Track: Fingerless – Get My Money Back
Missed in the pre-Christmas excitement, ‘Get My Money Back’, the new single from Brisbane’s inimitable Fingerless is a swaggering joy. Opening with a dream-like Gregorian chant with a spacey blur, the song launches into a spectacular, driving rhythm – there’s an attitude-laden tilt infusing psychedelic glam style with a rock’n’roll bluster. It’s The Triffids mixed …
News: Bushfire Relief Concerts – Australia
Australia has been hit with apocalyptic fires this summer and it is great to see the music industry coming together to provide support for the community. One concert entitled Down to Earth will to raise precious funds for for immediate fire relief via Red Cross and WIRES, as well as funding organisations that focus on …
Feature: 2019 Favourites
The following are lists of my favourite releases of 2019. This is not a definitive list of the best of 2019: I would not be so presumptuous to think I have listened to every single release nor the objective ability to state what is best. This is essentially stuff I have listed to and liked …
Premiere: Elder – wabi sabi
Backseat Mafia couldn’t be more pleased to premiere the extraordinary single ‘wabi sabi’ from Brisbane’s Elder: a song that is so innovative and exciting and quite mesmerising. It heralds the beginning of another stunning year from the stable of 4000 Records. With crystal sharp splashes of guitars, drums and bass, the song is alike a …
Album Review: tunnel traffic – Age of Convictions
While tunnel traffic is ostensibly the moniker for multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Adam Hachey, the move to bring long time collaborator, singer Jacky Muñoz, to the fore in the new album, ‘Age of Convictions’ pays dividends. In this new album, Hachey has dialed up the intensity of the instrumentation: capturing the quite/loud ethics of the Pixies …
Live Review: Underground Lovers/The Lovetones, The Corner Hotel, Melbourne
There is something special about seeing a band play in their hometown. You just know the audience will be filled with family and friends and there is a special frisson in the air. Indeed, rather appropriately, lots of love pouring all over the place; in the venue, on stage, even after the gig when members …
Album Review: Paul Kelly – Songs from the South (Greatest Hits)
Anyone with even a scintilla of interest in the music scene in Australia needs to know of the golden thread that runs through it in the form of Paul Kelly. He is to Australia what Bruce Springsteen is to the US, Bally Bragg to the UK: a rock’n’roll poet that holds a mirror to society, …
Track: Cloud Tangle – Thinking of Myself
A languorous, charged and alluring dreamy fugue emanates from the new single by Brisbane’s Cloud Tangle in the delicious single ‘Thinking of Myself’. Cloud Tangle is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist and producer Amber Ramsay, who has been releasing music under Cloud Tangle since 2014. Of Cloud Tangle, Ramsay says: My goal with this project …
Album Review: White Lies – Five (Reissue)
Emerging in a crowded field with fellow indie nouveau goth bands like Interpol and Editors, White Lies have been, in my view very underrated over the years. Their 2019 album ‘Five’ has been just re-released with the addition of two new songs, ‘Falling Out Without Me’ and ‘Hurt My Heart’, recorded with US producer Andrew …
Track: Fragile Animals – Waiting
One of the best exponents of the new wave of Australian shoegaze/dream pop, Queensland’s Fragile Animals have followed up their much lauded EP ‘Only Shallow’ earlier this year with a blistering new single ‘Waiting’. Inserting a vibrant sheen of jangling guitars, discordance and harmonies, ‘Waiting’ is a gorgeous shimmering wall of sound, with its dream-like …