Tagged By New Music

INTRODUCING: Pronto

, , No Comment

Pronto Press Photo

Hold your bloody horses, garage fans. Forget about that sick new band you saw on the weekend, cos I’ve found your new favourite act: Pronto. Of course these guys are out of Melbourne, and obviously they’ve been living on a steady diet of Eddy Current Suppression Ring. They’re fast, furious and insanely addictive.

Pronto, like many of Australia’s best garage punk bands, have helped an old genre grow up a little bit. They take early 70’s proto-punk, like The Troggs, and brutalise it into something that Hozac Records would eat slugs to put out. On their debut album, When You’re Gone, Pronto speed through their 11 tracks with frightening ferocity. They do bands like Dead Farmers, Royal Headache and Straight Arrows proud.

Between the gale force guitar solos, the crunchy, hollow vocals and stampeding drums, there are a few particular standouts. If you’re any sort of fan of loud, fun guitar music, you’ll love songs like ‘Soldier’, ‘Red Flag’ and ‘Cry’. These tracks will blow down your house like it’s a greedy wolf and you are soon-to-be bacon. Best played loud.

Bandcamp / Soundcloud

Read Post →

WATCH: Multiple Man – ‘Persuasion’

, , No Comment

Squaready20141007183850

The first time I heard Brisbane two-piece Multiple Man for real was at this year’s Shedstock festival in June (which is a travesty considering how often they play in my town). I had ‘fallen asleep’ early and was lying in my tent when outside started what sounded like the most insanely fun party ever. The music was violent and dark but driven by these bouncy synths that made everything so bloody danceable.

I wanted to get up and throw my body around and yell for no reason but being too ‘sleepy’ I just lay on my half-deflated blow up mattress and had a fucken great time throwing shapes internally.

‘Persuasion’ is Multiple Man’s newest single, and comes with a suitably dark, Euro-electro inspired video by Alex Dunlop. The title track from their forthcoming EP, it sounds like someone found everything good about the 80s and put it in a dance song, when what they kinda wanted to do was tell you to go fuck yourself. It’s sexy, aggressive, fun and really, really cool.

Facebook / Bandcamp

Read Post →

PREMIERE: Gordi – ‘Nothing’s As It Seems’

, , No Comment

Gordi_1

Gordi is vocalist Sophie Payten. ‘Nothing’s As It Seems’ is the new track from the Sydney based musician / medicine student. ‘Nothing’s As It Seems’ might appear polished, but if not for the hushed instrumental, it could easily carry on just entirely carried by Gordi’s vocal. Lyrically, it’s not overly ambitious – but Gordi’s pastoral nuances don’t call for it. The low-key arrangement keeps the folktronica twee-preening to a minimum. The track is still ethereal without being flail-your-guts-out emotive. (PS. I’ll be waiting for the Enya mash-up.)

Gordi plays Spring St Social in Bondi tonight and Goodgod Small Club on Wednesday October 22. Head here for a full run of show dates.

Facebook / Twitter

Read Post →

LISTEN: The Frowning Clouds – Legalize Everything

, , No Comment

Squaready20140930154526

The Frowning Clouds latest release, Legalize Everything, offers psych vibes that’d be welcome in the UFO Club and a reflective and varied approach to production.

Sonic tweaks over the album’s 12 tracks highlight a number of different elements as the sounds move from clarity to ambiguity. Tracks like ‘Dead Growth’ are reduced to a handful of haphazardly mixed instruments, and the results are more like a bootlegger’s eavesdropping than a studio product. Meanwhile other songs, like the excellently titled ‘Sun Particle Mind Body Experience’, bring to mind your favourite 60s psych-pop bands with an extra helping of grit.

It’s refreshing to genuinely have no idea what’s coming next, and while consistent in vibe, the album lays down an impressive variety of tunes. There’s even a bit of kazoo!

Charming and addictive, Legalize Everything is well worth a spin. Pick it up now on Rice Is Nice, and hear lead single ‘Move It’ below.

Facebook / Bandcamp / BUY

Read Post →

INTRODUCING: Yes I’m Leaving

, , No Comment

yilsl

For those who are punk-inclined, I have found you a Fugazi. In a context where everything else resembles an actual fugazi (variously defined as a fake or a fucked up situation), Yes I’m Leaving is the brutal and efficient slap of sense that Australia has been missing. The new album is direct, punchy, cathartic and chaotic; it feels like a bandaid being ripped from the hairiest part of your skin, over and over again.

On their fourth LP, Slow Release (which is being released via Homeless Records), Sydney’s holy trinity sound dirtier, scummier and more savage than ever before. The production values have been extensively upgraded, with every scrape and bellow of their instruments being picked up and intensified. But rather than creating some sort of squeaky clean parody of themselves, the studio treatment has ensured that Yes I’m Leaving’s usual maelstrom is even more pronounced.

Opening track ‘One’ is especially fearsome. As all members link into a staccato pounding of the hooves, stampeding doom seems an impending reality. The finale is sheer ferocity, frontman Billy Burke screaming ‘One!’ in his banshee cry with enough force to rip the hair right off your head. Latest single “Fear” has a similar effect. It’s basically an expanded Drive Like Jehu track that’s been embellished with a particularly foreboding melody and a strong Australian accent.

Yes I’m Leaving may be more cynical than a Scrooge who’s been through the Vietnam War and create a more gnashing atmosphere than a Tasmanian Devil going through withdrawals, but that’s exactly what separates them from the rest and places them in a higher domain of punk music. Slow Release is an essential listen for anyone who likes to get their heads thumped in by carnivorous punk. And for those who haven’t had the pleasure of such an experience? The perfect introduction.

Facebook / Bandcamp / BUY

Read Post →

LISTEN: North Arm – ‘Lately’

, , No Comment

Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH

North Arm are a Sydney-via-Newcastle-via-North Arm four piece who have been producing spaced-out folktronica since early 2013. The band’s new single, ‘Lately’, is an ethereal combination of front man Roderick Smith’s whispery vocals and a finely picked acoustic guitar, which floats atop a crescendo of percussion and synths.

‘Lately’ is decidedly more folk than the spread of lo-fi dream pop tunes on debut EP Thought Lines. I’m not sure which I prefer, but the production is ace all round – preventing the finely layered atmosphere of ‘Lately’ from turning into the ‘omg we get it’ overwrought boredom of some dream pop outfits.

The careful manipulation of traditional rock song structures gives North Arm an edge that I’m keen to hear more of on their next EP, Life Cycles, due out later this year.

Facebook / Bandcamp

Read Post →

PREMIERE: Hollow Everdaze – ‘Ominous’ video

, , No Comment

Hollow Everdaze

Adding a string section to your lineup might make you Warren Ellis – or a damp Celtic jam band. Hollow Everdaze recently added violinist Myles Anderson to the bill. Spiccato never hurt nobody, but I went along to a gig last week with doubt cloud looming. Watching a garage band with a string section is like running IRL with 3D glasses – many dimensions, cinematic feelings, general anxiety. As it goes, the violin did end up being a decent match for the the band’s starry-eyed psych laments, and even the slight jazzy breaks they’ve been spotting lately.

Below is Hollow Everdaze’s new clip for ‘Ominous’, a new track off their upcoming EP. There’s a church jam session and minor participation in other brooding activities the track title commands, like patting farm animals and wheelbarrowing down slopes.

YouTube Preview Image

Hollow Everdaze are launching ‘Ominous’ on Saturday, 4th of October at Boney with supports from Contrast and Peter Bibby and His Bottles of Confidence.

Facebook / Soundcloud / BUY

Read Post →