7" - Hear
HEAR is the enema your iTunes needs. Bringing you the most thought-provoking and up-to-date music reviews this side of Lester Bangs, HEAR sifts through the ever growing mountain of press releases and promos to only feature albums, EPs, LPs and mixes that we want to, not that we have to. Also, we try and make things make sense in 200 words or less so that you can just listen to the music.
Royal Headache 7"
Sydney's Royal Headache could be Australia's finest garage power-pop band. It seems that every song they write is infectious as hell, taking sugary '60s garage hooks and blasting them through your speakers with punkish fervor and velocity.
Opening track ‘Eloise' is the one that incited frenzy on Pitchfork, and if your misanthropic punk mate scoffs at the exuberance of the "nah, nahs" in the outro, chances are they're the only good thing that happened to him that week.
Total Control, Retiree 7"
Punk is now more than 30 years old, and while that might not be old enough to qualify for the pension, those who were around to see the scene ignite in the '70s are certainly getting close. Yet, as a general rule, it still plays as music for the young. The genre hasn't necessarily aged with its instigators.
Negative Vibes, Chrome Dome
Chrome Dome's pass at the commonest subjects of outsider music - misanthropy, deadened feelings, self-hate and insanity - is brilliantly skewed, catchy-as-heck and potentially disturbing. The local duo makes a rattling, drugged-disco chug with heavily intoned suicide-note lyrics, machine sounds in spasm, atonal synthesiser step-melodies and eerie, childlike tambourine accompaniment melting down as the sound of mental disintegration: chilled, deathly, tinted with hysteria and madly funny.
Brothersister Records 7" releases
Trust cottage Melbourne label Brothersister Records to solve the 'problem' of pop music's dematerialisation and release format conundrum so neatly and with such understated class. Tonight the inventive and enduring collective launch two new lathe-cut 7-inch releases, bundled with digital mixes and packaged in beautiful, limited edition sleeve art.
Super Wild Horses 7" EP
Lots has been made of 'shit-gaze' and 'no-fi' production values in music for a while now, most notably in America where the blown-up, overdriven sound of originals like Pink Reason, Times New Viking and Vivian Girls has seriously crossed over in indie circles to become almost a movement in itself, regardless of content.
All Hour Cymbals, Yeasayer
Do you know what a hippie is?
With their headscarves and hand bells, communal chanting and four-part harmonies, Yeasayer have a lot in common with west coast burnouts like Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, or ELO. But they also share similarities with fellow skinny-jeaned loft-lurking Brooklynites TV on The Radio, Grizzly Bear, and Dirty Projectors.
Spending Time c/w Switch Me 7”
Melbourne’s The Emergency return as a duo with two new disco cuts on New York’s Metal Postcard label. More delicate and spacey than anything on their excellent last album, The Spectrum Deadly, this 7” finds Milo Kossowski and Morgan McWaters down the bloody vampire vibe in favour of a colder, more pneumatic kind of funk.
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