album review
Album Review: ‘Dave Graney & Clare Moore in a mistLY’ reverberates with a delightful, playful sense of a drunken fin de siecle wake.
There is a clattering, chaotic stately grace about the songs created by the legendary duo Dave Graney and Clare Moore: born in a rock’n’roll cradle of unadorned guitars and pattering percussion with a louche, fey, self-deprecating delivery. They create the most glowing and comforting aura as Graney states with a come hither tone that he’s …
Premiere: We get early access to the brilliant Verticoli’s thunderous new album ‘The Echo’, ahead of Australian tour news.
nipaluna/Hobart’s post punk powerhouse Verticoli have provided Backseat Mafia with an exclusive listen to their new album, ‘The Echo’, and it is a gorgeous, cathartic cataclysm of sound and fury. Verticoli have drip fed us with a few anticipatory singles – ‘Pride And Legacy’ and Sailor’ – over the last year – perfectly restrained and …
Album Review: Troubadour extraordinaire Jo Meares releases the atmospheric classic ‘Dream Hotel’ and announces launch date.
Over the last year, Sydney troubadour extraordinaire Jo Meares has been releasing the most mesmerising and dynamic series of singles with producer Anth Dymke: each one a sparkling enigmatic jewel, interspersed, in the depth of COVID last year, by the release of a french language version of an earlier EP ‘Back To The World‘ (which …
Album Review: Tanya-Lee Davies is in ‘Dreamland’: a wonderful realm of slow burning vignettes that simmer with a melodic intensity.
The music of Melbourne’s Tanya-Lee Davies has a sixties beehive velvet blush about it – a sort of Dusty Springfield/Nancy Sinatra slow waltz to something powered by Burt Bacharach or Jimmy Webb, with a touch of self-deprecating antipodean humour. Her album ‘Dreamland’ is a wonderful collection of wry, bittersweet tunes that are infused with a …
Album Review: The magnificent Key Out make a triumphant return with ‘afterville’- a glorious, delicate and ethereal set of sparkling jewels.
Key Out for me are one of the unsung heroes of the indie music scene in Australia and indeed the world. Newly signed to the magnificent False Peak Records, they have burst back in to our lives with the magnificent ‘afterville’, a follow up to 2020’s ‘anthropomorphia’ (described by me as ‘stunning’ and ranked in …
Premiere: The Double Happiness take a refreshing stop at the ‘Roadhouse’: a wild west refuge filled with reverb, poignancy and epic widescreen poetry, and announce album launch date.
We have long admired the inherent joie de vivre and creativity of Brisbane’s The Double Happiness and are overjoyed to be able to bring you an exclusive early listen to their new album ‘Roadhouse’, along with brief, sometimes cryptic, sometimes hilarious, comments by the band on each track. The release is unavoidably imbued with an …
Album Review: Terra Pines throw a glittering veil of sludge pop over us with the engaging aural attack of ‘Downbeats’.
The self-described sludge pop of the music of Meanjin/Brisbane trio Terra Pines is an apt capture of the sweet dichotomy between the fuzzy barbed-wire instruments of the band and the rich melodic vocal delivery. This is an album filled to the brim with tight, layered harmonies and cinematic widescreen expanses delivered over an emphatic thump …
Album Review: The forecast is far from ‘Partly Cloudy’ for FLOWERTRUCK’s irrepressible and sparkling second album.
We’ve long been fans of Sydney/Illawarra band FLOWERTRUCK who have perfected an antipodean-flavoured brand of indie pop that has a genetic link to an amalgam of The Go-Betweens and The Apartments on one side of the ditch, and the Dunedin sound epitomised by Flying Nun roster of The Bats and The Chills on the other side. Blinding …
Album Review: Prudence’s ‘Negatives’ takes us into the heart of darkness – an ominous, brooding collection of treasures that glitters in the void.
With psychedelic-inflected vocals, nuanced and louche, the ghostly apparition that is Tom Crandles’s musical project Prudence has just released ‘Negatives’. It is a gothic-flavoured collection that reflects the period of turmoil over the last few years, bleeding through every pore, and yet seems to offer a glimpse of hope in the end. Opening track ‘Introduction’ …
Album Review: Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird unveil the glorious and majestic ‘Smiles of Earth’, out through Double Drummer, on the eve of a national tour.
‘Smiles of Earth’ is quite simply a glorious album and, for me, immediately takes its place as one of my contenders for album of the year. The new album from Melbourne outfit Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird (CTBNF), out through the esteemed Double Drummer, is a perfect storm of incredible songwriting, magnificent instrumentation and an …