Track: BATZ – Save Us
With wafts of the heady aroma of eighties greats like Martha and the Muffins or The Passions or even early Duran Duran, the new single from Melbourne’s BATZ is a vibrant poptastic blast of neon-lit joy, bursting with a catchy melody and cheeky refrain. BATZ aka Melbourne artist Chrissie Aubry says of the song: I …
Album Review: Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You really Feel
Courtney Barnett is swiftly developing global adulation for her low-fi, heartfelt vignettes of life which capture with great honesty her trials and tribulations and insecurities. Like Jonathan Richman, there is a brutal honesty in her lyrics that reveal a bruised innocence, backed with an increasingly muscular instrumentation that creeps up and surprises. Themes reflect her …
Track: Barrie – Tal Uno
There is something about melancholic dream pop that seduces me. It is the bittersweet nature of the music – layers of beautiful bright often upbeat sounds sometimes contrasting and at times augmenting wistful downbeat vocal refrains filled with a sense of longing. Barrie, a band based in New York but with an international mix of …
Track: Luvia – For You
With an extraordinary voice that ranges across styles from Elizabeth Fraser from The Cocteau Twins to Mazzy Star vocalist Hope Sandoval, Brighton’s Luvia‘s new track ‘For You’ is a gorgeous, sparse and haunting song filled with reverb and shimmering guitar. The instrumentation is deceptively simple – layers of sound hide behind the delicate guitar providing …
Live: Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds – Brisbane Hotel, Hobart 13/05/2018
The carpets at the iconic Brisbane Hotel in, confusingly, Hobart, Australia are so sticky that if you stand still on the one spot for too long, you might get never get out alive. Luckily, when a band like Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds play, there is no risk of that. Opening with their …
Track: Polychrome – Don’t Be A Stranger (Stranger Things Cover)
Having released one of the stand out singles of the year in ‘Final Kiss’, London duo Polychrome have swerved away from synth-pop towards the dark side: adding vocals and their production skills to a cover of the the theme to the brilliant TV series ‘Stranger Things’. Polychrome takes on the brooding, ominous synth sequencing bubbles …
Track: HOO HAs – Rantra
The HOO HAs‘s new single, ‘Rantra’, is an angry, loud, swaggering beast with a sneer and a studied pose. It’s a brilliant. Think of the shouty side of The Fall mixed with the bluster of Blur and a whole swag bag of attitude mixed with a pint or three of lager and stomping Dr Martens …
Premiere: Stella Diana reveal new track Der Sandmann
Backstreet Mafia is excited to premiere the fantastic new track from Italy’s magnificent Stella Diana. ‘Der Sandmann’ is from Stella Diana’s forthcoming album ’57’ due out on 25 May 2018. The extraordinary tsunami of creativity pouring out of Italy’s rock scene continues unabated with this stellar trio from Naples. They are in the esteemed company …
Track: Soft Science – Sooner/Paris (Double A Side)
Soft Science are continuing to produce some of the most exciting music out of the US West Coast with their unique take on shoegaze/dream pop. Following close on the release of their brilliant double A side singles ‘Undone’ and ‘I Don’t Know Why I Love You’ reviewed by us last month, the band are releasing …
Interview: Tangents plus track and playlist
The new track from Sydney-based band Tangents, ‘Terracotta’ is as hypnotic and mesmerising as their earlier EP ‘Stents and Arteries’ that I reviewed recently. I’m not sure if it’s electronica/dance music for the jazz generation or jazz for the electronica dance generation but somewhere in there there is a kernel of joy for all music …