Posts Tagged ‘Sideways to New Italy’

ROLLING BLACKOUTS COASTAL FEVER – ” Sideways To New Italy ” Best Albums Of 2020

Posted: June 12, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Then on the heels of two stellar EPs, Melbourne’s Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever first appeared on our radar at SXSW 2017. The marvelous quintet piled on guitars unapologetically in each of their breezy pop songs with life on the world’s roads and skies laid ahead for them. Their excellent 2018 debut LP, Hope Downs, solidified their status as a touring powerhouse, but the grind eventually made the band turn inward when writing “Sideways to New Italy”. “We saw a lot of the world, which was such a privilege, but it was kind of like looking through the window at other people’s lives, and then also reflecting on our own,” says singer/guitarist Fran Keaney. “She’s There” opens almost unconsciously with a nasty guitar hook that threads into a song about longing and pondering someone’s absence who might be thousands of miles away. “Falling Thunder” is a more traditional pop groove that’s still heavily stacked with guitars and asks “Is it any wonder? We’re on the outside / Falling like thunder, from the sky.” And while RBCF is shifting to make sense of their place in the world, they’re still very much committed to doing so while absolutely shredding.

Just two years ago, This Australian indie pop band Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever rose to international prominence with the release of their critically acclaimed debut LP ‘Hope Downs’ which found an eager audience around the world. Showing absolutely no signs of second album fatigue, they make their welcome return with the newly released ‘Sideways To New Italy’.

Inspired by the New South Wales village of the same name where drummer Marcel Tussie grew up and spent his formative years; nostalgia plays a major part in this wonderfully wistful record which channels the melancholy and turns it into a dynamic explosion over ten tracks.

It also reflects on how immigration is increasingly becoming a contentious issue thanks to the dangerous rhetoric of popularist politicians, which contrasts sharply with the bands views who see the benefit of blending cultures as proven by the Venetians who came to New South Wales in the 1800’s and brought their rich history to their new home.

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On their second full length record, “Sideways to New Italy”, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have turned their gaze inward, to their individual pasts and the places that inform them. From a town in regional Australia that serves as a living relic to how immigrants brought a sense of home to an alien place, to the familiar Mediterranean statues that dot the front lawns of the Melbourne suburbs where the band members live, the inspiration for the record came from the attempts people make at crafting utopia in their backyard (while knowing there is no such thing as a clean slate). In searching for something to hold onto in the turbulence, the guitar-pop five-piece has channelled their own sense of dislocation into an album that serves as a totem of home to take with them to stages all over the world.

“These are the expressions of people trying to find home somewhere alien, trying to create utopia in a turbulent and imperfect world.” These guys continue to grow as songwriters- there are a ton of catchy melodies across this album, and not a weak track. I can’t wait to see them perform these songs live! . The tightest 3-guitar band I have ever seen, full stop. The dual-lead guitar crescendo in Cars in Space is pure bliss, something Verlaine and Lloyd would have been proud of.

Released June 5th, 2020

2020 Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever under license to Sub Pop Records

‘Sideways To New Italy’ is now available on Limited Edition Sky Blue Coloured Vinyl, Standard Vinyl and a Bundle containing both records.

ROLLING BLACKOUTS COASTAL FEVER – ” Cameo “

Posted: June 3, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Melbourne-based band Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever will release their highly-anticipated second album, “Sideways to New Italy”, this Friday,  June 5th via Sub Pop Records. Today, they release the album’s fourth single, “Cameo,” which follows previous tracks “Falling Thunder,” “She’s There,” and “Cars in Space.”

“Cameo” begins with open guitar strums and Fran Keaney’s sweet, assured voice. Then, it thrums with plucking bass, crisp percussion, and Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever.’s signature ability to create a stirring, anthemic track. Undoubtedly an album high point, “Cameo” shows a band at the peak of their power, both instrumentally and lyrically.

“This is a love song. It’s about reaching through time portals,” says Keaney. “The lyrics were pieced together over about a year like a little puzzle. I found the first pieces in Rushworth, and the last pieces in Darwin.”

Sideways to New Italy is available for preorder from Sub Pop. Preorders of the LP through megamart.subpop.com and select independent retailers in North America, the U.K., and Europe, will receive the limited Loser edition

ROLLING COASTAL BLACKOUT FEVER – ” Falling Thunder “

Posted: May 5, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever are back with another preview of their upcoming album “Sideways To New Italy”, in the form of new track “Falling Thunder”.

Speaking about the new track, the band writes, “This song is about pushing on through the relentless march of time, against the constant cycle of seasons, and the way people change and relationships change. It’s set in that time when autumn is turning into winter and the trees are getting bare.” “Falling Thunder” is a third taster of the group’s forthcoming second album, arriving after previous singles “She’s There” and “Cars In Space”.

Sideways To New Italy will follow on from their 2018 debut Hope Downs, and is named after a village near New South Wales’ Northern Rivers – the area drummer Marcel Tussie is from.

Vocalist and guitarist Fran Keaney says of their forthcoming record, “I wanted to write songs that I could use as some sort of bedrock of hopefulness to stand on, something to be proud of. A lot of the songs on the new record are reaching forward and trying to imagine an idyll of home and love.”

“Falling Thunder” is out now. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s Sideways To New Italy album is due to arrive via Sub Pop Records on 5th June

ROLLING BLACKOUTS COASTAL FEVER – ” Sideways to New Italy “

Posted: April 3, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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RBCF - Sideways to New Italy

After enough time away from home, even the familiar starts to feel foreign. For guitar-pop five-piece Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, returning to Melbourne after long stretches looking out at the world through the windows of airplanes and tour vans lead to dislocation, like being the knot in the middle of a game of tug-o-war. Their second record, Sideways to New Italy (Sub Pop Records), sees the band interrogate their individual pasts and the places that inform them. In clicking the scattered pieces back into place, they have crafted for themselves a new totem of home to carry with them no matter where they end up.

Lead by singer-songwriter-guitarists Tom Russo, Joe White and Fran Keaney (and rounded out by bassist Joe Russo and drummer Marcel Tussie), the band began grasping for something reliable after emerging from relentlessly touring their critically regarded debut Hope Downs. “Sideways to New Italy” on June 5th via the fine folks at Sub Pop. Everything they have released has been awesome.

Home, for Russo, manifests in different ways: there’s Melbourne, where he and brother Joe grew up, but also Southern Italy where the forebears of their family originated. The album is inspired by New Italy – a village near New South Wales’s Northern Rivers – the area Tussie is from. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pit-stop of a place with fewer than 200 residents, it was founded by Venetian immigrants in the late-1800s and now serves as something of a living monument to Italians’ contribution to Australia, with replica Roman statues dotted like souvenirs on the otherwise rural landscape. As members of the band individually visited the Mediterranean and returned home to Melbourne’s inner-north, where waves of European migrants forged a sense of home since the 1950s, they realized the emotional distance between the two was minuscule. The prominent and romantic Greco-Roman statues that sit outside tidy brick homes in Brunswick represent, for Russo, an attempt to “build a utopia of where your heart’s from.”

“I wanted to write songs that I could use as some sort of bedrock of hopefulness to stand on, something to be proud of,” says Keaney. “A lot of the songs on the new record are reaching forward and trying to imagine an idyll of home and love.” This is the bulk of Sideways to New Italy, which boasts love songs, and familiar voices and characters, grounding the band’s stories in their personal histories.

The same can be said of this record, where White’s early attempts at writing big, high-concept songs were abandoned in favor of love songs (“She’s There,” “The Only One”), and familiar voices and characters filter in and out, grounding the band’s stories in their personal histories. On “Second of the First” the voice of a close friend joins White’s partner in delivering a spoken word passage; the chorus from “Cool Change” began its life in a song the trio played in an early band, over a decade ago; the chords from “Cameo” were once in an eventually abandoned song called “Hope Downs”; an early version of “Falling Thunder” featured a reference that only their friends would recognize.

“Sideways to New Italy” on June 5th via the fine folks at Sub Pop Records. Everything they have released has been awesome to date.