News: The Church announce ‘The Singles Tour: A Career Retrospective’ with Australian dates in November.
In exciting news, one of Australia’s greatest music exports, The Church, has just announced an Australian tour that will feature all their singles: a stunning retrospective of their storied career. We have covered this band extensively here at Backseat Mafia and can attest that in their current form, they have never played better. The creativity …
News: Dark Mofo has risen again – a full return of the iconic Winter Festival including exclusive gigs from The Horrors, Lisa Gerrard and Crime & The City Solution
The gnarled bony fingers of the corpse of the ubiquitous Dark Mofo Festival have gently shoved aside the dusty lid of its sarcophagus and has sat bolt upright as the details of the program for 2025 have been released. The Nosferatu of antipodean winter festivals – the original and in my humble opinion the best …
Album Review: Release the bats – Infinity Broke are rampaging through the cities with their excoriating, thrilling new album ‘This Masthead’.
It’s hard coming up with enough new superlatives to accurately describe an Infinity Broke album. Inevitably epithets and phrases such as contained chaos come to mind, along with freight trains careering out of control, sonic explosions, disturbances in the cosmos, mind shattering shards of metal. It’s enough to suggest that you should ensure any sound …
Track: The iconic Sparks release new single ‘Drowned In A Sea of Tears’ ahead of new album ‘MAD!’.
The inscrutable and enigmatic brothers Ron and Russell Mael return as the iconic Sparks with their new single ‘Drowned in A Sea of Tears’. The release precedes their new album ‘MAD!’ due out in May. The track is poignantly beautiful with a motorik thrum and yearning vocals. Dappling instrumentation underlies the searing melodies, typically enigmatic …
News: ‘Achilles Past’ – the black watch announce new double album ‘For All The World’ with the über cool single ‘Achilles Past’.
John Andrew Frederick, the genius behind the iconic dream pop exponents the black watch, manages to match a preternatural prolificacy in the sheer volume of his songwriting with an accompanied brilliance and quality that is never diluted. He has announced the release of a double album (a symbol of his productivity) entitled ‘For All The …
Track: The legendary The Bats swoop in with the shimmering fuzzy new single ‘Loline’, as a new record shapes up.
Surely the sun shines brighter the day we are blessed with another single from the living legends The Bats, one of the finest exports from Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud. It’s been five long years since their last album and The Bats have today released their new single ‘Loline’, while in the …
Premiere: The irrepressible Bryan Estepa exclusively unveils the pure pop/soul glitter of double A-side singles ‘Version Of Me’ and ‘Smile Away’.
Bryan Estepa has an ear for the sweetest sounding pop melodies that glitter like the stars in the firmament, and we are honoured to give you an exclusive listen to his new double A-side singles ‘Version Of Me’ and ‘Smile Away’. Estepa’s extraordinary ear for the light-as-air melodies and sweet refrains are at the fore …
Premiere: There’s a sparkling sound as Party Crashers enter the room with the glimmering track ‘Stoked With Your Diagnosis’ ahead of debut album.
I keep harping on about the wave of brilliant bands that, after successful (or not so successful) musical careers in the eighties and nineties, are reforming or forming new iterations that still have a spark of creativity and excitement. We here at Backseat Mafia are honoured to premiere another single from this example of what …
Album Review: End Scene declare ‘I Will Not Live Safe, I Will Live True’ in an album filled with beauty, self reflection and passion.
End Scene highly impressed us with their debut album ‘All My Ghosts‘ way back in 2021 and they are back with the expansive journey that is ‘I Will Not Live Safe, I Will Live True’: a true declaration of intent that permeates every note. The album comes from the fevered imagination of James Jennings whose literary …
EP Review: DVRKWorld’s self-titled debut EP is a delicious southern gothic blast of dark pop delight.
Fronted by Mary Shannon of Meres, Launceston band Dvrkworld deliver an icy, glacial form of shoegaze that seems intrinsically linked to the wild terrain and the weather in the southern isle at the very edge of the world. Formed in early 2023 by Mary Shannon and Drew Farrant-Jayet and later joined by Shawn Arnold and Ryan …