One of our favourite emerging bands from the Country of Australia, Melbourne three-piece Cable Ties have have been slinging short, sharp bursts of punk majesty for a little while now, and, following a tour supporting Camp Cope earlier this year, it’s all about to culminate in the release of their self-titled debut LP.
Better yet, they’ve deservedly taken out this week’s Feature Album honours on triple j radio , giving their abrasive, politically-minded jams plenty of time to worm their way into the your ears. The album’s release is through Poison City Records.
“A human in the wilderness/Is a scary thing to be,” warns June Jones, opening her second album at the helm of Melbourne based folk rock Two Steps on the Water. That’s just over a year since the opening line of her previous LP: “I’m a little bit scared.” It’s a fear that never really goes away, but at least Jones and co. are now better prepared to take it on. With lush three-part harmony and a particularly-beautiful detour prior to its closing chorus, Two StepsOn The Water continue to assert their place among the best Australian bands currently working in any capacity.
Alex Lahey is a 24 year old singer songwriter from Melbourne , Australia who has just signed to Dead Oceans Records. who have just re-released her EP and it is an excellent listen. Lahey tackles your traditional 20-something issues including relationships and life choices. Like her fellow Aussie, Courtney Barnett, Lahey has some wonderful lyrics; often at her own expense. For years, we’ve heard that rock ‘n’ roll is dying. Fun fact: It’s not true. Rock ‘n’ roll is alive and well in people like Melbourne, Australia for newcomer Alex Lahey, whose debut full-length I Love You Like a Brother is a bracing blast of big hooks, bigger guitars and biggest fun. Lahey has a tremendous talent for spotting the meaningful moments of day-to-day life, especially relationships, and then cleverly turning them into irresistible anthems. In a year that sometimes felt like drowning in bad news, I Love You Like a Brother is a rock ‘n’ roll lifeline.
She’s going to have some dates in the UK including a stop Bodega. 20th March 2018, She’s firmly planted on my must-see list.
If you’re hoping to score some life tips from Camp Cope’s sophomore LP How To Socialise & Make Friends, you might want to look elsewhere.
“It’s not like an instructional album. Like I don’t know how to socialise or make friends,” frontwoman Georgia Maq admits . The Melbourne trio are about to follow their acclaimed, self-titled debut with a record that’s even more raw than the first, if that’s even possible.
“In the last one we had like a couple a harmonies and like a gang vocal and this one is just like fully stripped back, there’s nothing,” Georgia says. “Everything was done just really quickly, how we like it, and I think I don’t care as much for this album. I don’t care what people think.
“I care less because I’m happy with what we’ve done and so anyone else’s opinion doesn’t really matter.”
When shesays “really quickly”, she means it. The album was written in a couple of months, and recorded injust two days(though half a day longer than the first). In fact, drummer Sarah ‘Thommo’ Thompson says she booked the tour for this album before a single word was written.
“[We] went ‘Uh oh, now we have to record it’ and we just went to the same place we did last time, just booked two days with nothing written knowing that if we didn’t have dates to aim for we wouldn’t do it,” Thomo says.
The album is totally done now, though we’ll have to wait until March to hear it.
gmaq – vocals/guitar
kelly- lead bass
thomo – drums
Pre Oreders for ‘HOW TO SOCIALISE & MAKE FRIENDS now if you’re in australia, hit up www.poisoncityestore.com to check out the different colour options, along with this lovely tee designed by Celeste Potter, & the first ever camp cope stickers. friends throughout the rest of the world! run for cover have a different range of colours for you to choose from over at http://www.runforcoverrecords.com available to order now. thanks so much to everyone who’s helped make this possible, we are stoked for you to hear it
Melbourne based singer-songwriter Batts last week released her stunning, raw “62 Moons” EP. The latest single from the release is the track “Somedays”, which fully embraces the new sounds Batts has been building across all of the tracks on 62 Moons.
Batts is the project of Melbourne based musician and space enthusiast Tanya Batt. Honing in on her sound with her two newest singles For Now and Little White Lies in the first half of 2017 .
Batts has spent 2017 touring Australia with Oliver Tank, Timberwolf and nyck .
A strong obsession with space and novels helps inspire the concepts and writing within Batts music. Creating soundscapes that take you on a journey with relatable lyrics to help the listener in whatever way needed.
Today marks the 1st year anniversary of our album launch for Disquiet Living. In celebration of this, we have some goodies to release! .Firstly, we would like to share with you a new track and video clip. Thank you Donnie for your recording skills.
We have also released an EP of B sides that didn’t make the cut. We figured that we would share these tracks with you anyway, mixed by our guitar man, Chris. These 5 tracks are available to download from our Bandcamp on a pay as you wish basis.
Five unreleased tracks that have been kicking/laying around in various forms. Tracks 2 thru 5 were recorded during sessions for our debut album in late 2015 and 2016, but for whatever reason didn’t make it onto the track listing or even thru the mixing stage. Tracks 2,3 and 4 have been played live many times as far back as 2014, track 5 has never been played before. Track 1 was written during 2016 when the album was taking shape and getting ready for release, but it was finally recorded in stages in 2017. It has been played at only twice, both times in 2017. Therefore we feel it has a connection to the era of Disquiet Living. These tracks form a release to represent the full spectrum of the band, with a focus on softer and less frenetic songs compared to the LP. Considering the current locations and feelings of the band members, Hesitation Tones is perhaps by default a farewell for now, and thus a gift based in gratitude to anyone who has supported us over the last few years and may be interested in hearing some of this musik recorded, or indeed at all. We hope you like it, thank you.
Reminiscent of the whimsical melodies of The Go-Betweens and harmonious soundscapes of Cocteau Twins, “All Of Our Time” is the work of seasoned artistAmaya Laucirica, someone who is still perfecting their sound four albums in. This wistful ballad is taken from Amaya’s upcoming album Rituals begun in 2015 whilst residing in Berlin. The record is a personable and intimate exploration of themes ranging from time to love, all packaged in Amaya’s unique blend of rich songwriting and multi-layered instrumentation.
On her return to Australia, Amaya built a band from members of The Devastations and Lowtide amongst others and recorded/produced Rituals with John Lee, known for his work on Channel 10’s hit show Offspring starring Asher Keddie. The product of this collaboration is an expansive and complex piece of music that deftly moves from sparse moments to intricate breakdowns with the assuredness of a musician at the prime of her artistic capabilities. Rituals is a major statement and fittingly so for a debut international release.
Alex Lahey has taken full advantage of her debut US late night TV appearance by crushing her performance on Late Night With Seth Meyers.
If there were any pre-show jitters you wouldn’t have even known as the Melbourne artist flawlessly belted out her single, Every Day’s The Weekend.
As an extra special nod back to Australia, Lahey’s drummer had the ‘YES’ tag featured on his kit, acknowledging the result of this week’s marriage equality vote.
Musical guest Alex Lahey performs “Every Day’s the Weekend” for Late Night with Seth Meyers
Near the end of last year, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard promised they’d release five albums by the end of 2017. As we creep closer to the end of this year, the Aussie psych outfit have thus far shared three: Flying Microtonal Banana, Murder of the Universe, and Sketches of Brunswick East (with Mild High Club). They’ll bring the tally up to four this week with the release of their latest full-length effort, Polygondwanaland.
Lead single ‘CrumblingCastle‘ opens the immersively brilliant POLYGONDWANALAND. It’s a mystical, slow-building psych-blues epic. The song sets a fine precedent for an album that listens like a cleverly constructed amalgamation other King Gizzard releases. The 60’s pop relaxation of 2015’s Paper Mache Dream Balloon, the jazzy time signatures of 2017’s Sketches of Brunswick East, the trackless rhythmic relentlessness of 2016’s NonagonInfinity, the microtonal, ancient conjurings of (also) 2017’s Flying Microtonal Banana, and the lyrical stories and themes so strongly present in (also, also) 2017’s Murder of the Universe. These guys have so richly explored and stretched the boundaries of their own musical and thematic universe that it’s nearly impossible for all their new stuff not to be entirely self-referential. King Gizzard can only sound like King Gizzard, and that’s a really, really awesome thing.
The album’s eponymous second track cruises upliftingly along on the burbling surface that is Gizz’s ever-deepening rivers of intertwining concept-driven song themes and stories. It opens in to the mouth of a swirling ocean, pulsing synth and clever guitar picking that spreads itself across the expansive and catchy ‘The Castle in The Air‘ and ‘Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet‘. These back-to-back tracks will swallow you up in them. Gizzard front man Stu Mackenzie delivers slightly tense, staccato vocals over a somber bass and synth combination.
A hugely 80’s synth warble that’d be at home in the middle of the Stranger Things intro opens ‘Loyalty‘ and ‘Horology‘; a back-to-back psych trip that skips along with whimsical aplomb. Mackenzie unleashes the exceptionally capable flautist within him, making sure Gizz’s trademark of deft musical ability.
Lucas Skinner’s trademark bass wanderings really come to the jazzy surface, then guitarist Joey does some more Mongolian throat singing, then there’s what I believe is a sitar for a bit, and then ‘Tetrachromacy‘ seamlessly begins, Eric and Michael begin to really warm up on the drums, and we change gears once more… goodness gracious. Always on the hunt for new horizons both thematically and musically, Gizz employ that desire and curiosity here more so than any other track on POLYGONDWANALAND. We get our first – and very minimal – taste of Ambrose Smith’s mouth organ skills, dashes of cross-album hook repetition and recycling, more glass/ tubular bells, a lyrical querying of undiscovered colours near blue, flute throughout, and some seriously swift rolls and fills from the beguilingly synchronized actions of dual-percussionists Michael Cavanagh and Eric Moore (who also runs Flightless Records while seamlessly doing tandem drumming across some seriously complicated musical structures .
The album expansively closes with the hypnotic and polysyllabic wanderings of ‘Searching‘; heavily 60’s stoner psych journey in to introspection, and finally ‘The Fourth Colour‘; a staggeringly large and complicated song that both drifts and turns corners. It’s a rollicking album closer. Just put POLYGONDWANALANDon repeat and keep discovering.
If King Gizzard and the Lizard didn’t release another LP for a decade, their musical output within this year alone would still eclipse most (if not all) multi-millionaire, studio-backed, advertising-funded, marketing-think-tanked pop-star’s album releases by a wide margin. And they did it in their own houses, with their own equipment, under their own record label, while touring the world to sold out shows, running their own music festival, making half a dozen film clips, and personally sending you the merch and records from each release to save on overheads.
Tracklist:
0:00 – Crumbling Castle 10:44 – Polygondwanaland 14:16 – The Castle In The Air 17:04 – Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet 20:38 – Inner Cell 24:35 – Loyalty 28:13 – Horology 31:06 – Tetrachromacy 34:36 – Searching… 37:40 – The Fourth Colour
The latest, greatest psych-rock band to come out of Australia. What is it with this country and it’s never-ending production line of mind-bending rock ‘n’ roll?
Post-set buzz: is this Tame Impala? Pffft. Music for daytrippers.
Their Best song: The whole set feels like a single, very long, very weird song, but if we had to pick a highlight it would probably be Hot Water, if only for frontman Stu Mackenzie’s jazz flute exertions. Frankly, they look like last night’s high hasn’t worn off yet. Which is exactly as it should be.
The crowd is pretty respectable, especially given the time of day, but there’s a significant drop-off from Pussy Riot’s in-conversation appearance just before them. In twelve months’ time, If all goes well, you imagine a reasonably prominent slot on the John Peel tent is within their grasp. But the Park stage – located way out on the fringes and populated with people who look like they’ve been doing the same drugs as them – feels like this band’s spiritual home. http://
The Fat Angel Sings 