EP - 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.
Dick Diver, 'Arks Up'
Dick Diver sound like underground '80s Australia. Arks Up recalls the best parts of the Hunters & Collectors discography: the songs gather around raw, trudging bass lines that sound best filling the pungent, carpeted rooms of old pubs.
With clever, multi-member pop songwriting, The Go-Betweens also come to mind: the accents not dropped but accentuated; the guitar work sharp, tonal, puncturing.
Wind Waker, 'Wind Waker'
The Zelda references have been flowing thick and fast since the genesis of young super-talented and ultra-motivated Perth young ones Wind Waker. Indeed, there's still something to be said for this band's dedication to their conceptual motifs. The cover of their album features an implement that controls the wind.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, 'Higher Than the Stars' EP
Let's just set the record straight. No matter what might have been said about the Pains sounding like the Vivian Girls... it was all lies. They don't. At all. Teaches all of you bloggers out there to not smoke that Mexican brick weed and then listen to records. You never know what's in that shit.
Exquisite Corpse
Now it's only an EP, so let's not shit ourselves just yet, but Warpaint are pretty fucking awesome. Coming from the star-studded and smog-misted hills of Los Angeles, this trio of babes is making music that walks that fine line we never knew existed between Beach House's dreaminess and Lindstrøm's beatiness.
Two Sides of the Truth / Do Anything Go Anywhere
World music has gotten a bad rap. It's too often associated with and passed off as music that late thirty-going-on-forty somethings are listening to, trying to seem relevant or hip. It's as if the entire hipster collective has bought into the eternal struggle of Rob Gordon versus Ian Raymond and of course, we all want to be fucking John Cusack.
Witch Hats, 'Solarium Down the Causeway'
Witch Hats are undeniably one of Australia's most intense rock bands, a newer and slightly more urgent version of that band that Nick Cave was in, in the early '90s (what's their name again?). They've just released a new EP, Solarium Down the Causeway, which just made me think of the 6km walk I used to take to the shops, where a Solarium and porn store were the only bastions of visible civilisation on the road to glory (German baked goods being the glory).
The Twerps
Imagine the sound of a pocket full o' loose change amplified by a contact mic, duplicated 577 times and broadcast with the volume cranked at 11. This ain't no John Cage composition I'm describing but the wild jangle that is contained within the lilting, delicate pop of The Twerps.
Recorded by Mikey 'Eddie Current' Young, The Twerps' self-titled debut exudes a refreshing candour.
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