video
Track: Bob Evans’s new single ‘Concrete Heart’ is a charming, jangling and melodic riposte to the unkind
Bob Evans is the nom de plume of Kevin Mitchell, front man for the Australian indie legends Jebediah who has gone solo for a number of years now. His new single ‘Concrete Heart’ is a warm and embracing track from his upcoming album Tomorrowland which is set for release on 16 April 2021. Of the …
See: The Psychedelic Furs release video for ‘Wrong Train’ – a gorgeous cinematic black and white slice of dystopia, plus announce tour news
Last year the venerable The Psychedelic Furs returned with ‘Made of Rain’ – making it on Backseat Mafia’s list of top fifty albums of 2020 and in my view one of their best albums. In my 9/10 review I wrote it was a contemporary album for the modern times and while it has all the …
Track: The Coral’s Ian and James bring their grandad in to narrate ‘The Great Muriarty’
AFTER rolling back into our lives and fuzzing everything up at the end of last month like a particularly psych-pop coastal fog with the deliciously eerie “Faceless Angel” and the unveiling of album the tenth, coming towards the end of April, once more, dear friends, once more, The Coral are ringmasters of the unforeseen. And …
See: Heligoland release an arctic chill with gorgeous new video for ‘Hera’ off album ‘This Quiet Fire’
The track ‘Hera’ perfectly encapsulates the overall shimmering beauty of Heligoland‘s album ‘This Quiet Fire’ (reviewed by me recently), and the band has released an enchanting video that is the perfect cinematic vision for the track. The black and white landscapes loom ominously – the snow-laden, naked boughs and walls of frosted trees frame the …
Premiere: Local Authority, Brisbane’s shoegaze/dream pop trio, release evocative and psychedelic video for the blistering single ‘Forever, For Now’
Backseat Mafia is very pleased to premiere the video for the new single by Brisbane’s dream pop/shoegaze specialists, Local Authority. I have championed this band for a while on these pages – I reviewed their last album ‘Negative Space’ and described it as a truly a magnificent album that carves out a unique space for …
Album review: Mike Lazarev – ‘Out Of Time’: a miniature soundtrack to an imaginary film
Mike’s a man out of step with chronos maybe, but not with the muse. As with Sonic Cathedral’s Cheval Sombre, who’s beautiful album in a very different discipline we looked at just last week, Mike seems to have time troubling his heart; its grinding linearity, its inexorability; the way it makes you miss things, yearn for things, regret. It’s a clever little record and a lovely one, too
News: Australian indie royalty Eskimo Joe announce national tour and release video for new single ’99 Ways’
Western Australian band Eskimo Joe are veritable and venerable indie giants in the Australian music scene, and it is great to see them back after a hiatus, firstly with single ‘Say Something’ last year and now with a follow up, ’99 Ways’. They have also announced news of an Australia-wide tour playing their first two …
See: Deniz Cuylan – ‘Flaneurs In Hakone’: stunning, chiming guitar soli from Turkish composer
IT ALL started with Beethoven’s Fifth. That’s LA-based, Istanbul-born composer and exponent of modern guitar composition Deniz Cuylan’s first and wholly abiding memory of music; it’s the early Eighties, he’s at home in the Turkish capital, all of 5, and the Fifth is spinning on his parents’ turntable. Duh-duh duh-duh … the grandiosity, the majesty …
Track: Mike Lazarev – ‘Finale’: Ukrainian composer drops the final curtain from next week’s delicious mini-album
THE IDEA of a soundtrack to an imaginary film is something we here at Backseat Mafia love straight off the bat, right back to when we fell for Barry Adamson’s rather wonderful Moss Side Story all those years ago. Injazero Records, the imprint overseen by London and Istanbul-based producer and journalist Siné Buyuka, which we’ve …
Album review: Cheval Sombre – ‘Time Waits For No One’: a luxuriant, timeless and meditative return
Time Waits For No One is not without its darknesses, its sadnesses, but they’re approached with the calm, supplicant grace that sits right in the heart of such feelings; and it is bloody beautiful. It’s an amulet, a perfect prescription; you can use it to ward off the world. Really, do