“Look Alive” by The Stroppies is released today. Having initially been moved back a month due to complications relating to COVID19, the record now arrives at a time of even more distress and concern. Tough Love and The Stroppies stand united in our support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Please see below for the band’s views on the matter. We hope the music can bring some relief in these dark and uncertain times.
“It feels strange to be promoting and releasing music in the midst of what has been a strange and traumatic year for everyone. This feeling is even more acute in light of the recent events in Minneapolis and the global raising of consciousness around the adversity faced by black people and black communities the world over.
The Stroppies will be donating 100% of profits from any copies of Look Alive sold through our to the aboriginal led Literacy for Life foundation until our copies are gone- in addition to this we will donate 100% of the profits from anything sold on our Big Cartel to this charity over the next week. We have also set up an ongoing donation of $20 a month in the band’s name that will be debited monthly and indefinitely.
Australian customers please order through us and through this channel to support this initiative.
For any overseas customers you can click the link below to purchase the record through regular channels.
We hope you enjoy the record and look after each other.
Originally starting as The DIY home recording project of Angus Lord and Claudia Serfaty, The Stroppies have now evolved into what some might call a “proper band”. Following on from their 2017 demo cassette and a sling of singles, 2019 saw the release of their debut LP Whoosh!, a studio-based affair that evolved The Stroppies sound, underpinned with a newly discovered melodic classicism. Look Alive!, their latest effort which was recorded only months after the bands return to Australia after their second European tour of 2019, represents a marriage of the two different styles of Stroppies recordings and rounds out an incredibly productive twelve months for the group.
Look Alive! Is the sound of The Stroppies honing their craft under new and unfamiliar conditions. Written mainly on the road then finished and recorded at home with whatever was on hand with only three of the four members present, it is according to the band’s singer/guitarist Angus Lord, “an EP forged in circumstance. A sum total of fleeting vignettes on scraps of paper, voice memos and iPhone notepads all collated between soundchecks and long stretches in a tour van pieced together over weekly jams. We didn’t want to waste much time when we got home so we opted to record it ourselves”. For a band who began with the initial idea to create “open-ended music, collaged quickly and pieced haphazardly together”, it is in some sense a return to their true self.
Lead single ‘Holes In Everything’ presents the band at its pop best: “If I could disappear into the atmosphere, I would be around you all the time” sings Lord, before swiftly throwing shade on the sentiment in the chorus, “It’s always frightening what I think”. It’s this penchant for push and pull of light and dark splashed against the backdrop of trepidation and humour that make The Stroppies records so endearing and open-ended. Though undeniably pop structure orientated, the bands propensity for re-inventing and re-appropriating their recording and writing process ensures that nothing starts to fossilize. Indeed, Look Alive! is that most intriguing of records precisely because it represents two ideas at the same time – the sound of a band in flux, but also the sound of a band becoming more sure footed as they walk their crooked line.
Aussie janglers The Stroppies return in fine form today with a new mini-album that wraps up their recording work from the last year. Vaulting off of their excellent album from last year, the band continues to capture the overcast sway of kiwipop from days past, calling back echoes of The Clean, Able Tasmans, and Tall Dwarfs. They buoy their sunny strums with heavy-sighed harmonies and a hummable heft of organ that gives the song staying power.
The band’s sticks to your ribs more than some of their peers with an ability to let angst and insecurity bask in the sun of their strums – giving their songs a more substantial kick then some of their cohorts. They continue their run at UK label Tough Love and while this might be another short one (something the band seems adept at) these eight songs still feel like a vital part of The Stroppies’ path. The LP descends to the decks on May 1st.
Taken from the record, Look Alive, out 1st May 2020 via Tough Love Records.
Starting out as a recording project between Angus Lord, Claudia Serfaty and Stephanie Hughes, the germ of what would eventually become the Stroppies was formed around a kitchen table in Melbourne’s inner west early 2016. The initial idea was to create open ended music, collaged quickly and haphazardly together on a Tascam 4 track Portastudio that drew on stream of consciousness creativity and a DIY attitude a la Guided By Voices and The Great Unwashed. The desire to move beyond the pre programmed drum patterns available on their Casio Keyboard led to the addition of Rory Heane on drums and a more conventional band dynamic.
In Late 2016, Alex Macfarlane recorded the band in their lounge room direct to 4 track, capturing 7 songs that would become their 2017 self titled cassette tape debut. The songs were bounced back and forth from tape machine to computer to tape machine to computer again. In keeping with the bands initial aesthetic, dubs were laid over a 4 month period incrementally on different devices as members had babies, explored intercontinental love affairs and set up homes together. Since the release of the tape, Adam Hewwit has joined the group on third guitar as they settle down into exploring the new band dynamic and focus on their next recording project.
The Stroppies is composed of members of many Melbourne and UK bands (Claudia is originally from London) including Dick Diver, Primetime, Possible Humans, White Walls, Boomgates, The Stevens, See/Saw to name a few. They make modest, idiosyncratic pop songs that reward with repeated listening.
From across the world, Melbourne, Australia seems like a city filled with youthful bands breathing new life into old formulas of melodic guitar-pop. Each of the last few years, the number of great bands coming out of Australia, especially the city of Melbourne, has steadily impressed. The Stroppies‘ self-titled 2017 EP was a great rough-around-the-edges work of experimental pop, with an air of Flying Nun Records to it. Their album “Whoosh!”is comparatively next-level — anthemic and multi-layered yet still driven by a loose DIY impulse. The voices of Gus Lord and Claudia Serfaty alternate, overlap and complement each other, as the instruments do much the same. Theirs is a comfortable, familiar-in-a-good-way sound that also feels fresh and exciting.
Taken from the debut album, Whoosh, out 1st March 2019.
“Whoosh is a silly word,” says Gus Lord of the Stroppies. “There is something completely nonsense about it, especially when removed from any kind of context. For me it conjures up images of something absurd and transient – two things fundamental in the experience of listening to or making good pop music.”
“Whoosh” may indeed be a silly word but it almost onomatopoeically captures the sound and essence of The Stroppies first proper debut album, one that breezes along with boundless energy, a refrained pop strut, infectious grooves and the sort of jangling guitar melodies that sound like a prime-era Flying Nun band.
Between them, the Melbourne-based band – currently comprising of Gus Lord, Rory Heane, Claudia Serfaty and Adam Hewitt – have been in countless bands such as Boomgates, Twerps, Tyrannamen, Primetime, Blank Statements,The Blinds, White Walls, See Saw and Possible Humans. The band formed together around a kitchen table in 2016 with a heavy focus around the essence of collaboration and a DIY ethos. This led to an acclaimed cassette release of lounge room recordings, which was then pressed onto vinyl to more acclaim. The Stroppies next step was then taking their DIY approach to home recordings into the studio to make a transitional leap to what would become their proper studio debut. “Whooshis our first concerted effort to make something with a bit more sonic depth,”says Claudia Serfaty (the bands other primary songwriter). “It was an attempt to take working processes that had been established in a home recording setting and build on them with a broader musical palette in the studio in order to push the band into new territory without compromising what made initial releases so endearing.”
Endearment is something that the Stroppies have no problem retaining on Whoosh. It’s a record that possesses all the spunk and gusto of a young band hurtling forward yet also knowing when to take their foot off the accelerator. It’s an album that simultaneously feels young and fresh but wise beyond its years. “Whoosh is the most robust sounding release we have ever recorded,” Serfaty says. Combining taut post-punk rhythms, indie jangle, seamless melody and sugary pop, it’s a record that Lord says is influenced by: “All sorts of things – life, work, relationships, old cartoons and the last 60+ years of guitar-based pop music in some form or another. This includes everything from Bill Fay to the Clean to Stephen Malkmus.”
“Whoosh” is a record that combines a natural sense of urgency with a thoughtful approach. Something that the recording process itself was emblematic of. “Budgetary restrictions meant that we had two days to lay the foundations,” Serfaty recalls. “So it was axe to the grind: burning through live takes interspersed with tea and Turkish food from the local kebab shop, which culminated in twelve half finished cuts, rough and ready.” That was the urgent part, what then followed was a focused and labour intensive approach to get the most out of the bare bones of the record as possible. “We spent hours building up, stripping down and mixing the work that had been recorded the month prior, throwing everything we could think of at the songs to see what would stick. We utilised whatever was on hand to pull sounds, including but not limited to vintage synths, rain sticks and an old door frame that we used for percussion.” This was done with Zachary Schneider, a friend of the band, budding producer and established musician who is most notable for his guitar work in bands such as Totally Mild, Free Time and Full Ugly.
By the end of that period the band got so absorbed in the record that they almost lost sight of it. “I’m still a little too close to this record for it to evoke anything in particular,” Lord says. “Except for perhaps dull anxiety. Towards the end of recording I felt like I was drowning in the process and lost all clarity on what it meant or it’s value. Kind of like saying a word over and over again – it starts to lose all meaning.” Although with time comes clarity and even amidst the fog of making a record that has taken over his life, Lord knows the band has made something special. “Reflecting on the process I feel really proud of the album.”
The Fat Angel Sings 