From their first, self-titled EP in 2017, to debut album Lost Friends, the Sydney band has always had a knack for wrapping their listeners up in warmth and instant comfort. On their folow up album,“Today We’re The Greatest”, Middle Kids keep up that spirit of optimism. Yet in the song writing and delivery of its 12 tracks, “Today We’re The Greatest” feels more grown up.
There’s no denying that Middle Kids are very good at what they do. They’re pros – consummate songwriters and performers. But what happens when the impressionable indie kids grow up? When life takes hold and points them in different directions, how does that affect the musical output?. For Middle Kids, it’s made for an album that reflects not just the change in their band and their personal lives, but also a realisation that your relationship with music can change over time.
“I want to make music that loves its listener,” songwriter Hannah Joy says. “Music that makes people feel seen, seen in the tiny little places that hide away in their hearts. I want people to hear our music, and feel a sense of love. And when I say love, it can be challenging, intense and tough. But it’s in the guts.” It’s an interesting way to describe music’s effects. When that unique connection is struck, a moving piece of music can make you cry, get you through, rile you up, make you intensely happy.
The way Today We’re The Greatest deploys Middle Kids’ sentimentality and romanticism stands out as one of its biggest drawcards. The front end of the album is stacked with moods. The slow burn of album opener ‘Bad Neighbours’ with its stream of consciousness storytelling. The shimmering nature of ‘Cellophane (Brain)’that punches things into bright indie rock territory.
Songs like ‘R U 4 Me?’ and ‘Questions’, which revel in the type of emotional upswings that could easily put them on an Arcade Fire record.
Although all of the above are different in their energy and impact, the boldness that Middle Kids have applied to their production and creation – that we see throughout the rest of the album – shows how they themselves have changed in between albums. Notably, Hannah and bandmate/husband Tim Fitz were preparing to become first-time parents while making the album.
Recorded at the end of 2019, Today We’re The Greatest would be in mixing and post-production for much of 2020. It proved to be a shift of pace for Middle Kids who, before this point, had been living life largely on tour. Now, settled in Sydney with a new life about to come into the world, the band was given the opportunity to look at the way they made music differently. For the first time in a long time, they had the opportunity to breathe.
“We use the word ‘beauty’ in terms of shaping it,” Hannah said, reflecting on the recording process. “I think because we were trying to create more beautiful moments, there’s been a different emphasis [compared to] some of our older stuff. I think there’s beauty in there, but I think it’s been more edgy, empowering…those classic indie pop sounds. This has been about trying to sit in the space a little bit more and seeing what happens.”
Middle Kids’ forthcoming album ‘Today We’re The Greatest,’ out March 19th, 2021.
Middle Kids from Sydney, Australia, will release sophomore album “Today We’re The Greatest” on March 19th via Domino Records. Today the Australian-based trio have released another single from the album with “Stacking Chairs,” which follows previously released singles such as “Questions.”
The band has found this sweet spot between chugging anthemic rock and an undeniable power-pop sound that combines to such a winning degree. The band toes the line between the two sounds so well. ‘Today We’re The Greatest’ is the second studio album from Australian indie-rock trio Middle Kids. Inspired by the marriage and parenthood of two of the band’s members – singer Hannah Joy and instrumentalist Tim Fitz – there’s an exuberance and openness here that was absent on 2018 debut ‘Lost Friends’.
The Sydney-based three-piece Middle Kids release their second album, “Today We’re The Greatest” . Recorded and produced in Los Angeles by Lars Stalfors (St. Vincent, Soccer Mummy, Purity Ring), the follow-up to the band’s award-winning 2018 debut, Lost Friends, is their most personal and courageous effort to date. Moving away from lyrics of a more conceptual nature,Today We’re The Greatest is the open, uninhibited product of fearless collaboration. Showing a real vulnerability, Joy is pulling directly from her own experiences and breaking down barriers she had previously set for herself.
The album includes “nervy Strokes-esque floorfiller” (The Guardian) “R U 4 Me?” and their monumental new single, “Questions”, a charged three-minute odyssey which sees Joy struggle poetically with concepts of honesty and intimacy over an explosive rhythm section and a stunningly orchestrated brass-filled climax.
Here is our new song ‘Cellophane (brain)’. sometimes i picture my noisy brain as a crinkly bit of coloured cellophane. not sure what jung would say about that but i think it just means i don’t have a good grip on human anatomy.
Other tracks like “Run With You”, were written when Joy was a few months into pregnancy with her and Tim Fitz, her husband and bandmate’s, first child. They recorded her 20-week sonogram, and wove the gentle, rapid thump of their baby boy’s beating heart into the last 20 seconds of the track -an exuberant declaration of devotion. Joy’s journey to motherhood and her marriage with Fitz has imbued her songs with a vibrancy that’s unabashedly romantic yet free of clichés. There’s also “Stacking Chairs,” with its unique allegories and Joy’s sunny vocals, that strikes this delicate balance beautifully: it’s a testament to her deep connection with Fitz and the new, “infinitesimal” love that transformed their lives with their son’s arrival.
“Cellophane (Brain),” the new single from Middle Kids’ forthcoming album ‘Today We’re The Greatest,’ out March 19th, 2021. Domino Recording Co Ltd
‘Romantic Notions’, the fourth album from Sydney post-punks Mere Women, confronts its listeners with a question about the nature of “romance” itself. We tend to think of romance, broadly speaking, in its simplest and most wholesome terms – a rose-tinted equivalence with love and fulfilment. But what of the word’s more sinister connotations? That is, the romanticising? If romantic notions are ultimately just that, how do we come to terms with the way they shape how we move through the world?
That tension forms much of the new record’s conceptual background. ‘Romantic Notions’ is not an easy listen, as it focuses on the coercion, obsessive love and controlling behaviour faced by women throughout time, and interrogates the way idealism can become a coping mechanism in otherwise fraught circumstances.“That term ‘romantic notions’, for me, it’s really double-edged,” explains singer and keyboardist Amy Wilson. “It’s really beautiful, and it sounds so lovely, but it’s also quite a naive state to be in, I think. It can be quite disempowering to live in a dream world of romantic notions.”
Wilson’s song writing is direct, economical, and plays a lot with repetition and motif. It’s a style well-suited to an album like this one, where lyrics are presented as intimate internal monologue. On album track ‘As You Please’, against a wave of discordant guitars and frenetic rhythms, she repeatedly sings, “Take what you want as you please / I’ll wear my heart on my sleeve”, a crescendo that epitomises the desperation, yearning and quiet hope that underpins ‘Romantic Notions’.
Women’s lived experiences have long informed Wilson’s song writing. They were particularly influential on Mere Women’s previous album, 2017’s ‘Big Skies’, written largely while Wilson was living in regional NSW. Exploring the expectations placed on women of her grandmother’s generation, along with the experiences of women in remote communities, the record juxtaposed its spacious textures with lyrics about being penned in and held back by tradition. ‘Romantic Notions’ – which is out this Friday – continues to examine those themes, with Wilson drawing heavily on her generational family history.
“This record was kind of brought about by my family, and particularly my grandmother, who recently gave me a whole stack of her mother’s diaries. And they’re amazing to read – how intensely she felt about everything, and how she was held back and mistreated by people around her, but she still held onto these really romantic ideals about how her life should be and would be.”
Given its subject matter, Wilson says it’s the most personally connected she’s felt to a Mere Women album, the closest to home she’s ever written. NME asks what it was like delving into such personal content, and about the kind of responsibility that comes with communicating stories like the ones Wilson does on ‘Romantic Notions’.
“I get obsessed with certain things, and it goes over and over and over in my mind,” Wilson says. She pauses.“It’s really complex, because I look at people in my family, especially women of older generations – I see all the things that they struggled with, how hard it’s been for them to find their identity, to find their way in the world independently of whoever their partners were. For me, I feel so lucky. There’s still challenges, of course, but these stories have affected how I’ve turned out as well. I feel so honoured and privileged that they’ve been able to share those stories with me, and I just want to be able to pass them on.”
‘Romantic Notions’ is Mere Women’s most accessible and cohesive record, the culmination of the 11 years spent finding their identity. It’s a refined version of what they’ve always done best: pairing urgent, angular guitars with atmospheric soundscapes, propulsive rhythms with Wilson’s Siouxsie Sioux-esque vocals. While ‘Big Skies’ was an album full of masterful performances, ‘Romantic Notions’ feels more focused on the band locking in with each other, each part in service of the song.
That may be due in some part due to the conditions in which the songs on ‘Romantic Notions’ first came together. Much of the album was written in a rustic house on the Hawkesbury River shared by Wilson, guitarist Flyn McKinnirey and bassist Trisch Roberts. An hour out of Sydney, it takes driving through national park for 15 minutes to get to the small town the house is located.
The trio – along with drummer Mac Archibald, who makes his recorded debut with the band on ‘Romantic Notions’ – crafted a huge deal of the record collaboratively, all crammed together in the house’s living room.
“It was really nice to not be in a studio in the city at 9pm on a Thursday night, trying to jam,” Wilson says. “We’d spend the whole day or the whole weekend just hanging out and playing, having lots of tea and coffee breaks and diving into the river when we felt like it. “It was just such a different way to write a record than we’d been used to in the past. This was a way less isolating experience, even though we’re still in a remote sort of place. We could all easily be together.”
Wilson formed Mere Women back in 2010 alongside McKinnirey and drummer Katrina Byrne, who played with the band up until 2017. Debut singles ‘Sun Rising’ and ‘Waves’, released shortly after the band’s formation, were stark no-wave cuts that commanded attention in the makeshift warehouse venues the band emerged from.
Following on from members’ previous acts like Ohana and Little A, Mere Women became a distinctive figure in Australia’s underground punk scene, finding their peers more through a shared DIY ethos than similarities in genre. Debut album ’Old Life’ arrived in 2012, with its follow-up ‘Your Town’ two years later. Roberts joined in 2016, and Archibald after the release of ‘Big Skies’ in 2017.
Throughout the decade, across a handful of records and line up changes, they found a home in the community fostered by the likes of inner west institutions like Black Wire Records and the Red Rattler, along with Beatdisc in Western Sydney. They were part of a sea of fiercely independent bands creating esoteric music, by and for the small niche who passionately championed it.
In 2021, things look different. Black Wire’s physical store and venue on Parramatta Road in Annandale, where the band regularly performed and rehearsed, has been gone for a few years – leaving a gap that has yet to be filled. Similar venues have had to weather the impacts of the pandemic over the last year, and the small, intimate shows that bands like Mere Women found an audience in were stopped dead in their tracks. While the band’s recorded output is captivating listening, they’ve always thrived most in a live context.
“I miss it so much,” Wilson says mournfully. “It’s like a piece of me is missing. I love playing live, and it’s such an important part of my life. And I knew that, but you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”
Though shows in Sydney have been able to safely return in recent months, the way they’ve been able to take place feels somewhat incongruous with the kind of community Mere Women emerged from. Large venues capable of hosting seated, socially-distanced shows may have begun to recover, but the impact on small, community-oriented spaces remains yet to be fully seen. Wilson says that while they haven’t found the right setup just yet, they’re planning on eventually touring ‘Romantic Notions’, excited at the prospect of bringing these urgent, visceral songs to a sweaty room once more.
‘Romantic Notions’ is out March 5 on Poison City Records
When Adrianne Lenker says an artist’s “writing and voice are ethereal and angelic and guide me through internal canyons and plains,” you stop and take notice. Lenker (alongside Big Thief producer Andrew Sarlo) co-produced the debut album from Sydney, Australia-born singer/songwriter Indigo Sparke, who lives up to her collaborator’s praise on echo. Songs like “Colourblind” and “Carnival” draw the bulk of their power from Sparke’s bewitching vocals, with only sparse instrumentation to pull focus from her mystic storytelling—a deliberate decision she and Lenker made. “This record is an ode to death and decay. And the restlessness I feel to belong to something greater,” Spark explains. “Adrianne and I talked so much about keeping the record stripped back and simple, that is, we are all just constantly getting stripped back and humbled by life.” Listening to echo feels like standing in the shadow of an entity so large, you can’t see its entire outline, flooding you with fear, but also an unknowable awe.
Indigo Sparke brings her deeply personal lived experiences to her music, highlighting the spaces between the polarity of softness and grit. Pulling from her experiences of addiction, of healing, of queerness, of heartbreak, of joy, of connection, of the softness and of the grit alchemizing it all into tenderness through her music, she conjures up a myriad of feelings that is undeniably potent. Echo was co-produced by Sparke, Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker and Andrew Sarlo, and features playing from Nick Hakim and Big Thief’s James Krivchenia.
The voice of Indigo Sparke feels fearless, but at moments it comes at a whisper. I was first taken by this Australian singer on a random journey, listening to around 1300 songs for last year’s SXSW music fest. Her song “the day i drove the car around the block” has a mundane title that made me smile, but lyrics that both cut hard and comfort. “Take off all my clothes, kiss me where the bruises are,” and later the refrain, “Love is the drug, and you are in my blood now.” Indigo told the NPR crowd about the song’s origins of trying to learn how to drive on the other side of the road while in Los Angeles, with a huge vehicle and a stick shift.
She just gave up and wrote this tale of defeat and solace. On her third song, a tune that was so new at the time of this performance it had no title (now it’s called “Burn”), she’s joined on guitar by her partner, Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief. It all made for a most intimate and sincere expression of honest emotion and a beautiful day with friends in the office.
SET LIST: “Colourblind” “the day i drove the car around the block” “Burn” MUSICIANSIndigo Sparke: vocals, guitar; Adrianne Lenker: guitar
Indigo Sparke From the album Echo, out February 19th 2021, via Sacred Bones Records
Music from Sydney, Australia, Mere Women are back with a divine new offering song ‘Romantic Notions’ the title-track from their eagerly awaited fourth album due 5th March 2021 via Poison City Records. We are excited to premiere the song’s clip directed and lovingly crafted by the band, shot on the land of the Kuing-gai and Eora Peoples. Vocalist Amy Wilson gives us an insight into the track, We wrote the majority of the record at our place on the Hawkesbury River where three of us live. It’s a stunning spot right on the water, surrounded by national park. The record has soaked up this place over the writing process and as a result is more spacious and considered I think. Living here has made me feel like more of an outsider and this really comes through lyrically. As an album it’s dark and self-reflective but hopeful.
‘Romantic Notions’ the theme came from. It explores the idea that love can be used as a tool to control someone or can be used as a reason to make destructive life choices. As a band at that time we were inspired sonically by groups like TFS, White Hex and BAMBARA and wanting to create something that sounded sludgy and enveloping.
We were trying to create this sense of ‘becoming’ something new and leaving the old behind with the clip. It was filmed at our cottage and in the surrounding bushland by Flyn and Mac from the Band. Mac edited the clip and made the opening titles. Our friend Kim from White Lion Cosmetica got on board to do makeup and created this really cool monsteresque look that changes and grows throughout the clip. We’re so happy to be releasing again and getting back to playing music. Thanks for watching and listening to ‘Romantic Notions’ – it means a lot and we hope that you enjoy it.
.”W.Y.G” follows a trail of destruction left behind by family violence. It travels through distressing family resemblances and conflicting feelings of loving someone and hating them all at once”.
They’re the psychedelic four-piece who hail from Sydney, Australia, ready to whisk you off onto a magical mystery tour of their own. An attempt at untangling hazy, drunken memories from a heavy weekend down the beach – whether it be Bondi or Brighton. After forming in 2015, the pals are fast making a name for themselves with their dreamy psych-rock, with singles Cheesy Love Song and Tangerine highlighting how far they can push their sonic sound.
Lazy Eyes have announced the upcoming release of their second EP, dropping a new single and sharing tour dates. The band return in 2021 today with a new single, ‘Where’s My Brain???’, the first taste of The Lazy Eyes’ next chapter. In a press release, the band explained that ‘Where’s My Brain???’ was written during the band’s formative years, at a time “when the setlist was lacking fast paced, energetic tracks” ,
“We needed that one last song that the audience could mosh and get sweaty to,” they said. “The song is loosely about losing your mind over something and wanting to have a tantrum, but really it’s just a jam.” . The psych-rock Sydney outfit dropped their debut EP, ‘EP1’, in June of last year. Upon its release, NME said in its review that The Lazy Eyes “coast from dazed pop to shameless love ballads, claiming pole position for the next mainstage psych outfit along the way”.
“These Aussie teens are blazing a fresh path for psych-pop with a mesmeric throwback sound – and as that dialogue might suggest, they’re not cutting any corners.”
The Lazy Eyes make no qualms about wearing their psych-rock influences on their sleeves, but do so with the kind of cheekiness only a teen band could get away with (take the self-deprecating title of the charming ‘Cheesy Love Song’, for example). Written largely during their high school years, The Lazy Eyes’ sole EP already provokes equal measures of nostalgia and “cringeness” for the group – a sign they’re ready to evolve and carve their own path to the big league.
A cross between The Flaming Lips and The Beach Boys. Wonderful stuff.
The Lazy Eyes are a four-piece psychedelic rock band based in Sydney, Australia. The band are Harvey Geraghty (vocals, guitar, keyboard), Itay Shachar (vocals, guitar), Leon Karagic (bass) and Noah Martin (drums).
Here is an Australian band that will appeal to the Khruangbin crowd, as well as to fellow countrymen like Tame Impala or King Gizzard (but their more mellow side). They cut their psychedelics with pretty poppy hooks, sometimes even going a little overboard on the sweet and sugary to my taste. “Songs Of Worship” is strongest when it explores repetition, taking on an extremely comfortable floaty, atmospheric, fleeting sound. Kudos to their producer too, because sound-wise this is a treat. Taking influence from heavy psych/world music peers such as Goat, Here Lies Man and Kikagaku Moyo,
The Sydney 7-piece Kimono Drag Queens are coming in hot with their much-anticipated debut album “Songs of Worship”, after a steady stream of stellar singles over the past half decade. Kimono Drag Queens are a psychedelic/world music seven piece with musical influences spanning continents, genres and flavours. With a focus on rhythm heavy walls of sound, they’ve formed a style that blends elements of psych rock, Tuareg music, 60’s pop and noirish lyricism that fails to draw comparison
“Wild Animals” has a strong Band Of Skulls vibe which I dig, while “Evil Desires” shears past my allergy zone with its merry Afro-beats and guitar lines, but it saves itself as it gets a tad heavier along the way with some rhythmic fireworks at the end Willys World” starts of a little problematic with its obligatory guitar/citar sounds, but develops as the album’s strongest song with a perfect built-up and a powerful head-bobbing riff that will worm itself inside your head for a while afterwards.
The record twists and turns through a broad array of psych wizardry, touching on many cornerstones of the genre, with single. ‘Wild Animals’ evoking memories of Goat’s breakout single ‘Run To Your Mama’. ‘Hunters’ displays a memorising percussion performance driving the record as it pulls you deeper under its spell before you have time to brace yourself, after which the album crescendos through the euphoric ‘Willy’s World’ to its climax, leaving you gasping for breath. “I like my psych to have transcendental qualities, with the ability to transport me out of my reality, and place me far above the world and its troubles. I want a journey of sound that changes my perception while listening, and Kimono Drag Queens was able to offer me that on ‘Songs of Worship’, along with a whole lot more.”
Like Utopia Avenue, Songs Of Worship won’t necessarily bring new content to the table, but it does provide a modern angle to psychedelics that sheds some new light to it. Besides that, it is a very pleasant listen that will go down easily like some THC-infused candy. Sometimes too sweet to my taste, yet addictive all the same. ‘Songs of Worship’ is due for release digitally on the 6th of November 2020 and will have a vinyl release to accompany it, with presales live on Friday September 11th 2020. ‘Wild Animals’ evoking memories of Goat’s breakout single ‘Run To Your Mama’. ‘Hunters’ displays a memorising percussion performance driving the record as it pulls you deeper under its spell before you have time to brace yourself, after which the album crescendos through the euphoric ‘Willy’s World’ to its climax, leaving you gasping for breath. “I like my psych to have transcendental qualities, with the ability to transport me out of my reality, and place me far above the world and its troubles. I want a journey of sound that changes my perception while listening, and Kimono Drag Queens was able to offer me that on ‘Songs of Worship’, along with a whole lot more.”
Like Utopia Avenue, Songs Of Worship won’t necessarily bring new content to the table, but it does provide a modern angle to psychedelics that sheds some new light to it. Besides that, it is a very pleasant listen that will go down easily like some THC-infused candy. Sometimes too sweet to my taste, yet addictive all the same.
http://‘Songs of Worship’ is due for release digitally on the 6th of November 2020 and will have a vinyl release to accompany it, with presales live on Friday September 11th 2020.
Sophie Payten – the folk-pop singer and producer known as Gordi shares her latest single, a soaring, post-new wave anthem, ahead of her second album “Our Two Skins” . Since her last album “Reservoir”, Gordi has collaborated with Troye Sivan, toured with Sam Smith, Julien Baker and more, performed at Eaux Claires alongside The National, Bon Iver and Big Red Machine, and finished her medical degree to become a qualified doctor. The dark horse of ‘Our Two Skins’ – ‘Extraordinary Life’ – has just ticked over 1 million streams. It’s the most played song from the record. You guys totally should’ve told me that you want me to write non-moody songs.
To celebrate, I asked a couple of friends to reimagine the song. I first met Alex Somers when we worked together on my first album ‘Reservoir’ in his studio in Iceland. I saw Alex + Jonsi play their collaborative record ‘Riceboy Sleeps’ at the Sydney Opera House last year and Alex has brought that beautiful atmosphere he always finds to his rework of ‘Extraordinary Life’. Georgia Maq (lead singer of Camp Cope) released some of her solo work earlier this year, which I totally fell in love with. She seemed to really dig ‘Extraordinary Life’ so she produced and engineered her own cover of it.
Gordi is proud to share the “Extraordinary Life” EP featuring compelling remixes from Alex Somers (Sigur Ros, Black Mirror) and Camp Cope’s Georgia Maq. The EP also includes a live version recorded at the Sydney Opera House in July this year, and a lo-fi bedroom demo from 2018. “Extraordinary Life” is the most streamed song from the 27 year old Canowindra artist-producer’s second album Our Two Skins, notching over 1 million plays on Spotify last week.
Gordi’s “Extraordinary Life” reworked. Original song taken from Gordi’s album “Our Two Skins” out now via Jagjaguwar Records.
Flowerkid has today announced his first move to obtain global recognition. The 19-year-old Sydney artist came to prominence with his track “BoyWith The Winfields And The Wild Heart” and “Late Night Therapy” and has now earned attention from across the globe.
Flowerkid (aka Flynn Sant) will be managed by Wonderlick in Australia in partnership with Best Friends Music’s Danny Rukasin (co-manager for Billie Eilish and FINNEAS) for North America.
“Flowerkid’s music is incredibly raw, honest and unique and he has a clear vision for how he wants his music to impact people and to help incite change,” said Wonderlick’s Stu MacQueen.
“It’s very exciting and inspiring to be involved in this project, and now with the addition of the brilliant Danny Rukasin, we have finally completed the amazing international label and management team. We look forward to flowerkid sharing this compelling music with the world very soon.”
“When I first heard flowerkid’s music, a recommended listen from Jason Kramer at KCRW, I was immediately blown away by how special and gripping of a voice he has, and the stories he is telling from a song writing perspective,” added Rukasin. “I am proud to be able to help develop and present this incredible artist to the North American market and to be collaborating with such a world class management and label team to help showcase this artist and his art to the world.” In addition to management, flowerkid has also announced label deals with Warner Music Australia for Australia & New Zealand (with A&R by Marcus Thaine), Atlantic for the US and Parlophone in the UK.
“When I first heard flowerkid’s music, a recommended listen from Jason Kramer at KCRW, I was immediately blown away by how special and gripping of a voice he has, and the stories he is telling from a song writing perspective,” added Rukasin. “I am proud to be able to help develop and present this incredible artist to the North American market and to be collaborating with such a world class management and label team to help showcase this artist and his art to the world.” In addition to management, flowerkid has also announced label deals with Warner Music Australia for Australia & New Zealand (with A&R by Marcus Thaine), Atlantic for the US and Parlophone in the UK.
The song, ‘Late Night Therapy’ is written, composed and sung by flowerkid,
Flowerkid featured in the acts to keep an eye on in 2020
The Fat Angel Sings 