melbourne
ALBUM REVIEW: Floodlights – ‘From A View’: another great Antipodean guitar salvo
IF THERE’S one area of the world that has always seemed to have had a dialogue and a response to a certain strain of British indie guitarpop, it’s been Australia and New Zealand. Witness the Flying Nun scene and related bands that brought so much to our ears in the late 1980s: The Chills, The …
SEE: Floodlights – ‘Matter Of Time’: garagey Melbourne bite
GUITAR pop from Australia and New Zealand: it’s inarguably a very good thing. From the 1980s onwards, with bands like The Chills, The Go-Betweens, Straitjacket Fits, The Verlaines – no area of the world has had such a dialogue with that particular brand of British-originating indie six-string action. And now we’re into a new and …
Droppin’ Knowledge: Sampa The Great Shares New Video – Time’s Up
Melbourne-based emcee Sampa The Great shares a new video for the song, “Time’s Up,” featuring fellow Australian rapper Krown. The track is found on Sampa The Great’s excellent 2019 LP, The Return, which was released by Ninja Tune. In the song, Sampa and Krown call out the music industry and demand that it does a …
Feature: Tim Wheatley – Lying Low plus Australian Playlist
Tim Wheatley is an Australian expatriate living in London who has just released a fantastic new single – ‘Lying Low’ – with incredibly prescient themes of isolation. Like many Australian songwriters, Wheatley’s ‘Lying Low’ somehow captures the widescreen horizons of Australia best from afar, as if it is wired in his genetic code: razor-sharp, observational …
EP: Jade Imagine – You Remind Me of Something I Lost
Melbourne’s Jade Imagine continue to forge a cool and eclectic path with the release of their new EP ‘You Remind Me of Something I Lost’. Sitting somewhere between shoegaze/dream pop and something more sparse and muscular it is a fantastic and unique journey from beginning to end that defies a label. Opening track ‘Coastal Pines’ …
Album Review: Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Sideways to the New Italy
With ‘Sideways to the New Italy’, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever (RBCF) have clearly announced their presence as one of the most accomplished and uniquely Australian indie bands around. And, in my opinion, they can proudly take their place in the Pantheon of indie greats on a global stage too. However, it’s the Australian connection that …
See: The Stroppies reveal new video for ‘Look Alive’
Melbourne tunesmiths ‘The Stroppies’ offer up a third taster ‘Look Alive’, the title track from their forthcoming mini album on the ever energetic Tough Love Records. ‘Look Alive’ has all the ingredients that make The Stroppies such an intriguing prospect – the loving jangle, the rhythmic chug, the slacker melody plus in-built surprise keyboard fills …
See: Cut Copy reveal new video for Love is all we share
Melbourne purveyors of quality electronic music, Cut Copy, have returned with a new single and video – Love is all we share. It’s their first track in almost three years and its out now on Cutters Records / The Orchard. Dan Whitford on the new track: ‘Love Is All We Share’ is a song we made using only a …
Track: Tobi Tobi – Cast Away
It’s often the spaces in between the instruments in a song that create an inedible atmosphere, and the new single by Melbournian duo Tobi Tobi proves this fact. Simple instrumentation (double bass, piano, guitar), so sparse as to be almost undetectable, ripple beneath singer Renee Anderson’s extraordinary vocals and a haunting, heartbreakingly melancholic melody. There …
EP: Destrends – Wastelands
Destrends have produced an explosive post-punk EP that recalls an eighties Australian post-punk mentality epitomised by bands like Midnight Oil and Spy Vs Spy: vibrant, passionate and intelligent, danceable and thrashy. Added to this is a level of theatricality and attitude leavened by an inherent larrikin sense of humour. Opening track, ‘Missing People’ sets out …