We are absolutely honoured to premiere the new single ‘Sow A Little Seed’ from Sydney indie pop gurus Restless Leg. It’s been nearly three years since we heard from this band upon the release of their album ‘Dream Buffet’, and this is one of the bands that first lit a lightbulb for me about the emerging ‘Marrickville Sound. It’s worth remembering what I wrote about this phenomenon:
It is undeniably a sound with its genetic origins in the eighties Dunedin Sound with an infectious strain traceable to Brisbane. A sonic line stretching from The Clean, The Bats, The Chills in New Zealand to The Go-Betweens and The Apartments. Guitar-driven, jangling, melodic pop tunes with themes that share a common link to the vicissitudes of everyday live, the minutiae of existence, growing old, up and out. Sometimes with a touch of alt. country, sometimes not. Many of the bands have history from the eighties and nineties and now the kids are grown up and things have settled down, they’ve re-awoken dormant, suppressed creative urges, reconnected with old band buddies. Maybe some of these bands have nothing whatsoever to do with Marrickville…
The new track from Restless Leg ticks all the boxes. It’s a gloriously up tempo jangle pop delight that recalls the almost naive yet wry innocence of early Go-Betweens and the raw energy of The Bats or The Chills, laced with a sense of self-deprecating humour and a whole oil tanker full of melody. The lyrics have a certain fey surrealness about them:
Never said, never tried
Never born, never died
Never kissed, never cared
Tell me were, we ever there?
The guitars etch out a sparkling, dappling riff while the vocal delivery is raw and unadorned with a glorious backing chorus that adds a delightful burnish as the song ambles along.
Singer/guitarist and songwriter Ben Chamie explains that
…this and the album track ‘Pure Hallucination’ started life as one song, but we broke them down into two and re-arranged both to make them work separately.
Musically it always reminds me of a Cat Stevens song called ‘Here Comes My Baby’ that was in Wes Anderson’s film Rushmore. It’s a great soundtrack that I have always loved and returned to from time to time!
Sow A Little Seed was produced by frequent Backseat Mafia artist Jamie Hutchings, recorded by Jason Whalley at The Pet Food Factory and by Tim Kevin at Tempe River Studio. The track comes with a quirky video shot by Graeme Trewin on an iphone:
This is delightful indie pop at its very best. ‘Sow A Little Seed’ is out everywhere tomorrow via all the usual streaming and download sites and through the link below.
The track and forthcoming album ‘Dance Around My Head’ is being released through Sinister Porpoise Records, a newly formed imprint of the label Love As Fiction Records. Founded in 2021 in Perth, WA, Love As Fiction Records specializes in 90s and 00s Australian music reissues and has released music from Ammonia, Bluebottle Kiss, Big Heavy Stuff and The Panics. Sinister Porpoise has been formed to specialise in new music from existing and up and coming Australian bands, with the first release on the label being Restless Leg’s new 2024 album.
Feature Photograph: everyangle.com.au
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