Posts By Grace Pashley

PREMIERE: Slowcoach – ‘Beneath the Board’

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Slowcoach

‘Beneath the Board’ is the debut single from Melbourne dude Dean Valentino, aka Slowcoach. Despite never having heard this before, I feel like he could be an old friend. That’s the kind of track this is: warm, assuring, forward-looking without leaving you behind. It’s confident and solid, and at every point where Valentino could have slackened off and let ‘Beneath the Board’ drip into the abyss of toothless indie rock he revs up, adding a bass lick here, a twanging guitar there, and piercing synth punctuating it all.

By three listens in I was spinning around the room SO SURE that someone was whispering to me, but that turned out to be one of the track’s many neat layers (production help from Michael Belsar of Melbourne calypso rockers Twinsy), that by chance put the fear of God in me…and made me listen to the song another three times to make sure I wasn’t going batshit (1.27 guys, promise it’s real). Such is the effort Valentino has gone to to produce a track that leaves no melodic lead or dreamy production trick unturned.

Attention must be turned to Valentino’s voice, because after I recovered from my ghost scare/religious epiphany I could have sworn that was Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell walloping me with his restrained power ballad vocals. Pair that with a War on Drugs rhythm wall and Slowcoach have put together a really fun, effortless sounding track.

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LISTEN: Tiny Little Houses – ‘Easy’

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Tiny Little Houses are four guys out of Melbourne who have garnered a bunch of attention with the first single off their forthcoming EP, ‘Easy’. The track plays to the band’s strengths of earnest songwriting and pretty guitar hooks, making it easy to see why their clean indie folk cuts through the swathe of non-committal indie-rockers vying for triple j listeners and Soundcloud plays.

Caleb Karvountzis’ voice is couched in echo but the band resists the urge to drown ‘Easy’ in reverb, letting their sad boi aphorisms (‘it’s not hell / but it’s not easy’) carry over simple, well-crafted instrumentation. Tiny Little Houses have avoided overcrowding the track with unnecessary fluff, with the few blues-inspired guitar licks – which build into that tense scramble at the end of the last solo – adding some depth to the track. The melodies are too bright for this to be an overtly sad number, which is what makes it so damn loveable.

You can catch Tiny Little Houses at the ‘Easy’ single launches in Sydney and Melbourne later this month.

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INTRODUCING: Bachelor Pad

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bachelor pad

Bachelor Pad are new wave rock-n-rollers out of Sydney who have opted for an original take on the genre du jour of fuzz-rock-cum-shoegaze in their new track ‘Ever Get the Feeling?’.

If you’ve ever been curious about whether a twee synth riff could complement distorted guitars and an ocker accent, ‘Ever Get the Feeling?’ answers your oddly specific curiosity in the affirmative. Bachelor Pad have traded ye olde verse-chorus structure for a few lyrical refrains in a refreshingly sparse use of the Australian accent in a rock context. The souring of the track’s initial lyrical optimism mirrors the interloping guitar licks, which are loftily melodic at one turn and whining feedback at the next. Even with its simplicity, the track fills out its 4-minute existence nicely.

Bachelor Pad are launching their single TONIGHT at Spectrum, with support from Wolf Cola. Their album Bachelor Pad is for the People is due out in August.

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INTRODUCING: Almost Violet

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Almost Violet is the project of Sydney lass Jess Meier, who has been producing some dark electro-pop for a while now, developing a signature production style by piecing together sparse electronic samples with cut up vocals from old news clips. In the wake of the recent SOS BLAK AUSTRALIA protests, her latest track ‘Ivory’ works through some serious white guilt.

Throughout ‘Ivory’ you can tell that Meier’s voice would really pack a punch if she went full pop ballad, but she balances the blasts with subtle nuances. The overall tone is sultry enough not to sound out of place with the atonal samples but pretty enough to carry the melodic load of the track. The song opens with the crackling voice of an old (probably) white guy assuring us that ‘The new Australians are real Aussies’, and Meier sets up the protest message with lyrics that are pointed but not overwrought.

She’s described the rest of her tracks as ‘#cinemasadcore’, which is super apt. The meticulous production across all her tracks can only be a labour of love crafted by someone who has done the technical legwork to create compelling stories with her music.

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Sex on Toast – ‘Oh Loretta’

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In this series, ‘First Impressions’, we’re going to subject a bunch of songs to the immediacy test – getting our contributors to review a track they’ve heard only once. This is Grace’s take on ‘Oh Loretta’, the new single from Sex on Toast.

Sex on Toast are 10 dudes out of Melbourne who just can’t contain their feelings anymore, so good luck Loretta, whoever you are. Their debut album was a sonic adventure of soulful harmonies backed by an extremely well-equipped brass section and a generous smattering of jazz keys – a winning formula they have reproduced on their latest single ‘Oh Loretta’.

The sheer force of the testosterone-powered vocal arrangement on ‘Oh Loretta’ is like a rugby choir serenading the hot little sister of one of the guys: kind of awkward but kind of endearing. With lines like, ‘If you were a bus you would be double decker,’ I don’t rate Sex on Toast’s chances of scoring, but they’re gonna give it their brassiest, loungiest crack. ‘Oh Loretta’ contains about a thousand different hooks that will flood your head for hours after listening, and even though I still can’t tell if Sex on Toast are taking the piss out of the old trope of guys joining a band to get laid, their talent is absolutely undeniable. I just really hope at least one of them can play the keytar.

Listen to this track prepared to get swept up in their cheese appeal – you’ll be groovin’ in spite of yourself. They’re playing some shows in Sydney and Melbourne for their single and video launch.

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LISTEN: Lonelyspeck – ‘Wring’

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TEEF Records have rallied some of Australia’s most exciting electronic acts for Imperium in Imperio, a compilation album whose artist list reads like a warehouse party of your dreams, with Setec, Yon Yonson and Collarbones to name a few on the stellar line up. They’ve treated us to an early peek at Adelaide producer Lonelyspeck’s (aka Sione Bouts Teumohenga) contribution to the record, ‘Wring’, and boy oh boy has he auto-tuned his way right into our hearts.

‘Wring’ would sit in the middle of a James Blake/Oliver Tank/How to Dress Well venn diagram to represent emotionally swollen and poignant-as-hell electronic music. It’s a big, beautiful cloud of a track, with extremely well-crafted vocal effects hovering above a slew of atmospheric layers and tense beats that show off his knack for tension/relief breaks.

The lovely airiness of the production appears to be a Lonelyspeck specialty – Teumohenga deftly replaces the trademark electro-banger drop with a luscious sound wall on this Rihanna bootleg he magicked up a while back.

The TEEF compilation will be out June 1st, and in something of an electronic and significantly less cringeworthy ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’ move, TEEF will be donating all profits to Oxfam Australia’s Nepal relief efforts.

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Kucka – ‘Recovery’

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Despite recent collaborations demonstrating her ability to nail a pop hook, with ‘Recovery’ Kucka (aka Laura Jane Lowther) has created a tasty slice of experimental pop. The first track off her next EP shirks structure for melodies and off-beat rhythms that run into each other and then disappear, as Lowther poises her characteristic industrial electronic samples for collision with her warped fairy vocals.

The instrumental break (sans-instruments) of ‘Recovery’ is a gnarly structure of broken glitch that shoots you right through to Kucka’s candied syllables towards the end of the track. Syllables is as much as I can confirm because I can’t be 100% sure that she’s saying real words – not that it really matters. The point is that Lowther has somehow made a song for riding Nyan Cat across a dark portal of pixelated unicorns and menacing rainbows into another dimension – a journey that would definitely require recovery. Maybe that’s what it’s about?

We’ll be seeing a lot more of Lowther in the coming months, with a run of free shows across the country kicking off in Brisbane at the end of May.

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