Dead Letter Circus

Dead Letter Circus – ‘The Mile’

First off – no, Bert Newtown isn’t in this band! (For those who don’t know, Bert Newtown is a famous Australian TV personality.) 

Whichever country you go to, regardless of musical trends, you’ll always be able to find what could be termed “pocket scenes”, or even “mini scenes”, where a group of bands stick close together, and it becomes almost incestuous, but not in the nasty kinda way.  One such scene is the Brisbane underground alternative scene, with a bunch of high quality bands all coming out of the same area, and the same half a dozen or so bands have the same MySpace top friends.  Yep, MySpace has finally become a cited social marker…

To me, the band that stands at the apex of that Brisbane scene is Dead Letter Circus.  They take a leaf out of the book of bands such as Dredg and U2 and lay on the delay and reverb thick and fast, but as a self-confessed delay junkie I like the tones that they’re making here.  They’re also creating alternative music that’s a bit more intelligent than the norm.  Bassist Stewart Hill plays excellent melodic bass lines, choosing not to simply follow the root notes of the guitar chords, and Kim Benzie’s soaring vocals add to the music a more dramatic mood, akin to someone like Clint Boge from The Butterfly Effect. It’s fair to say not everyone’s going to like his voice, but that’s a matter of personal preference…

The band have just finished recording their debut EP with producer Forrester Savell, best known for his work on Karnivool’s album Themata. I’m hoping they soon make the trek out of Brisbane and head down my way to Sydney because I’m quite keen to see how they sound live, and to hear some more material from these guys who I feel have quite a lot of potential.

http://www.myspace.com/deadlettercircus