Tagged By New Music

INTRODUCING: Beef Jerk

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More Australian than getting workers comp for six months after spraining your ankle and then spending it all on Winnie Blues and schoeys at your local. Born in Sydney’s incestuous inner west, Beef Jerk drop the ‘y’ from everyone’s favourite chewy strap of cow, and induce a feeling of catchy ambivalence in whoever is lucky enough to be near the stereo when their music comes on.

They’ve just released their debut LP, Tragic, which is packed with dark humour, a constant backbone of off-kilter strumming and the occasional sax-breakdown courtesy of Millie Hall (Destiny 3000, Bridezilla). The songs come thick and fast, and at 15 tracks there was the possibility the music would become stale. However, Beef Jerk’s consistency is remarkable as they unnervingly inject their deranged, saturated pop sensibility into songs with titles like ‘Footy’, ‘The Last Chiko Roll’ and ‘Stay At Home Dads’.

Beef Jerk are destined to become a layman’s new favourite – their music is lackadaisical, but naturally so. There’s no force to it, the tunes oozing and grunting their way from Jack Lee and Mikey Branson’s mouths and fingers as naturally as a foreman yelling, “Tools down, boys!”.  Armed with just wry humour and a sweet but slightly out of tune guitar, Beef Jerk are gonna be on high rotation for a while.

Beef Jerk have some gigs coming up in Sydney and Melbourne:

12 June – Grace Darling Hotel, Melbourne w/ Black Vacation, Chook Race, and Gentlemane (RSVP on Facebook)

15 June – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, supporting Cool Sounds

27 June – Hermann’s Bar, Sydney

10 July – Brighton Up Bar, Sydney

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INTRODUCING: Twelve Point Buck

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Twelve Point Buck have been making beautiful fuzz rock for a hot minute now, but 2015 has seen them develop into a fully-fledged four piece, putting out their first EP Boris this March.

It was a long wait (they had me drooling over their sad-girl shoegaze track ‘Twenty Two’ for almost a year in the interim), but Boris made me forget the delay entirely. The Blue Mountain outfit’s debut EP is essentially what would happen if Kim Deal and Billy Corgan were mashed into one person and that person’s mouth made melodic noise whenever it opened, like one of those perpetually-gaping clowns at a fair. In fact Twelve Point Buck’s music has that kind of lingering, ethereal air that would make it the perfect soundtrack for exploring dilapidated showgrounds.

Despite delighting in the melancholy of it all, I was pleasantly surprised at the EP’s sunny turn when ‘Callie’ popped up two tracks in. I can’t tell if it’s the song’s title or the bright, jangly guitar line and almost mindless repetition that makes me think of a Californian road trip. The off-kilter vocal arrangement creates the dynamic the song needs to stop it from melting into the sound wall that comes with gals-just-wanna-make-a-pop-song (and have fun) guitar pop. It’s also a necessary break from the spread of luscious distortion and droning vocals that fills the remainder of the EP. (You don’t want to spend ALL of your time wandering around a terrifying showground, do you?)

Head along to the Oxford Art Factory on May 30th for the EP release party.

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PREMIERE: Head Clouds – ‘New Light of the Equinox’

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Head Clouds

There’s a place for articulate, indie pop music and the best-of is filed somewhere between the Decemberists and whatever happened during the blow-organ resurgence that was 2005.

If there’s one decent deed you do today to bring it back, give Head Clouds’ earlier EP, Up On Hellfire Ridge, a listen. It’s a sample of the band’s dreamy lyricsm that’s a bit early Augie March and akin to what Midlake might have penned after a weekend bender.

The first track from their new EP, ‘New Light of the Equinox’ is about “new perspectives”, which the band comparatively strings up against guitar flourishes and Jayke Maddison’s pastoral croon: “You rode me into the dust, I was a bull in the new light of the equinox”. 

All the machinations in the first part of the track are comfy, plodding on as you would with the ebb and flow of Satisfactory Indie Rock Song. The guitar syncs with the vocal; the vocal marries the guitar in the verse. This is until the bridge where the track scatters out into an instrumental waltz and the guys start waxing lyrical about telecomms et al. Head Clouds’ sound is incredibly polished for a band who’ve been releasing stuff independently. You get the feeling that the slight cowbell might be abandoned for some crash symbols, Win Butler style at any moment. Lucky, the band are good at showing restraint in song and form – and it’s working in their favour.

Head Clouds are releasing their new EP very, very soon. More info below:

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LISTEN: Angie – ‘Out of Age’

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Angie

It’s always kind of bugged me that not being able to really sing has never stopped dude musicians from giving it a crack, and being liked. Most of female-fronted bands, even the most underground, that get any attention have a ‘pretty’ voice front and centre. There’s nothing pretty about the vocal on Sydney artist and musician Angie’s newest single ‘Out of Age’. It’s monotone, almost tuneless and rubs up against the guitar line like steel wool. It’s attitude that’s important here – a stretched kind of desperation that keeps you on edge for the whole song, an uneasy balance between drone and hook.

‘Power Pop’ were never words I thought I’d be ascribing to Angie after her excellently dark and dogged first EP Turning, but she herself calls this a track “a pop tribute”, With a guitar line as huge as the one here, the shoe fits. But that guitar just repeats over and over – never breaking into the big sunny chorus that you’d expect from someone other than Angie. It drills itself into your head and stays there.

‘Out of Age’ is the first single off Angie’s forthcoming record Free Agent, due out later via Rice Is Nice this year. And an exciting one, because it tells us that anything could happen – throw your expectations in the trash.

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PREMIERE: Jarrow – ‘Last Monday’

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The name of Dan Oke’s first EP is Legitimate; a credible slice of reassurance every musician needs to know that their music is Out There and in the ears and hearts of the people Dan Oke makes music under the guise of Jarrow. He recorded the EP between his home in Footscray and a beach house in Anglesea. Oke sent us an email last week with this tune, and I’ve spent the rest of the week over his excellent older material flavouring the best-of scuzzy drum machines and Connan Mockasin’s Caramel.

Here’s the internet debut of ‘Last Monday’, so feel spesh everyone. It’s a lo-fi, upbeat strummer, with the treble switch turned up somewhere between Snowy Nasdaq and the dust balls gathering at Fergus Miller’s feet.

According to Oke, the track is about routine consequences of routine drinking on a school night, presumably penned around the Bermuda Triangle of venues (Tote, Gaso, Old Bar).

Support Jarrow by purchasing his debut EP, Legitimate, available on Bandcamp from the 14th of May.

 

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LABEL PROFILE: Breathlessness

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Breathlessness is a tiny, close-knit label formed in Hoppers Crossing, a suburb on Melbourne’s outer edges, where the label’s founders and current signees grew up. (A number of them even lived on the same street). The first Breathlessness releases appeared last year – Vulpix’s debut EP, Swarms, and Finx by Splendidid – and the label’s third outing, the self-titled EP from psychedelic duo Sun Bazel, came out in March.

The collective consists of only five or six core players: Jordan Barrow of Vulpix moonlights as a guitarist in Zac Terry’s band, Splendidid. Daniel Prieto, who plays bass in both oufits, is releasing his debut EP as DPDP (titled Afterglow) through Breathlessness in June. And last summer two members of the Splendidid live band, Jack Foy and Harry Hayes, wrote the material that became Sun Bazel’s first release.

Both Vulpix and Splendidid make sweet-sounding dream pop that could have come from a four-track abandoned circa 2008 and unearthed in someone’s basement like forgotten treasure. Built from rippling arpeggios and close, fuzzy drums, these tunes are heavy on the reverb and not afraid to enter the red. Sun Bazel’s psych-pop, meanwhile, circles woozily, composed of deceptively simple lines of detuned synths and phasered guitar.

Breathlessness is hosting a label party at the Shadow Electric Bandroom this Sunday, 26 April. (Stay calm – they’ve explained everything you need to know in this easy-to-follow tutorial). Splendidid and Vulpix will be performing live, and there’ll be DJ sets from Sun Bazel and DPDP. Erik Scerba, who mixed and mastered most of the label’s releases, will also be DJing. Scerba makes Tumblr-fied hip hop beats as Yoshimitsu, his sounds skipping from cloud rap to glo-fi and warped muzak. Don’t miss it.

Tickets to Sunday’s show are available through the Shadow Electric website.

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Oh Mercy – ‘Sandy’

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The amount of music floating around on the internet right now is verging on the incredible. About 12 hours of audio are uploaded to Soundcloud every minute. For the consumer, this is a pretty neat deal – there really does seem to be something out there for everyone these days. Plus we’re seeing unprecedented opportunities for collaboration and cross-fertilisation.

For musicians trying to pursue a career in pop music, however, there’s a serious problem: namely, how to get the attention of bloggers, DJs and other industry types who are, more often than not, clique-y and fatigued from sifting through reams of one-sheets for bands they don’t really care about.

Marketing, I’d like to think, can only get you so far. More importantly, you’ve gotta be able to write and produce a track that cuts through pretty much immediately. Of course, this approach is kind of a blunt instrument. There are always going to be songs that deepen significantly over repeated listens, and bands with more experimental or cerebral aims. For music like that, isolating a core audience is probably the most important first step. To really break through, though, something more dramatic is going to be required.

In this new 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. Kicking things off is Jackson Rumble (in a step up from his last attempt to review a track without having listened to it at all), with his take on ‘Sandy’, the latest release from Melbourne band Oh Mercy.

………

Straight outta the blocks you can tell this comes from a place that worships at the altar of respectable modern rock tropes. Driving kraut rhythms, tremolo’d guitar, analog strings, girl’s name for a title. And whatshisname of Oh Mercy has a timbre to his voice and a way with a lyric that actually makes you listen to what he’s saying. Two lines in and I kind of want to know what’s going on, and why this chap is so terrified of being alone.

There’s tension here, as we wait for the War on Drugs-style, head-out-the-car-window, flying-down-the-highway payoff. As he beckons her to “come closer”, begs her not to leave – the rhythm motoring along – I’m waiting for the payoff: in which Sandy either walks out the door or crumples into his arms.

But I feel like the song takes a mis-step in the bridge, applying the brakes rather than launching into the stratosphere, as the best Springsteen-esque guitar chuggers tend to. Nevertheless, it kept me hanging on, eager to know how it would end. And in fairness, the song resolves like most things in life probably do – with a wheeze rather than a bang.

You can catch Oh Mercy playing the Newtown Social Club in Sydney this Wednesday, 22 April, and Melbourne’s Gasometer Hotel on Saturday 25 April.

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