New Music

WATCH: Tralala Blip – ‘Pub Talk’

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Photographer Kate Holmes

Tralala Blip have been treating audiences around Brisbane and their hometown of Lismore/ The Northern Rivers of NSW for almost a decade. In that time, they’ve continuously developed and refined their sound, and are now one of the most exciting, fun and thoughtful electronic bands in the country. Their first full-length record in five years is Eat My Codes If Your Light Falls, and now they’re inviting the rest of the country into their world of experimental music through the gaze of musicians with disabilities.

Their latest single ‘Pub Talk’ is spare and moody. The bare electronic backing leaves room for the understated tenderness of Lydian Dunbar’s vocal performance to shine – drawing you in to an easy intimacy. The repetitive, almost robotic backing beats slowly ramps up; there’s a feeling of urgency in Dunbar’s message ‘I am same but different/ my heart is full of sounds and light’. The video, directed by Jake Taylor from In Hearts Wake, is appropriately melancholy, glitchy slow-motion accentuate the feeling of alienation, while lingering close ups on the sensory experiences of the world outside Dunbar’s, making a personal longing to connect feel universal. ‘Pub Talk’ takes its time opening up, but then seems to be over all too soon, lingering bitter sweet.

‘Pub Talk’ shows a different side to the band after new-wave disco-dancey first single ‘Facing Monsters’ earlier this year, and it’s clear Eat My Codes… will have plenty to interest all kinds of electronic and experimental music fans. It’s also clear that we’ve been missing out on some amazing music from differently-abled musicians, and there’s a lot more work to be done in making Australia’s music scene open to everyone with something to say.

Eat My Codes If Your Light Falls is out on Laurence English’s Someone Good label today! Buy it here.

If you’re lucky enough to live in Brisbane, Tralala Blip will launch Eat My Codes… at The Foundry on August 1

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LISTEN: Joan Banoit – Clerical

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clerical

Sydney artist Joan Banoit delivers his debut album, Clerical, an impressive collection of splintered art pop full of moody electronics and longing vocals.

Following the hazy, neo soul of his self-titled debut EP, Banoit, assisted by producer Artefact, adds surprising dimension on Clerical pushing the music beyond any easily identifiable genre.

Single, ‘Bet Me’ is a masterful piece of songwriting, the rich arrangement drawing comparisons to genre pushers These New Puritans. Brass flourishes are punctuated by military drum bursts before opening up to make way for the devastating hook, an aching commentary on the internal struggles of a long distance relationship.

The complexity and minute attention to detail make the album even more beautifully difficult to pigeon hole. But this is pop music at its core, albeit not in the traditional sense. There are memorable vocal melodies and catchy rhythms but the treatments are intriguingly fractured, cloaking the more immediate moments in a haze of esoteric electronic soundscape.

Clerical is an arresting, multi-layered album that is as equally enjoyable listening to on the surface as it is going for a deep dive. Available now through Lazy Thinking Records.

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LISTEN: Angie – The Underling LP

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Angie

Angie’s 2013 solo record Turning was one of the first things I wrote about for this site, and her 2017 piano album Shyness is one of my favourite Australian albums of all time. So my first hearing of The Underling’s first single, ‘Blood on My Eyes’ with its ROCK beat and its simple riff, took a little change of expectations. But maybe this was on purpose – a classic rock song to throw off all the nerds that just wanted more fancy piano. Because there’s nothing simplistic about the rest of The Underling.

The Underling illustrates the total uselessness of genres, the way Angie’s refusal to be restrained. Sometimes it’s a heavy sounding noise record, vocals are dredged up, with effort, from under layers of guitar and effects. Then ‘Your Style’ has a rhythm guitar like The Go-Betweens or something, totally out of place and easy breezy but still somehow it works. ‘Your Style’ is followed by ‘A Century of All This’; the biggest downer of the record, with its droning guitars and droning vocals and noise like a plane taking off.

You hear a song like ‘A Century of All This’, and you think there’s no way this is gonna turn into something easy or fun. But while The Underling sounds like a struggle a lot of the time, sometimes it’sounds like victory, like on ‘This House (Athens Reprise)’, a reprise of the track of the same name from Shyness. Where it once was a haunting piano ballad, a quiet statement of defiance, on the reprise the power of a full band is let loose and becomes less about desperately trying to ‘move on’ on more like fighting words; ‘gotta get it, before it gets to me’.

More in feeling than sound, The Underling seems to reference back to some of the stuff from Turning (which is, somehow, 6 years old now) but with all the growth and experimentation that’s happened in the period clearly audible. With her uncompromising attitude and classic rock sense with a noisy, experimental edge, Angie makes guitar rock seem like something worthwhile to invest time in, rather than just background noise to a night out. Something worth loving. And, at least when she’s doing it, it definitely is.

Buy The Underling on bandcamp here

Angie’s touring Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne and you can find out more about that on wonderful Facebook

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LISTEN: Brick Brick – Chip 4 Chip EP

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Brick Brick

Brisbane forever favourites Bent may have stopped playing a couple of years ago, but singer and multi-instrumentalist Heidi Cutlack has given us plenty of good music since then. Her solo project Scaredy Snake was breathy, stripped back pop, and now, with bassist Phoebe BMX (from Come Die In Queensland, who released a truly terrifying tape early this year) and Matt Kennedy (from Kitchen’s Floor, of ‘pissing people off at The Sydney Opera House’) on drums, Brick Brick is Cutlack moving away from cuteness or naivety into something more disillusioned, heavier and ah, more rock.

Cutlack might be channelling a bit of Kennedy’s downer-than-you lyricism in the opening track’s drawled, ‘everyone is boooooooored / everyone is saaaaaaaaaaaaad’, but then, that song’s called ‘Sooky’ so you know it’s more tongue-in-cheek than that. ‘Sooky’ is that belligerent brat we can all be, grumpy for no reason, picking fights with whoever, and it’s making no apologies – a ratbag song and a fun listen.

Cutlack’s voice on this EP is strong and expressive – pouting then powerful, sinister on ‘Fill Me Up’, then plaintive and desperate on ‘Houseshow Song’. ‘Houseshow Song’ is chaotic and catchy – one you could imagine shaking some floorboards and inviting noise complaints. Anyone coming to this record looking for Bent’s wonky pop savant won’t find it, but there’s plenty to like in this collaboration of Cutlack’s bare-bones poetry with BMX and Kennedy’s tough-as rhythm section. The bass especially fills up all the cracks with a deep kind of muck. Combine that with the thick, uncomfortable, production, Chip 4 Chip is the kind of tape that makes me pine for Brisbane.

You buy a digital download or cassette with secret track from Eternal Soundcheck.

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LISTEN: Sweet Whirl – Love Songs & Poetry EP

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Sweet Qhirl

From the first golden second of Love Songs & Poetry, I’m blissfully drowning in sweet melancholy, nostalgia, romance. I put it on in the background at work but it’s too beautiful to focus on anything else. Esther Edquist’s voice is so rich it’s rude. Like how dare someone sound so good when they’re saying ‘I don’t wanna be your girlfriend / I just want someone to hold you / give you all the love I told you you deserve’. Oof. That’s from the very first track, ‘Girlfriend’, and while that song hints at an irony in the EP’s title (also see: ‘some of us are made for coupling and suffering / but that girl ain’t me’), these are definitely love songs. More in how they feel than what they say – the way they build and shimmer and fill up your whole heart. The goddamn strings. The low-key intricately lovely base and guitar. Fucked me up.

Love Songs & Poetry is Edquist’s first release on Chapter Music, and it’s a perfect fit for their clever Aussie pop vibe. I loved O.K. Permanent Wave, that moody, intimate LP Sweet Whirl put out in 2016, but this release is so good in such a different way. Can’t believe I put off listening to it for a few days cuz I thought the first single ‘Strange News’ was a little too cute at first. I was wrong! It’s a gently swinging country-tinged gem, looking up under its eyelashes asking for a kiss, while warning you all the reasons you shouldn’t give in; ‘I’m not the kind you should be taking home / drunk and lingering’. That’s a trend across lyrics on this EP; they’re resigned, knowing, sometimes cynical, warning you to keep your eyes open the whole time the music is begging you to just let go. The music wins every time.

These are six songs for people who wish that Sharon Van Etten had could have resisted the synth a bit longer (… even if they’re still insisting they love the new direction). It’s emotionally generous; Edquist gives us plenty of material to get to know her, to relate to her hopes and mistakes. Final track ‘Rubber Heart’ is a perfect evocation of that ‘oh no, I’ve kissed every single person in this town’ feeling, ‘each ghost has a street name, each corner a voice I once knew’. It’s a movin’ on song, skipping along, shaking off the cold water ready to start again. Edquist, like the rest of us, is unable to resist the pull of another big, messy splash.

You can buy a tape or download this EP here

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LISTEN: Lucy Roleff – Sometimes Do

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LucyRoleff

Melbourne’s Lucy Roleff returns with another taste from her forthcoming album, Left Open in a Room, following on from whimsical lead single, ‘A Woman’s Worth’.

Roleff’s enduring, folk-leaning music draws comparisons with understated artists such as Vashti Bunyan and Nick Drake. Its ageless beauty is imbued with a sense of history despite its current context, even Roleff herself at times appearing to have emerged from some mystical time capsule. This is not to say the music is in any way passé, more so that it is impervious to the fleeting (and ultimately forgettable) tendencies of some contemporary music

The songwriting on the new album is refined and confident, exposing a vulnerability in the lyrics, adding to her already rich musical universe. Latest single, ‘Sometimes Do’, exemplifies this vulnerability; a delicate harp arpeggio cradling Roleff’s exquisitely elegant vocals that appear suspended atop the sparse, pin-drop arrangements.

Left Open in a Room is due out May 15 on Lost & Lonesome, Little Lake Records (au) and Oscarson Records (eu). If you’re in Melbourne, you can catch Lucy launching the album on May 26th at Eastmint, Northcote with supports from Mindy Meng Wang & Genevieve Fry, and Pascal Babare & Band. Full event details here.

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LISTEN: Slumber – Body Crush EP

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slumber

‘Body Crush is Tasmanian solo artist Slumber’s first release; a collection of 2 years’ worth of work, made up of snippets, found sounds, and drowsily beautiful vocals from Tasmania’s Amber Perez. Perez also plays guitar in ferocious Hobart pop punk band Slag Queens, but with Slumber she’s turned her attention inward, making, in her words ‘dank sadgirl bops’ (and you’ll find no better description).

This EP came to me kind of like a balm against that constant low-level anxiety that we’re all getting, if not used to, bored of. Do you ever feel like there’s so much fucken blah blah everybody talking constantly out there that you struggle to even listen to music with lyrics in it? You’re like, oh god, please shut the fuck up? I do. But this EP is like restorative good company, like an afternoon spritz, like a friend who’s just as happy to spend the afternoon watching Seinfeld as talking deep stuff.

Dealing abstractly with ideas of romance with the self and others, the takeaway from these songs seems to be a kind of inner peace that comes from looking back at the past with a kind of forgiveness. With the inevitable backslide into wistful regret in ‘let u go’, a pretty highlight that brings glitches, birdsong and mumbled vocals together for a deep wallowing sigh. It’s the quiet acceptance in lines like ‘we are both the seas that we drown in / we are both our only way out’ that makes this EP more than breezy listening bleep bloops and more like a real document of progress and growth.

‘sick dank track #5’ is just what it says… kinda. An optimistic dance song to bring on the dawn ‘I’m getting better at being good to myself / I think I’m almost ready to let things work out’, Perez sings with a half-smile, multi-tracked vocals bringing the sense of euphoria to the only song I wanna hear if I ever go to the club again.

Listen to, or even buy (!) Body Crush on Bandcamp.

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