Track: Brisbane’s Dopamine return with the anthemic blast of ‘Turn You Heart’ and tour news.
Following up last year’s effervescent single ‘Strange Situation’, Brisbane indie band Dopamine return with the thumping track ‘Turn Your Heart’. Chiming guitars and mountainous choruses combine to create a rousing anthem, with Dopamine’s genetic links to Britpop/madchester guitar driven epics on full display. Fin Miller (lyrics and vocals) says of the track: This song was pieced …
Track: Sydney’s legendary nineties heroes Caligula return with the blistering single ‘World on Fire’.
Caligula‘s brand of thrilling electro grunge reached its apotheosis in the early nineties with the album ‘Rubenesque’, and having burned so brightly, the band went into hiatus until reforming to support Pop Will Eat Itself’s (PWEI) Australian tour in 2018 with founding members Ashley Rothschild and Jamie Fonti. A few live shows have followed, signifying …
Track: Christchurch’s T.G. Shand is back to transfix us with her mesmerising lush sounds in new track ‘Little Sieve’.
Ōtautahi/Christchurch resident Annemarie Duff, formerly of the legendary Melbourne shoegaze band Miniatures (on the iconic Saint Marie Records label) sends out the most delightful sonic missives in the name of T.G. Shand. We here at Backseat Mafia have been transfixed by her stream of jangling, sparkling singles over the past year (‘The Ease‘, ‘Lemony‘ and ‘Seats‘). Her new single …
EP: Auckland’s Silk Cut shape out another elegant dream pop delight in new EP ‘panda’.
Last year’s ‘astronaut’, the debut EP from New Zealand’s enigmatic Silk Cut (reviewed by me here) was a hazy dreamy introduction to a band that has, amongst its constituent members, a breadth of experience. Singer/guitarist Andrew Thorne has played with Modern Chair – a collaboration between him and another veteran of the NZ music scene, Wayne Bell. …
News: Sydney legends The Clouds announce 30th Anniversary tour for Australian indie classic album ‘Penny Century’
In the late eighties early nineties, The Clouds were one of the most formobale indie bands in Australia with their fusion of thundering, jangling stop/start guitar sounds burnished with glorious harmonies and melodies. There seemed to me to be a three pronged attack during this era with fellow bands The Hummingbirds and Falling Joys releasing …
Premiere: Marty K & the Electric Hurricanes dynamically ‘Ride the Waves (ft Rosa Rico)’ in a rollicking soul-inflected anthem.
Marty K & the Electric Hurricanes have an unique ability to take a sonic snapshot of the seventies with a prog rock genetic code and deliver something cathartic and satisfying for our times. Last time we met them, they released the psychedelic blast of ‘Rattle Snakes and Bones’ (read my review here). The follow up, …
Track: The magnificent Fontaines D.C. release the brooding title track to their new album ‘Skinty Fia’ due out in April, and announce new live dates.
‘Skinty Fia’ is an Irish phrase which translates to English as ‘the damnation of the deer’ which is used to display disappointment or annoyance – phrase which resonated with Fontaines D.C.‘s frontman Grian Chatten as the correct expression of his feelings towards the ‘mutation’ of Irish culture abroad. ‘Skinty Fia’, the newly released title track from the forthcoming …
EP: Grids/Units/Planes unveil the heady and mesmerising electronica of ‘Diverge And Coalesce’
The sounds of Brisbane project Grids/Units/Planes (GUP) are that of a cloudy, diffuse space that glitches and hums in a languorous rich texture: awe-inspiring and transfixing. I have always thought that the magic in effective instrumental music is the ability to tell stories and create images without words, and in ‘Diverge and Coalesce’, GUP have …
Track: The Nagging Doubts tell you it’s a ‘Dirty Scene’ in their own inimitable fashion, with a scuzzy fuzzy melodic pop ramble.
Last year’s EP ‘Autocalm’ (reviewed by me here) was a brilliant introduction to the youthful exuberance of The Nagging Doubts, a band who have drawn on the rawness and street-wise veracity of The Velvet Underground and enriched it with a visceral antipodean sound. They are back with a new single ‘Dirty Scene’ and it is …
News: Enigmatic Sydney-based duo Nessick Berwick announce EP ‘Get There’ and unveil the title track as a tasty and insouciant aperitif
Sydney-based duo Nessick Berwick comprises of two musicians/producers with the most impressive and diverse CVs. Ian Nessick has spent many years in Australia as a maverick fashion retailer involving some of the more forward-thinking stores in Sydney and Melbourne. He currently runs Rudimentary Raiments. As well as designing clothes, Nessick also designs interiors and writes …