Backseat Mafia is very pleased to premiere the video for the new single by Brisbane’s dream pop/shoegaze specialists, Local Authority. I have championed this band for a while on these pages – I reviewed their last album ‘Negative Space’ and described it as a truly a magnificent album that carves out a unique space for Local Authority in the heady world of shoegaze/dream pop. I stand by those words, and produce new single ‘Forever, For Now’ as further evidence. My case rests.
In fact, there seems to be a lot more muscle developed on the bones in this new material.
There is a slightly warped and discordant sheen in the razor-sharp and sparkling shards of guitars that fuzz and blister. The vocals softly and distantly soar above the fray – two voices interlock in a dreamy fugue. This is a heavy Local Authority – a wall of sound that thunders and roars – an aural assault of the most pleasant variety, receding now and again before resuming service. A far away and distant melody is anthemic and mesmerising, the song reaching a crescendo at the end that leaves you tired, deaf and battered and ready to start the track again.
Jacques McGill (vocals/guitars) says of the track:
In the time around the release of our debut record Negative Space, we spent a lot of time tinkering and re-working our live sound. Within the band we found ourselves swapping out our instruments and roles a lot of the time, bass would become synth, synth would become guitar, guitar would cease to exist and so forth. After every show we would go back and reassess everything we had done previously and re-craft our sound before our next show, we were always trying to bring the distinct cold and dreamy sound we had crafted so meticulously on our record into the live realm.
After taking a break in 2020 we returned to writing in what I think is our strongest layout of the band yet, and our new song Forever, For Now is a testament to that.
The single reflects a change in the way the band creates its sound:
What’s exciting about the new single, is that while our debut record was focussed on writing from old demos I’d made, Forever For Now, was written entirely in a collaborative sense from live practices. Erica breathes new life into the band in her new role on bass guitar and vocals we wrote together. Kailan lends his own identity to the dream pop subtleties he lays down on keyboards. I’ve even completely overhauled a new guitar rig as a way to highlight our multi-textured guitar sound. It’s a creative and exciting time for us as a band.
The lyrics are poetic – both nihilistic and reflective:
And nothing really matters
And no one really tries
Just stay the same forever, for now
Ultimately ‘Forever, For Now’ has a psychedelic lustre which is perfectly captured in the trippy video with its blurry palettes of colours and a flickering TV screen pixelated quality. According to McGill, the video was made on old analogue gear. It’s a perfect hazy lense for the music:
Out now through the lovely 4000 Records, you can download/stream through all the usual sites or, even better, get directly from the artist through the link below:
