Track: Thrillhouse kick starts the year with the effervescent ‘Janus’.
I feel that my musical year doesn’t really start until I’ve received Thrillhouse latest offering. And their opening salvo for the year is the appropriately named single ‘Janus’, the Roman god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces and is where the name …
Track: Sydney’s Jet City Sports Club unveil a spirited, jangling slice of heavenly melancholic pop in track ‘She Don’t Need No One’ and announce launch date.
With a genetic make up that has hints of The Sundays and The Cranberries as well as an antipodean bloodline stretching back to bands like Even As We Speak, The Killjoys and The Clouds, Sydney band Jet City Sports Club have released the sparkling ‘She Don’t Need One’. It’s jingle jangle guitars aplenty with with …
News: Sydney’s fizzing pop punksters Down For Tomorrow are up for a national tour and entice with anthemic single ‘Dark Comedy’ – a zesty track capturing the zeitgeist with an explosive thrill.
Sydney outfit Down For Tomorrow continue their skyward trajectory with their new single ‘Dark Comedy’. Chainsaw guitars tear apart the sonic landscape under the urgent excoriating vocals. This track has the bite and thunder of something like The Vines – indelible melodies that arch over the thunderous instrumentation, imbued with power and passion and a …
Track: Sydney’s power pop maestros The Nature Strip return to the fray with a bit of essential ‘Surgery’ and a launch gig.
It’s been a while since The Nature Strip brightened our world with their brand of quirky, intelligent power pop (last seen back in 2018 with the EP ‘Past Pacific’, reviewed by me here). In the intervening time, however, they haven’t really left us at all – John Encarnacao’s Warmer project and Pete Marley’s Marveline project …
Album Review: Brisbane’s Noir et Blanc (Amber Ramsay from Cloud Tangle) unveils the ambient classicism of ‘Wallflower Pedestrian’: a beautiful immersive sonic journey.
Noir et Blanc is the new vehicle for Brisbane’s prodigious dream pop wonder Amber Ramsay from the ethereal Cloud Tangle. And ethereal is an adjective that’s going to get quite a run in this review. Where Noir et Blanc departs from Ramsay’s other work is that the music is solely instrumental – a sort of …
Album Review: Sea Power crest the waves with the beautiful and shimmering ‘Everything Was Forever’, and announce launch shows.
The band whose name was formerly appended by the word ‘British’ has made a rather triumphant return in their new guise as Sea Power. On the one hand, the things that have made the band so special – their distinctive quirkiness and eccentricity steeped in a certain pastoral/rural bliss and ability to combine intelligent, witty …
News: The enigmatic prince of funk Donny Benét announces new EP, global tour dates and new instrumental single ‘Le Piano’
Sydney-based composer Donny Benét has perfected a brand of uber cool funk – driven by his proficient bass playing – that has caught the world’s attention, with past albums stretching back to his 2011 debut ‘Don’t Hold Back’. COVID restrictions prevented Benét touring his last album ‘Mr Experience’ in 2020 but to salve the pain, …
Live Review: The Paper Kites/Hollow Coves/Kat Edwards, Odeon Theatre, Hobart 11/02/22.
The grand old Odeon Theatre in Hobart has Chameleon like qualities: changing its colours and nature according to the artists who play there. I’ve seen the place pulsating and exploding with a vibrancy and an atmosphere befitting a stadium ten times its size, and I’ve seen it exuding an intimacy and closeness befitting a private …
Track: Perth’s Great Gable’s new single ‘Our Love’ is a gliding, soaring slice of sparkling sunshine. Plus tour news.
‘Our Love’, the new single from Westerns Australia’s Great Gable, eases through the consciousness like a bird gliding through a cloudless blue sky: the sparse and evocative music fluttering and turning effortlessly while the vocals are soft and easy. The result is something quite mesmerising, like lying in a floatation tank while your senses drift …
News: The legendary Killing Joke are back with new EP ‘Lords Of Chaos’ and lead off with the scything and visceral title track and news of UK tour.
There is surely a patent for the distinctive Killing Joke sound – the visceral scything guitars, the urgent emotive vocals of Dr Jaz Coleman and the infectious mix of goth, pop and metal resulting in something quite cinematic and euphoric. And the good news is that the band is back after seven years and sounding …