Sydney trio Magnus know how to hit the metal, indulge the boogie, stoner rock vibe and stay perfectly on the wrong side of weird on this digital single ‘Saints, Sedated’. It hits a super solid pounding sprint home at the back end after digging into jazz metal noir and desert rock grooves.
The track features Lucius Borich (Cog) on drums, percussion, backing vocals and organ.
Magnus’ sophomore album is coming soon and has been engineered and mixed by Aria award winning Paul McKercher and mastered by Grammy award winning Brian Gardner (Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf).
We’re hitting up some sounds from Sweden today, in the form of this track from Surmland Sound Science. It comes from their EP The First Thesis. There’s not much to be found online about the group or individual – no Facebook or Spotify presence. I guess they let the music do the talking and we’ll take that. ‘Analysis: Identified KHz’ is an instrumental piece that sounds like a mystery noir soundtrack filtered through a Bond theme, as played by a 00’s post-rock group. Intriguing? Dig into their EP, on Bandcamp, for more…
Norwegian trio Spielbergs have a pretty great balance of power pop melodies and noisey guitars and drums on this track, 4AM, from their debut album This Is Not The End, set for release at the start of February 2019. It’s anthemic indie rock but it sounds effortlessly uplifting and energetic.
Shihad, Young Lions, The Dead Love Metro Theatre, Sydney November 24th, 2018
Thirty years, damn… where did that time go. This writer recalls first seeing them open for The Angels in Auckland, New Zealand in 1990. Back then they were fresh-faced young lads, still in thrall to the thrash metal of Metallica and co and yet to embark on the ups and downs of their rock ’n’ roll career. Now of course they’re middle-aged statesman of Antipodean hard rock, a conduit between metal and melodic rock and most importantly, still performing as passionately and intensely as ever.
The Dead Love were up first, keeping things simple, rough and raw with their grunge punk that treads a nice line between unhinged rock and crossover melodic punk pop. At times their songs veered too close to catchy choruses of the anthemic hook kind but they know to ensure they keep enough throat shredding angst and anger in the mix to stop the songs sounding too cleaned up.
Young Lions on the other hand represent the worst of modern rock, when technology creeps in and bleaches out the rough edges and believable conviction in the music. In their frontman they have a singer who can certainly nail emo, hard rock and some cringeworthy rap moments but his self-belief was overcooked with over-the-top rock star moves and ventures into the audience. The music was generic alt-rock by numbers, Bono fronting Linkin Park, an Australian Idol facsimile of rock music.
Shihad quite simply laid waste to what came before them. On a stage devoid of amplifiers and a sound that was blisteringly loud, heavy and perfectly balanced, they set about celebrating 30 years as a band with a set that began with Think You’re So Free from their most recent album FVEY and worked its way back, in chronological order to Factory from their debut Churn.
It was a fascinating arc to experience as the four black-clad Kiwis accurately acknowledged their high-points and lesser successes. The General Electric (celebrating 20 years) supplied five songs, FVEY three, Shihad, Killjoy and Pacifier two apiece. The most commercial period spanned The General Electric and Pacifier albums and the near sold-out crowd were in full voice singing along to songs such as Comfort Me, Run and My Mind’s Sedate. As always Jon Toogood was the hype man and the tireless frontman, constantly inciting audience involvement with handclaps, sing-alongs, lit-up phones held aloft and unified jumping up and down. They’re all cliched rock moves but he does it well and all with his laconic, genial stage manner.
As a band there are few that play tighter hard rock and honour the riff as diligently as Shihad, they’re a precision machine with a beating heart. In Toogood’s case, one that pumped blood in a stream down his arm as a result of frenetic guitar playing. Karl Kippenberger still works the stage, grinning at the audience like he’s bumping into old friends, Phil Knight is a study of six string wizardry while Tom Larkin is the glue and anchor that ties it all together. As they approached the tail end of the set things got darker with the magnificent thrum and throb of Deb’s Night Out, an absolutely brutal psych assault of You Again and the industrial tectonic riff of Factory from their debut album.
Shihad are essentially still doing what they’ve always done, entertaining their devoted fans with sensory overload at maximum volume. It’s fun, it’s life-affirming rock music and they’re still right at the top of their game, a claim that can be bestowed on very few bands after three decades of making music.
Hinkley are a band hailing from Rochester NY and they’ve got a nice mix of Sparklehorse and Flaming Lips with a dash of the backwoods vibe of The Band thrown into the mix. Definitely on a melodic, cosmic 21st century indie tip. These two tracks are good examples of what you can expect to hear on their album Purblind which is out now via streaming services and to download from Bandcamp.
We’re digging the sound of this track from Women Of The Night, a band based in New York but featuring members from Adelaide (Australia), Seoul and Alabama. This track swings and swaggers along with raw vocals and a liquid, late-night vibe of jangly, bluesy guitars and a indie noir tinge.
There’s an EP out on Spotify and if you hit up the Bandcamp page you can order a limited edition 7″ single.
This is sky-high psychedelic indie rock from Anthony Braun Perry (formerly of The Growlers). When your head is in the clouds you may as well smoke ’em in this heady, dreamy, drug-like gem of a song that drifts along with a nursery rhyme quality and some fine woozy guitar playing.
Debut LP from Catsigns, The Fine & Mellow, coming soon on Pop Cautious Records.
On an autumnal morning in Prague during her European tour, Cash Savage discusses the songwriting shift on her new album Good Citizens and talks with Chris Familton about the importance of her band The Last Drinks.
The lead-up to the release of a new album can be a tricky period for an artist to negotiate. Some take it in their stride while others ride the emotions of anticipation, self-doubt and excitement. Cash Savage had of course been through album releases before but this time around it felt different given the shift in her songwriting to address socio-political issues that she felt she could no longer avoid.
“Never more so has it been such a relief to have a new record out. This album is really different for me. Through interviews I’ve had the opportunity to self-analyse that. The day it came out we got a four star review in the Guardian and a real weight lifted off me that day,” Savage reveals. “I didn’t realise I was carrying that at all and then I was floating around the rest of the day once that happened.”
Heading into the writing of Good Citizens, an album that addresses the marriage equality debate, moral decay and the inherent problems with male dominated societal structures, Savage knew that it was essential that she start writing about those issues while also still grounding many of the songs in the world of love and relationships.
“I wanted to make the album a real snapshot of how I felt at the time and part of that was that I was (and still am) in love. I knew it was going to be more political but I didn’t ever think it wouldn’t have a couple of love songs on there too. These love songs are political too, because of who I am,” she stresses, before adding “I didn’t really ever see there was a point for me to write songs like this before. I was quite happy to have drunken rants about political systems with my mates down at the pub, but I didn’t see much point putting it in my music. This time I didn’t see there was any other way around it. I had never thought I would ever write a political album so it was surprise for me!”
Making a foray into writing about these kinds of issues begs the question as to whether the process acts as a way of Savage dealing with and processing her feelings about them. “Those issues are frustrating full stop so I don’t think the songs made it more frustrating. It definitely helped for me to write about them. I’ve actually quite enjoyed contemplating the different questions that I get asked about those issues, from different people from different walks of life. For me I guess I’ve found it quite healing.”
Over the years Savage’s band The Last Drinks have been an integral part of the sound of her records and the power and passion of her live performances. The lineup has changed as members have taken temporary leave for other musical pursuits (guitarist Joe White is a member of Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever) or for family reasons (guitarist, banjo player Brett has recently become a dad) but Savage believes the flexibility and nature of the band is its strength.
“The band has always been so organic with its changes that its never felt like it’s one sound. To have a genuine shift has given us a lot of freedom and we’ve had to re-work some arrangements. We’ve been playing some of these songs for a long time and it’s nice to mix them up a little bit. It doesn’t feel different and it does feel different at the same time. It’s been quite nice actually. There is such a camaraderie within The Last Drinks. We’re just a really good bunch of mates and there’s so much fun had on and off the stage. They’re a phenomenal live band and to be able to stand in front of them is just fucking incredible.”
