backseat downunder
EP: Romanie’s ‘Little Big Steps’ is an ethereal and glowing paean to resilience and hope.
Originally from Belgium, Romanie relocated to Melbourne a few years ago and found herself in the midst of the COVID pandemic and a number of lockdowns: events that can create anxiety and uncertainty for locals, feelings that can only be even more exaggerated if you are far from home. Romanie’s EP, ‘Little Big Steps’ is a shimmering …
Track: New Zealand’s Nik Brinkman’s new single ‘Sugarland’ is a delicious shimmering wonder.
With a theme running to the sweeter side, New Zealand’s Nik Brinkman follows up ‘Candy’, premiered by us back in June with another languid, hazy delight, ‘Sugarland’. The crystalline guitars form a crisp, crunchy background to the dreamy haze of the song with its recurring riffs and floaty atmosphere. Brinkman’s magical vocals are evocative and …
Track: Melbourne’s Dull Reality’s imagination sparkles with the atmospheric single ‘Push Myself Away’.
Dull Reality – the work of Melbourne musician Ben Shields – follows up his single ‘Daffodil (reviewed by me here) with the new track ‘Push Myself Away’ – another sparkling, textural, multi-layered track. With a motorik syncopated beat and a synth wash, a hypnotic jingling in the far distance, this is a transfixing delight – …
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: Sydney’s Magnetic Heads unveil ‘Moral Outage’: a scything blast of dark synth-driven pop
‘Moral Outage’, from Magnetic Heads, is a sparkling ensemble of eighties-influenced, synth-based tracks that resonate with a darkness and refined intelligence. And when I say eighties, I mean the good stuff. Intertwining threads draw in the synth giants of Heaven 17, Cabaret Voltaire, New Order, The Beloved and even Devo, while the delicate intricacies of …
Track: Bagful of Beez (The Meanies/Even) trip the light fantastic with whacky debut single ‘Syco’ and announce new album and launch date.
If you are in the mood for a bit of psychotic psychedelia with an infusion of chemical cocktails and a backpack full of barely suppressed chaos and self-deprecatory humour – and after all, who isn’t in the current climes – then Bagful of Beez has just the thing for you with the appropriately named single …
Track: Sydney’s Moody Beach swaggers in with the shoegaze blitz of ‘Plastic Love’
Sydney’s Moody Beach (the work of Melissah Mirage) has been catching the attention of Backseat Mafia this year with her dirty, scuzzy brand of shoegaze dream pop, delivered with a shot glass full of swagger and a black leather jacket draped attitude. Two earlier singles this year, ‘Chance’ and ‘The Other’, set the radar blinking, …
News: The legendary Australian punks The Hard-Ons announce You Am I’s Tim Rogers as new frontman, a new album and a single ‘Hold Tight’ to spark things off.
The shock announcement that veteran indie band You Am I‘s enigmatic Tim Rogers was joining venerable Australian punks The Hard-Ons as a permanent frontman is only matched by the immediate surprise release today of a new single and news of an album from the iconic band. The new album, amusingly entitled ‘I’m Sorry, Sir, That …
Track: Perth dreamy dream pop duo The Money War unveil the sparkling and melancholy delight ‘Miles Away’.
Gliding out of the world’s most remote city, Perth, duo The Money War (Carmen and Dylan Ollivierre) have today released the ethereal and dreamy track ‘Miles Away’. This is a coasting, sparkling and very delicious slice of melancholy, punctuated by the most languid and evocative breathy saxophones and subtle horns, and gilded by reflective, immersive …