Calling All Cars - ‘Animal’

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Calling All Cars is a collision of myriad different styles - lo-fi garage rock (just listen those overdriven single-coil electric guitars), punk rock (there is a definite palpable energy here), pop-punk (inflected within the chorus) and straight-out Aussie pub rock (ummm… I’m stuck for another bracketed sentence).

Real Aussie rock seems imbued into the collective unconscious of Australians; there’s something about a rough’n'ready band sweating it out on a pub stage that automatically endears us towards them. There’s an exploding Aussie rock scene at the moment, although sadly there’s a tendency towards mediocre output on record (Gyroscope, I’m looking at you). Calling All Cars is perhaps slightly generic in their delivery, but their point of difference is a gruff heart that bleeds out onto their music. It’s not blowing me away, but it’s not shunning me either. And it’s certainly an evolution in the right direction. I reckon the chorus would rock live.

I’m intrigued.

http://www.myspace.com/callingallcars

Ohana - ‘When Things Come Alive’

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Australia’s most combustible band, Ohana, return with a brand new track off their forthcoming record. Once again sounding like a band on the edge of completely losing the plot, the Wollongong four piece play their noise-pop with aplomb, echoing alienation with music that pushes and pulls you with visceral energy and infectious rhythms. I can’t wait to hear their new album, and ‘When Things Comes Alive’ is a fantastic teaser track. It’s a wandering progressive number that bookends a My Disco-esque shoegaze mid-section with a frenetic beginning and end, tearing their guitars apart. I think I can hear the blood on the strings.

http://www.myspace.com/ohanamusic

Snowman - ‘Daniel was a Timebomb’

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While the proprietors of Who the Hell argue over the merits of Snowman’s brutal new beast The Horse, The Rat and the Swan, I’m unequivocally on the “Pro” side for this album. It’s fucking menacing, like a Birthday Party record, completely visceral and incendiary; it feels like the four piece won’t just bring down Perth, but the whole of Australia with the force behind these songs. The music darts from raucuous punk rock like that found on ‘Our Mother (She Remembers)’ - what an opener! - to the weighty darkness of ‘The Blood of the Swan’ and ‘She Is Turning into You’, two songs that’d fit almost too well in the soundtrack to Wolf Creek or a similarly evil Aussie outback film.

‘Daniel was a Timebomb’ is the closest thing Snowman have to a pop song on this album - that is, if you like your pop songs to explode your eardrums.

http://www.myspace.com/thesnowmanempire