The third album from Melbourne’s The Ancients is a record that hurtles, ambles and breezes by with equal amounts of intricate musicality and simple skewed-pop broad strokes. There is a wistful 60s folk tinge to songs like House of Cards, the lighter contrast to their more layered and dense psych excursions such as the shoegaze haze of Hamster and the epic Molokai that manages to … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: The Ancients | Night Bus
Callinan is still spreading the good word on foreign shores (including CMJ) and getting great praise for his shows and album Embracism ahead of a return to Australia to play Laneway and support for Savages in January. He has also just released the video for one of my favourite Embracism tracks, the slow, bruised grace of Landslide. Continue reading WATCH: Kirin J Callinan | Landslide
Neko Case recently released her new LP The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You and it finds her in fine form, possibly her best. The kind folks over at Warner Music and ANTI- have given us a copy of the album on vinyl (including a CD copy) to giveaway to one lucky DS reader. The album … Continue reading GIVEAWAY: Win a copy of Neko Case’s new album on vinyl
Hope Springs are a trio from the Sunshine Coast of Australia who trade in the kind of indie guitar music that intersected post rock in the 90s and created literate and emotive songs that played with structure and dynamics. The band have recently recorded a Balcony TV spot for their forthcoming single Sooner Or Later which will appear on their second EP featuring production work by … Continue reading WATCH: Hope Springs preview new single on Balcony TV
Sydney’s Sister Jane are releasing Whole Wide World, the first single from their new album, on October 15th and have kindly sent a pre-release stream out into the digital aether. It finds them sounding impressively widescreen with tumbling drums, reverb-laden guitars peeling off all corners of the canvas and vocals that resonate with lush melodicism and barely contained urgency. There’s a decidedly UK post punk/indie … Continue reading NEW MUSIC: Sister Jane | Whole Wide World
One of our favourites of the last year, Courtney Barnett, has released the video for her excellent Avant Gardener single. The track comes from her LP The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas due out October 15th. Continue reading VIDEO: Courtney Barnett | Avant Gardener
The band name and artwork for this album set me up with the expectation of another constructed indie facsimile bled dry of imagination and real emotion. Thankfully this duo out of Melbourne flipped my preconceptions by way of their compositional agility and creative twisting of pop and electronica. Tom Iansek has one of those voices that comes from the Jeff Buckley school of sensitive choirboy … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Big Scary | Not Art
by Chris Familton The years roll by but New Zealand seems to have the consistent knack for throwing up bands that continue the lineage that was formed in the early 80s while still carving out a niche for themselves in the overcrowded world of left-of-centre guitar rock. Popstrangers have already released a stellar record this year and now Ghost Wave have turned potential into an … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Ghost Wave | Ages
Luke Russell and his band the Proposition opened the evening with a set of sixties flavoured guitar pop peppered with quirky song titles like My Girl’s Prematurely Grey. The Proposition, who include a Wiggle (Murray Cook) on guitar, show a deft melodic touch when it comes to building a playful musicality to Russell’s songs, shading them in soulful retro-pop colours. The Nature Strip took the … Continue reading LIVE REVIEW: Bryan Estepa @ Union Hotel, Sydney (08/08/13)
by Chris Familton Over the space of a few years Julia Holter has quickly established herself as a composer, songwriter and singer with a special talent for creating sonically exquisite music. Hers is a musical style that channels classical, jazz, folk, electronica and the avant-garde and Loud City Song stands as her most fascinating and fully realised album to date. There is a feeling akin … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Julia Holter | Loud City Song
by Chris Familton Mix small town pessimism, youthful optimism, suburban nihilism and a lo-fi aesthetic and you have some of the ingredients that make the essential sound of Bad//Dreems on their superb Badlands EP. The Adelaide natives have been teasing/threatening us for a while now with a string of singles (Chills, Tomorrow Mountain and Caroline) and now those songs plus another trio of equally terrific … Continue reading REVIEW: Bad//Dreems | Badlands EP
by Chris Familton Eleanor Friedberger has followed up her 2011 debut album relatively quickly and for that we should be thankful as it continues where that record left off with razor sharp observations of life and love in her typically infectious and deceivingly poetic manner. The four year hiatus of The Fiery Furnaces has been a golden period for Friedberger, allowing her to spread her … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Eleanor Friedberger | Personal Record
Doubtful Sounds 