Track: Silverbacks – Muted Gold
Quirky and bubbly, angular and slightly off-kilter: Dublin’s Silverbacks have released a fantastic new single ‘Muted Gold’ that is eccentric, bold and highly enjoyable. Think of Talking Heads (maybe more Tom Tom Club), Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend with the slightly unhinged singing and idiosyncratic guitar picking style that I always associate with the late …
Premiere: Unruly Girls – Black Love (Video)
Backseat Mafia is very honoured to premiere today the phenomenal new video by Italian band Unruly Girls. ‘Black Love’ is off their recently released album ‘Epidemic’ – an album I rated a 9.1 out of 10 – and is a typically unhinged, anarchic and thundering production, yet is antithetically tinged with a sense of poignancy. …
Track: The Wednesday Night – The Perfect Scene
There’s been an awful lot of good stuff coming out recently – maybe it’s something to do with the age of isolation – but the new single ‘The Perfect Scene’ by Sydney’s The Wednesday Night has ever so gently nudged its way forward to take its place as one of my favourite releases of the …
Track: Kidsmoke – The Bluest You
With a spectral guitar intro and the yearning vocals, Kidsmoke’s new single ‘The Bluest You’ is a dreamy smooth pleasure of the highest degree. There is a celestial shimmer to the song – it shines and sparkles while simultaneously creating an air of pastoral melancholia. An air that clearly reflects its lyrical themes, of which …
Premiere: Marveline – Savoury-Toothed Tiger
Marveline is basically the solo work of Pete Marley – a stalwart of the Sydney music scene and go-to bass player for a number of seminal local acts including The Nature Strip (see our review of their last album) and Fallon Cush. We are honored to prmiere Marveline’s debut album – amusingly titled ‘Savoury-Toothed Tiger’ …
Track: Naipia – Lonely
The new single from Brighton’s Naipia is a pure indie pop gem filled with yearning and emotion. ‘Lonely’ is undoubtably classic anthemic indie rock that is differentiated by its thoughtful structure and inherent stadium-filling presence. Celestial choruses, melodies, thoughtful lyrics and driving guitars all combine to make this a fantastic debut. The accompanying video captures …
Track: Tobi Tobi – Cast Away
It’s often the spaces in between the instruments in a song that create an inedible atmosphere, and the new single by Melbournian duo Tobi Tobi proves this fact. Simple instrumentation (double bass, piano, guitar), so sparse as to be almost undetectable, ripple beneath singer Renee Anderson’s extraordinary vocals and a haunting, heartbreakingly melancholic melody. There …
Track: Sunburn – Jump the Gun
Sunburn are part of an astonishing cluster of indie bands that are bursting out of Dublin at the moment. Indeed, Sunburn have a melodic and passionate creativity that makes them as endearing and enduring as fellow Dublinites Fontaines D.C., The Murder Capital and Just Mustard, with more of a pop flavour. The shard-like guitars of …
See: Empathy Test – Monsters
Empathy Test‘s single Monsters, reviewed here last month, is a statuesque, cinematic synth blast: anthemic and haunting – and it is fitting that the band has released an incredible video to accompany the single. Directed by Calum Macdiarmid and funded by fans, it is a stunning visual piece that perfectly matches the mystery and awe …
Track: Eskobar – Roller Coaster
The cooler-than-thou retro-modern indie Kings from Sweden, Eskobar, are back to follow up their earlier single ‘When Your Heroes Fall’ which we reviewed last month. ‘Roller Coaster’ provides indelible proof that we are dealing with a serious bunch of musicians with an inherent talent for performance and melody. ‘Roller Coaster’ has all the insouciant swagger …