s heroine east from St Louis, this synthesised pulse also takes the listener on a journey.
The opening “Emerald City” began in a world halfway between the Melbourne of Luluc’s beginnings and the Brooklyn the duo have since come to call home: in Berlin in August 2018, where, on an invitation from Dessner,Zoë Randell and Steve Hassett flew out to perform at the PEOPLE festival. There, in an old East German radio-station-turned-venue-and-studio, the frequent collaborators – together with drummers JT Yates and Jason Treuting, and CJ Camerieri on trumpet – sought to translate the restless energy of the streets of New York into music.
Friends, festivals, transatlantic flights: the “Emerald City” origin story couldn’t be further from the Australian coast where Randell and Hassett finished mixing the album, seeing out the pandemic in isolation. And yet the thread that runs through “Dreamboat” is primarily an introspective one: of wild horses and weatherbirds, Wizard Of Oz metaphors and waking in the night. Luluc’s dream world, like the real one, is still complicated: at times as idyllic as the vision of “blue water and sunshine” in the Carpenters-esque “Dreaming”; at times a claustrophobic nightmare roping you in against your will.
The frantic buzz of that opening track is straight from the fast-paced, pre-pandemic world in which it was occasionally played live – but the anxieties tied up in its frenetic layers, punctuated by panicked bursts of trumpet, will be familiar to anyone who has lain awake these past few months, “tumbling and twisting” with “too much” in their head. The song is a stream of consciousness set in those anxious moments before sleep; above the noise, Randell’s voice a steady ship, with lines that seem prescient now. “Like Dorothy on the run,” she sings, “breaking my will, I stay in”.
The track is one of two to feature a Dessner co-production credit, Randell and Hassett handling the majority of the album solo. Combined with their decision to release independently rather than through long-time label Sub Pop – an amicable decision, Randell explains, driven by the duo’s desire to release this music into the world at their own pace – the implication is of full creative control. The simplicity at the core of the duo’s song writing remains intact, but the confidence that comes with experience allows them to lean into different choices as the songs dictate, be it duelling drummers, tenor saxophone or a touch of New York jazz guitar.
Wurlitzer and walking bass lend “Hey Hey” a vintage country feel, jazz drummer Dalton Hart working with Hassett to keep the song at a simmer until a melodic burst of sunshine shoots through the middle. “Weatherbirds” is built around another Dessner beat, but it’s the brightness of Hassett’s guitar and backing vocals that carry the song; and Arcade Fire touring member Stuart Bogie’s saxophone brings the pink flush of sundown to “Out Beyond”, a harmonious Randell-Hassett duet from the edge of the world.
But sometimes, the songs call for nothing at all. “All The Pretty Scenery”, a feather-light beauty in which the narrator’s gaze turns from her own interior world to that of another, features only Randell and Hassett, some vocal doubling the closest thing to trickery. “Gentle Steed”, recorded live in Berlin with Hassett on piano and Caimin Gilmore on double bass, falls somewhere between old folk song and mythology, Randell’s vocals timeless and pure. Her voice carries something of a myth-making quality in its timbre, making the everyday details that creep into her lyrics – a reference to “booze”, an affectionate “my man” designation for a partner – twice as charming.
The real world creeps in as it must: as the sound of cars “rolling their way into my notebook” among the diary-esque lyrics of “Hey Hey”; in the shape of an arachnid in “Spider”. But behind it all, a self-possessed Luluc in isolation, daydreaming of friends apart until they can once again cross the sea.
“Dreamboat” released through Sun Chaser Records October 23rd, 2020
