Hachiku’s upcoming self-titled EP is dreamy. That sounds like a disingenuous, relatively vague description of the fuzzy beats and twinkly melodies, but Hachiku – otherwise known as Anika Ostendorf – has these deft, light vocals, sung in a clipped, wide-eyed accent are just that – dreamy. It’s an early summer, soft-lights-and-cool-water kind of sound, and…
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Zander Hawley is an American songwriter truly coming into his own with this, his debut album, When I Get Blue. Having first come across his music a few years ago (he is one half of LA’s Honeywater with Amandla Stenberg), I’ve been keeping track on Hawley’s solo releases out of Nashville since. There’s a poignancy that permeates throughout Hawley’s…
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The coolest kids on the block and possibly the sweetest kids of the bunch – Western Australian band San Cisco are back with The Water, a serenade of rich insistent pop tunes. Lets dive in. The band began their string of melodic love dedications back in 2010, with their first EP Golden Revolver. Led by storyteller Jordi Davieson on vocals, Scarlett Stevens, Josh Biondillo and Nick Gardner were…
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British ‘left hand’ pop artist, Joe Goddard, has finally graced us with his second LP, Electric Lines. It’s been a long eight year wait since his debut solo album Harvest Fest, but makes up for it with the 10 tracks on the LP full of irresistible, futuristic hymns. Starting off as a member of Hot…
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Across six albums released since 2008, POND have made a name for themselves as a band with ever-interchangeable members and a thirst for reviving the best psychedelic rock of the 1960’s/70’s. The initial motivation for POND was to create a collaborative musical project that could have anybody involved whenever they wanted. The result is a band currently…
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The much-hyped return of Gorillaz has been justified…to an extent. It’s been some years since 2010’s Plastic Beach introduced us to some brilliant pieces of songwriting and so understandably, when tour dates and hints of new music began filtering out, the excitement levels surrounding a new Gorillaz record began peaking long before any solid details about the record…
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It’s a little demoralising finding a musician who is infinitely more talented than you in plenty more areas than just music. In this instance, it’s Alex The Astronaut, the multi-talented musician, soccer player, and scientist. Smarts and sporting prowess aside, Alex The Astronaut is a seriously talented, and supremely wordy lyricist and musician. Here on…
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Though firmly anchored in Americana Chris Shiflett‘s third solo album, West Coast Town, translates beautifully to the Australian country scene. I most recently listened to the album as I churned through a road trip through Victoria and New South Wales and it made many of the 1400 kilometers melt away. There’s something about the wide…
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On Local Natives‘ third full-length effort, we see the five-piece opting to stay consistent with their sound on their 12-track offering of harmony-rich, up-beat indie-rock. Sunlit Youth follows their sophomore album Hummingbird (2013), a release that saw the band grapple darker themes and question whether their future material would resemble a recovery. In Sunlit Youth, Local Natives have successfully created…
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This just in: guitar and drums aren’t dead. Who’d have thought it? In an age where every man, woman, and dog seem to only use synths and drum pads, Sydney two-piece Polish Club have gone about releasing a blistering debut album. On the back of a couple years crafting their blues and garage rock sound,…
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Evolution is what makes humans the race we are. While Darwin’s theory of evolution is most notably recognised by the summary of ‘survival of the fittest’, it also speaks about one’s ability to adapt and change to its environment. And here on his current EP A Boy And His Rose, Sean Heathcliff has shown that…
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Canadian four-piece The Franklin Electric have been moving and shaking in the folk scene since 2012, entering and winning a Nashville songwriting competition with over 8000 other bands from around the world. Flavoured with alternative pop, their debut LP This Is How I Let You Down layers perceptive lyrics with string-based harmonies, emotive piano chords and their self-proclaimed secret weapon, the…
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To celebrate 25 years in the business, The Waifs have delivered their glorious eighth LP, Ironbark. They asked their fans what they wanted, and delivered a stunningly created 25 song album. All tracks were recorded at the Karl Marx beared guitarist, Josh Cunningham‘s quaint bushland house in rugged Moruya in New South Wales. Still very…
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Let me preface this review by saying I am in love with Laura Marling. I have been since 2013, when she enchanted the entire tent at Splendour in the Grass. Her songwriting shows wisdom and depth beyond her years, and many of her songs make me feel like they’ve been written just for me. I’ve…
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The first time I listened to this album, I had questions. The first: why are they breaking up their band when their latest album is this good? The second: where are the subdued, quiet Augustines I remember from their 2014 self-titled album? Opening track “Are We Alive” assaulted my ears with a drum frenzy and…
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Listening to this 19 track long album before you realise it’s a collection of EPs can be confronting. Hanni El Khatib produced five separate EPs last year and this collection is all of them thrown together. The first track, “Baby’s OK” has a strong drum beat and starts with the line, “I was high as…
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Ty Segall‘s latest, self-titled album – the ninth in his discography – starts with the dirty, riff-driven track “Break a Guitar”. It’s the perfect opener for an album full of more dirty, riff-driven tracks and sets the scene. Segall’s voice stays within an easy range and complements the rest of the instruments, with its familiar…
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Harley Streten, known to the rest of the world as Flume, dropped his freshest music on the market titled Skin Companion EP II, alongside his 2016 LP Skin. The companion EP came to fans as a surprise, offering his audience a chance to hear Flume’s work with artists such as Glass Animals, Pusha T and Moses Sumney. 2017 can only calls success for…
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2016 was a hard year, globally, politically, environmentally. People made half-hearted jokes last November that at least we’d be getting a lot of good punk music pretty soon – small compensation, honestly. But the genre that flourishes the most under backwards political regimes doesn’t actually seem to be punk – often, what we remember the…
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One of the most influential bands of the 90’s alternative-country movement, Son Volt, are back and better than ever. The LP, Notes of Blue, is the band’s first since 2013, made up of 10 blues galvanised tracks, inspired by a glorious mix of Skip James and English acoustic guitarist Nick Drake. Having grown up listening…
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FOAM, the trio out of Perth who have been making waves since 2012 with the raucous live shows, have this month released their first full length, Coping Mechanisms. Recorded over two years and following up four successful EP’s, Coping Mechanisms is an experimental shift in style that proves this alt-rock act have a far more expansive world…
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Iluka first appeared on the national music scene in 2011, releasing EPs To The Place and Eyes Closed under her given name, Nikki Thorburn. The youthful acoustics of her earlier releases hinted at the raw creative talent Iluka brings to her songwriting, and as her musical style has evolved from such quietly enchanting pieces to the…
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Here’s a fun fact: Other than English, French is the only other language to appear on all government authorised passports worldwide. Why I know that? I have no idea. Here’s another fun fact: The extent of my French vocabulary is limited to what I learnt in Year 8. I remember a handful of words and…
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Sometimes when you’re reviewing something subjective, like music or art, you run up against this age-old debate between subjectivity and objectivity. That’s where I am with Dirty Projectors’ new, self-titled album. I think it might be really interesting, from an objective technical standpoint, but I know it bored me and made me feel weirdly twitchy….
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Tullara’s debut EP Better Hold On had been a long time coming. The songwriting process began around three years ago, encapsulating a broad spectrum of emotions ranging from intense heartbreak to bounding optimism and retelling a personal journey within six short tracks. The honesty of this EP is inescapable. From first listen it’s evident that Tullara…
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Banks & Steelz, the collaborative project of Paul Banks of Interpol and RZA of Wu-Tang Clan works on paper, but how has it actually turned out? Given my lack of prior exposure to both Interpol and Wu-Tang Clan, I’ve come in with no expectations of what either of the two featuring artists should be bringing…
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In The Service of Spring is the debut full-length from Sydney’s Dusken Lights. It’s an extremely relaxed album – very, very low energy – but very sweet and pretty when it works. The opening track, “Superman, Wondergirl” (sidenote, why no Wonder Woman?) is a promising opener, with the juxtaposed vocals of singer/guitarist Paul O. Watling…
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In 2016, artists of colour have expectations placed on them from both sides of the political spectrum – those on the right would rather they stayed silent about their concerns, while oftentimes those on the left expect each artistic statement to be a political paean and call to arms. This is, of course, an unfair…
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Back in September, I sat opposite Briggs and Trials in Brisbane as they told me about Reclaim Australia, the debut album by their collaborative project A.B Original, and how it stood to shake up not only the Australian music industry, but our social community as a whole. Generally, you learn to take such grandiose claims…
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Mothers are the latest in a long and illustrious line of Indie bands from Athens, Georgia, with their hipsteriffically titled debut When You Walk a Long Distance You Are Tired. While they have many things going for them, not least their fantastic singer, the album could benefit from a little more editing and a more…
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