album
Album Review: Children Collide’s ‘Time Itself’ is a cathartic, thundering, heavy metal psychedelic trip, plus tour details announced.
Melbourne’s Children Collide have been a vital beating heart of the Australian indie music scene, and after a nine year break are back with swagger and style with their new album ‘Time Itself’, out now through Spinning Top Records. With a deceptively tamed jangling start, ‘Man of the People’ erupts into a mountainous riff-laden fuzzy …
Album Review: Holy Holy say ‘Hello My Beautiful World’ with an elegant and sparkling collection of jewels, plus tour news.
It is an unusual situation to find myself lauding an album that just debuted at number 4 on the Australian music charts in the company of what could be loosely described as commercial pop artists (not the kind of milieu I generally write about). But then that just about sums up Holy Holy‘s universal appeal. …
Album Review: James Barrett releases the beautifully composed album ‘A Series of…Mostly Nothing’ and announces launch gig.
If anyone knows anything about me, it’s that I live for a good love song. I also really appreciate a love song that isn’t always so directly about a human being. They can be about anything if you relate it that way, like a pet, a car, a best friend, a stuffed animal, etc. Scranton …
Album Review: Polish Club’s ‘Now We’re Cookin” is a delicious banquet of pop, flavoured with a hint of darkness.
Australia’s Polish Club have just released their album ‘Now We’re Cookin”, and it’s a very pleasant ray of sunshine when all else around is dark. And yet this bright ray of colour is a little more nuanced and layered than is expected. This is a band with a presence and diverse sonic textures: a veritable …
Meet: We chat with Holy Holy’s Tim Carroll about the new album, writing and recording songs and setting the studio on fire.
Australia’s sparkling pop duo Holy Holy’s forthcoming album ‘Hello My Beautiful World’ is due out on Friday, 20 August 2021 through Wonderlick Recording Company. Recorded in Victoria and Tasmania, Tim Carroll, part of the duo with Oscar Dawson, says of the album: We were given all the freedom in the world to do whatever we wanted, …
Album Review: Ron S Peno and the Superstitions release the stupendous ‘Do The Understanding’, and announce launch gigs
The legendary and charismatic Ron S Peno fronted the iconic Died Pretty since the eighties, with time off for bad behaviour and a band hiatus. Having moved to Melbourne, he formed Ron S Peno and the Superstitions while his Died Pretty partner in crime, guitarist Brett Myers, stayed near Sydney, playing with Joey’s Coop. For Peno, 2019 …
Album Review: Infinity Broke swagger out on to the streets with ‘Your Dream My Jail’: a brilliant and visceral coating of indulgent excess and cathartic chaos – plus tour news.
Infinity Broke are a band that does not go gently into the night: their new album ‘Your Dream My Jail’ is an excoriating, driven, thunderous slice of post-punk cake that is angular, studded and visceral. Guitars wail and caterwaul, drums crash like waves on an exposed coast and singer Jamie Hutchings (formerly of nineties indie …
Album Review: Sydney’s Darren Cross (Gerling) creates a little ‘DISTORDER’: a splendid electronic fugue for our dystopian times
Darren Cross is a pillar of the inner city indie scene in Australia: one of those hyperactive artists who never stands still. In the nineties he was in Gerling – a genre-defying iconic indie band that transgressed the boundaries between guitar-based indie rock and electronica. Later as part of Jess and Dep, he delved into …
Album Review: Tunnel Traffic’s elegiac ‘Take my Power’ is a shimmering and immersive work of art
Adam Hachey is a brilliant and underappreciated song writer whose talent has been lauded by Backseat Mafia since almost our inception when he emerged with the band Meesh, creating a genre of what he termed anti-folk. His songwriting is in fact folkish, but with an indie pop sensibility and a more layered and rich approach. …
Album Review: An Early Bird’s beautiful album ‘Diviner’ is a sparkling, romantic journey into the imagination
Milano-based troubadour Stefano De Stefano has been keenly admired by Backseat Mafia since our very birth when we lauded his band Pipers back in 2013 and then his solo stuff under the name An Early Bird. Stefano has shown dedication and passion for his craft throughout the years we have known him: beautifully composed and …