The Protectors - All Systems Go (mp3)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Coming out from Newcastle, two hours north of Sydney, four piece The Protectors are a new addition to the rock scene that always seems overcrowded, but they somehow managed to present a refreshing take and bring new energy to the tried and through format. This song is all summer fun times.

www.myspace.com/theprotectors

Charge Group - ‘Lullaby for the Apocalypse’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Only on a rare occasion does an album affect you so profoundly you’re spouting its credentials to all and sundry, including that crazy lady on the street who claims she’s a Nazi and should have “punched her fucking teeth out.”

Whoops, I digress.

What I’m trying to say is relatively simple: Charge Group’s debut record, Escaping Mankind, is brilliant. No two ways about it. From the ashes of the much-loved Newcastle outfit Purplene, Matt Blackman and co. have taken their time, slowly fashioning an album of 10 gorgeous tracks that hark back to the guitar rock of ’90s indie music, evoking images of Swervedriver, June of 44, Sonic Youth in their mellower moments and Fugazi. The inclusion of Jason Tampake on violin - who plays in the wonderful Firekites - lends the music a distinct colonial feel, which fits somewhere between The Drones’ instinctively Australian poetic incantations and The Dirty Three’s brooding indie-noir.

It’s refreshing to hear such an anachronistic sound, reminiscent of days when Something for Kate was releasing albums like Beautiful Sharks and How Machines Work was one of the most exciting bands on the Australian musical landscape.

Even though CERN’s Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator didn’t eviscerate the world yesterday, ‘Lullaby for the Apocalypse’ still feels like a fitting choice.

If you’re in a reading mood, one of my favourite local music writers, Emmy Hennings, wrote a fantastic piece on Charge Group for Mess + Noise entitled ‘A Process In The Weather of the Heart’. (Where the hell did she get that title from??) Read it here.

http://www.myspace.com/chargegroupmusic

Calling All Cars - ‘Animal’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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

British India - ‘I Said I’m Sorry’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I’ve never got British India. Are they a hard rock band, or an indie band? Their popularity seems to have exploded, despite the fact they’ve never released anything that’s actually worthy of such grand acclaim. I guess there’s something to say for a catchy chorus. ‘I Said I’m Sorry’ is OK, but there’s nothing all that exciting about this song. Sure, they’re aping the Clash in the chorus, but aside from that the song is just one big plateau.

http://www.myspace.com/britishindia

Mammal - ‘Smash the Pinata’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mammal are moving further and further away from Ezekiel Ox’s former band Full Scale and finding a sound of their own, which sits somewhere in the middle of a triange of metal, funk and alt. rock. The typically loquacious Ox is again preaching to the masses, but he’s the ultimate frontman: his effusive personality and unbridled energy which is the key to Mammal’s blistering live shows is captured perfectly on their new tune, ‘Smash the Pinata’. It’s not as simplistically catchy as their other material, but it’s still got that stomping beat.

http://www.myspace.com/mammaltheband

You Am I - ‘Dilettantes’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

A gift courtesy of Andy Kent from the band, this is the brand new song from arguably one of Australia’s greatest rock bands, You Am I. ‘Dilettantes’ is the title track from the band’s forthcoming album, set for release in September. Gone is the dirty, garage rock sound that this band is so renowned for; in its place is a beautifully country-inflected tone, similar to what their iconic frontman Tim Rogers was doing with his solo material. A lush orchestration really lends this song a sense of melancholia, and it’s a fitting backdrop to Rogers’ always-engaging lyrics.

http://www.myspace.com/youamiofficial

Nucleus - ‘Dissolved Girl’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sound familiar? Sydney’s proponents of prog-rock goodness, with a penchant for Tool and Dream Theater, Nucleus have lent their hand to a reinterpretation of Massive Attack’s ‘Dissolved Girl’ on the band’s second EP, Circumvolution. The whole EP was an in-house affair: the band’s guitarist Dylan Mitrovich produced, engineered, mixed and mastered the six tracks, and for a home studio the quality of the Circumvolution EP is top notch. And this isn’t a bad cover, either!

Sydney-siders, Nucleus are launching Circumvolution at the Excelsior Hotel in Surry Hills on Saturday August 9 if you feel like some heavy guitars for your post-Splendour weekend.

http://www.myspace.com/nucleusband

Birds of Tokyo - ‘Broken Bones’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Although I haven’t really settled down and got cosy with Birds of Tokyo’s new disc Universes just yet, my initial reaction to the album is that it’s a fairly hit-and-miss affair. Having said that, ‘Broken Bones’, which is essentially the opening track on the disc (there’s an ambient intro song), is a wicked tune, and the best track on Universes.

http://www.myspace.com/birdsoftokyo

Snowman - ‘Daniel was a Timebomb’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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