Spontaneous post provoked by real excitement here. I’ve got raging tune-wood for this pair that I heard today via Who The Hell, Mecca of all mp3s Australian and arbiter of tastes amazing. If you’ve read through all previous syntax and you’re still here then truly you’ve earned this. I reward you with a treat and that treat is Edward Francis.

I’m all goosed up on both these jams and I’m almost anxious in my haste to listen to both of them, repeatedly, constantly, so I can come to terms with them. They truly are both wonderful. Horse Rock Love Song because it manages to combine spaghetti western guitar with drawn out sax licks in a combination that shouldn’t work but good gravy, it does. Of course I’m spending each five minute listening trying to determine whether the spaghetti western reference was supplanted in my mind by virtue of the songs title but we’re done, we’re past that, the next song has begun. The tempo is up, the sound bed expanded (though that sax is still really right among things) and we’re hearing piano runs and… a marimba? Do my ears deceive me? The lady vox is Phia who has made waves in her own right the past year round. I’ve dug a little deeper, IT’S A KALIMBA, PEOPLE. Now we know… Now we know.

This is everything you’d hoped it would be, then doubled, then doubled again because you’ve got depressingly low standards for Australian music. Oscar Key Sung here drops what is the perfect counterpoint to the four ito the floor anthemic pleading that was October’s ‘All I Could Do‘. It’s Alyosha to the Ivan, Seachange to his Odelay, ‘Take Care’ to his ‘Started From The Bottom’. He’s had this one in the arsenal a long time, deploying it live with with less affect than ‘All I Could Do’ or ‘It’s Coming’ but to an audience not yet acclimatised to the newness. The man himself is so far past this track that he’s been spinning remixes of it in his sets before the original had yet flavoured the public palette. The news in tandem is that the long (LONG) awaited Oscar Key Sung EP is upon us. Maybe set a date with your girl, go to the pharmacy to collect the relevant supplies because come March three, when you put this on in your Corolla there’s going to be some back street freestyle a la sixteen year old Kendrick. I’m saying you’re gonna get laid. Way to make me spell it out, good grief. Taste the future below, even Pitchfork know what’s going on.

Sooooooo… Colourwaves huh? An EP from colourwaves… You know who would be highly qualified to write about such a thing? Someone who had listened to the past Colourwaves EPs. Not this guy though, no sir, haven’t listened to them, I certainly have not. The new one though, that’s a doozey. Am I better able to discuss it because I come without preconceptions? Maybe. Am I going to some research to better inform myself on the journey? Not a chance. Let’s do this.

I’ll spend the key words of this “review” summarily referencing the Drive soundtrack, Washed Out, chillwave and Candy Claws. Lots of elongated oohs and aahs, dark synth and it’s all quite lovely. Enjoy.

In my mind there’s a perennial battle between what I know and what you know and where exactly the two overlap. The middle space in this venn diagram waxes and wanes depending on the subject matter but when it comes to Australian music who even knows!? Maybe sometimes I give you more credit than you deserve and in those moments I don’t provide you with the necessary backstory to properly gorge yourself on a new artist. Other times I assume you know very little and I’ll hold your hand as we explore hot new producers like Gizbo Glabbelstork or Flume. I think with GUM I thought “Hey. These guys know a thing or two about good tunes. They’ll be across this”, so despite the song itself being fundamentally excellent I’ve let it sit on what I thought was the mantlepiece but was in fact an old shoebox under the bed. So, retrieving that shoebox of unspoken goods, let’s talk GUM. Meanwhile, I hope you googled Gizbo Glabbelstork.

This one from GUM might be one of the most reverbed tracks I’ve EVER LISTENED TO. Even the reverb has reverb. Listening to this song is like standing in an elevator with opposing mirrors multiplying each other into the pseudo-distance. Also you’ve downed two tabs that afternoon and visually, none of it makes sense to you. The reverb works in that same way, bouncing off itself until it fades into the ether. Structurally it’s hard to detect what’s what. I don’t know if the upper range vocal section is the chorus or the explosive guitar part that follows or even if we’re existing in a cosmic binary universe wherein two chorus are socially acceptable. I hope it’s the latter. Imagine that.

GUM is the same Jay Watson who did some real ol’ drumming in Tame Impala (famous band) and some real ol’ guitar in Pond (semi-famous band). I like to think that his arch-nemesis is Joe Ryan (Shiny, they say) who also plays guitar (and other stuff) in (semi-famous band) Pond. Nemeses only by virtue of the fact that they both dropped their most recent singles on the same day in an effort to see who is most famous. At the moment it’s Jay but pundits are tipping a late game resurgence from Shiny Joe.

Because you’ve sat still through this entire post I have a special treat for you. It’s a song by POND theyselves, and a true jam at that. It’s written as part of the Spirit of Akasha soundtrack which has been something I’ve been working on at work this past year or so and I kid you not, having it finally released is like being cured of the Bubonic Plague. I feel so healthy, like I could crush a schoolbus with just one hand. Pond wrote a song for it and so did heaps of other good sorts but we’ll just listen to the Pond track for the moment if that’s cool? Thanks m8s.

The Stevens (label-mates of Dick Diver over at Chapter Music) hail from Melbourne, and at the beginning of November last year they dropped record by the title of A History of Hygiene. So let’s talk history. By now the savvy listener (you) knows that any song will be an appropriation of sounds from the past, and this is most easily demonstrated in guitar-based rock. You can trace the ancestry of a particular guitar tone or playing style like blonde hair back up a family tree (the oldest electric guitar recording is barely 80 years old, after all). With these sounds come the moods that surrounded their genesis. We’ve all experienced the transporting function of music, the power to evoke a particular mood or memory from the past. It’s kinda like time travel. But in your brain. Woah.

As a result, when I listen to opening track ‘From Puberty to Success’ I can’t help but think of 90s bands like Pavement, who really crystallised in musical form the mood Stephen Malkmus referred to as ‘this morass of slackness’. The Stevens are historians, and they bring us treasures from the past. This is your new fix of spineless rock from a lucky country. Musicians who have been anaesthetized by a removal from any sense of external struggle. There is a pathos involved; it makes us feel empty, or perhaps a nicer term would be ‘relaxed’. I love it.

I hear echoes of The Velvet Underground in tunes like ‘Challenger’, with that distorted bass line and organ sound carrying reluctantly hollered vocals. Despite the brevity of some of the 24 tracks on this album, there is a lot to sink your teeth into: a big ol’ bunch of interesting sonic moments throughout, some exceptional chorus melodies and great lyrics.

In summary: this band uses wah-wah pedals on their guitars, and nothing has ever sounded bad through a wah-wah pedal. Nothing. Ever.