New clip from Zeal for ‘Vigilante,’ one of the highlights off his album With the Moon Alongside Racing Us Home.

If you’ve seen Zeal’s live show then you’d appreciate that it this clip is appropriately made with the aid of programming and tricked-out hardware.

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A couple of sweet jams and old-skool hazy vids to accompany from Cyst Impaled – the solo project of Collarbones’ Travis Cook. Presumably the Collarbones album is done and will be released soon since he clearly has time to indulge individual pursuits like that. (Not that there’s anything wrong with this pursuit – but, you know, kinda hanging out for that album).

Cyst Impaled – Infinite Smile from Travis Cook on Vimeo.

Cyst Impaled – Spectral Bus from Travis Cook on Vimeo.

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Straight Arrows – ‘Bad Temper’ (mp3)

Early bird catches the worm and the late bird… misses out on mad blog hits.

Would normally give this a miss since it’s been covered extensively elsewhere, but the tune is A) fucking rad and B) the album from which it’s pulled will be released by Rice Is Nice, aka (one of) Australia’s coolest label(s).

Get into it.

www.myspace.com/thestraightarrows

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Kimbra – ‘Settle Down’ (mp3)

We’ve given a lot of love to Washington over the past couple of years, and while we don’t bemoan her success at all I think even her most ardent pre-2010 fans have to admit that Australia is approaching Washington saturation point. I still haven’t figured out what this means for other female ‘indie’ pop singers. Some peeps people will probably be exhausted by librarian-chic, female-led, JJJ-ready tunes, while others are probably still at the point where they’re ready to lap up anything with a female larynx wrapped around it (get yr mind out of the gutter).

I’ve probably already done Kimbra a disservice by conflating her with M-Wash. I was mostly trying to pre-empt a comparison between the two than trying to cement one myself. Both are young, Australian, female pop solo artists, but these are just superficial similarities. Stylistically, they’re quite distinct. Kimbra’s ‘Settle Down’ is a song that is more playful and electronic in its arrangement than anything on ‘I Believe You, Liar,’ and her work on Miami Horror standout ‘I Look To You’ is further proof of her versatility and electro potential.

Enter Penguin Prison, here to lend a hand with catapulting Kimbra onto the dancefloor. I foresee good things for Kimbra – starting with her name on the final announcement for this year’s Meredith festival. Those lucky enough to be going must let me know how she holds up in the ampitheatre.

www.myspace.com/kimbramusic

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Mt Augustus – ’12 Hour Trip’ (mp3)

Ghost Notes – ‘The Nihilist’ (mp3)

After an age kicking around the Brisbane music scene supporting, producing and organising gigs for other bands, Mt Augustus have finally released their debut LP. The self-titled album is out now on Incremental Records and it’s a mostly acoustic affair. Like a more genuine counterpart to the slew of troubadours in this country, Mt August make music that is usually soft and sentimental without being superficial or saccharine. You can grab it here – it’s only being released on vinyl and digitally (no CDs).

Along for the ride are labelmates Ghost Notes, a self-described minimal/post-rock/jazz band who’ve also just released their debut self-titled album. I don’t really know how to describe their album without reducing it to ‘x post-rock band + y jazz-inclined band + spaghetti westerns‘ so I won’t even bother (you can fill in x and y by yourself). I can say that Ghost Notes’ debut is really good and worth getting your hands on – if you can handle songs that generally go for longer than 5 or 6 mins.

Mt Augustus and Ghost Notes both play the Open Bar in Melbourne this Saturday, Oct. 17 with Winternational and Light Lions.

www.myspace.com/mtaugustus

www.myspace.com/ghostnotesband

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Another stepping stone to Tame Impala’s world domination sees Tame Impala dropping by the famous Daytrotter studios. For the uninitiated, this basically involved them doing a live performance of three or fours songs, which then gets uploaded to the Daytrotter website along with a crappy hand-drawn picture of the band and a slightly pretentious musing on their in-studio demeanor. But seriously, Daytrotter do good shit and you should subscribe and get these sets emailed to you weekly – they literally do a new one every day. Points for commitment.

Tame Impala’s set is good in that it sounds a lot like their album only slightly less dense and a bit slower (think they’d smoked up a bit too much before jamming). I know why people don’t like Tame Impala’s live show. I think it works in a small setting but gets lost on a big stage, but these dudes are young and one album in, and as the Daytrotter session proves they have the musical chops to bring it live. If they get a bit more confidence/energy/switch to a certain designer drug, who knows what they can pull off?

It should be stated that their debut album Innerspeaker is still one of the best albums of 2010. If you’ve somehow avoided it until now, this is the day to rectify that.

Go >>>HERE<<< to stream/download the set (as soon as I can log into Daytrotter I’ll get something up, but FYI it seems to be a bit on the fritz. You can still stream it though).

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