I heard this song this morning in our regular Tuesday morning triple j Unearthed music meeting and lemme tell you, the effect was immediate. Sweet child of the ocean and literal sunbeam Claire Mooney brought this in full of nonchalance, as if she wasn’t just about to play us an absolute wonder wrapped in jazz, psych loops and hundred dollar bills. I played it down. “This is fine, I guess”, I shrugged. I knew though. I knew that Claire had unknowingly stumbled upon a rich mineral deposit, and I was ready to take it off her hands. “Mind if I borrow this for a minute?” I asked, hefting the mp3 in the air and catching it again. “We won’t have much use for it but it might make for an excellent paperweight, perhaps. Or I can just chuck it in the bin for you if you’re finished with it?”

I pocketed that sweet file and I knew I’d committed a great evil, but what was I to do in the face of a groove this infectious. Vocals, flitting in and out, probably lyricless and largely formless but another dynamic that helped to drive this song constantly onward. I considered burying it in a lockbox so that only I would hear the song again but it felt wrong to deprive the world of this great rhythm. Now, I present it to you, underneath this text and as spectacular as I’ve suggested. The reference points on his Unearthed page are Caribou, Floating Points and Kevin Parker and that’s just about the listing of its parts. They’re a Melbourne four-piece founded by former Lurch & Chief member Brendan Anderson. Starts strong, ends stronger, here for you right now.

Carla Geneve is Perth’s next great hope, just nineteen years old and full of wild promise. I recently came across a state municipal report which stated that Western Australia had abandoned mining income in favour of capital investment in Carla Geneve stocks. And I’m no financial advisor but let me give you this piece of (financial) advise- you’d best do the same. The profit & loss graph looks like the sort of gradient that would be horrific to walk up and she knows her way around pharmaceuticals so we’re looking at some real short term dividends. First hand witnesses tell me that her performance at the WAMI’s was packed to the brim and talked about through the entire conference but that’s not the evidence you need. Listen to this absolutely song here. Greg’s Discount Chemist, is Carla’s… fourth maybe (?) song so far. She dropped three in batch a year ago but this feels like her moment with a quickened influx of fans following in the track’s wake. It’s wonderfully local in its lyrics and tone, and clever in the way it delivers turn of phrase (I’ve heard she doesn’t like her own line in “wish I could kill time but times killing me” but it is, of course, excellent). When the track breaks down to that lax baseline at the 1:45 I’ll tell ya, I damn near wept out the Yakult I’d just drunk and wouldn’t that just have been a damn waste of some good probiotics? It’s so beautifully earnest and she could read me my pacemaker manual and I’d still be riveted. Viva Geneve.

B-B-BONUS BEAT! That’s right, your favourite segment is back and with it comes a remix built around that bridge bassline from the Carla Rae Jepsen track above. You don’t get this on musicfeeds, I’ll tell you that for free.

I am not coping with this Marcus Whale cover of Troye Sivan’s ‘My My My!’. Not at all. All the coins have fallen out of my pockets, my umbrella has blown inside out, my headphones have become incredibly tangled and my laces are an undone spaghetti mess. I’m a total shambles. Marcus has taken what is unarguably a monstrous pop song and amped up the monstrous to make it both melodic and crushing in the one moment. I’m almost disappointed when it ends in that I want it to billow into even thicker chunks of noise. He’s playing some shows soon and word on the street is that he might even be working on some new music or whatever I don’t know. I don’t need new music, I just need this. What a titan.

When I first heard this thing it hit me harder than the Taronga zoo branded slap bands that my daughter keeps inexplicably losing, forcing me to purchase yet more slapbands. Harder than slapbands and harder even than the recurring cost of slapband repurchase. These are zoo gift shop slapbands too, objectively the best and most expensive slapbands. Harder than that.

Not because the beat was particularly chunky, though immaculately produced by Sydney hip-hop monster (and Godriguez collaborator) Stackhat and not because that voice is weighty and beautiful both. It hit me because right from the outset, this damn song kept reminding me of my own mortality. I mean the thing opens with a ticking clock, interposed into the production throughout the track so that you might never forget your impending doom. It’s all part of the semi-nihilist tides moving beneath the song, declaring that we’re all just matter. But there’s an optimism too, signalled halfway through the song with Nardean’s laughter and the ‘that’s a good thing’ tempo change. That’s the point at which Nardean starts to paint scenes of mortal beauty, things that are lovely even if fleeting. And please do not sir even begin me about the bit where she flows upward in pitch like a reverse vocal waterfall (low gradient obvs).

It’s wonderful structure and songwriting and lyricism and vocals and production and I just don’t know if I’ve heard another Australian song of the same finished quality in 2k18. There have been some wonderful and unique artists thus far but this is a holistic monster, the real deal, every box ticked. You could submit this for a US visa and they wouldn’t even request further justification, you’d be sorted.

Don’t ask me who she is or where she’s come from, you can scope Nardean’s socials for that side o things. I’ll tell you though, her future is where I’ve cast my eyes. There’s a full LP in the works (completed even?) made possible through an Australia Council grant and I’m quietly optimistic of more as good as this.

Yesterday I found a new artist the same way I find every other new artists on this gross website- an email from my cousin who saw another local artist repost a video of the first artist covering them at a brisbane market. That’s my format right there and I refuse to discover music otherwise. They’re a duo called Elder and they’ve got just this one song called Vagabond and boy howdy, it’s a good’n.

I haven’t received a press release about it but I bet if I did it would say that it was recorded using several singular pieces of rigatoni attached by a series of well cooked linguine strands. You can hear the starch, the reduced clarity and particularly an increase in the amount of audible pasta. You’ll be thinking to yourself “well now, I haven’t before heard of a song recorded on various pastas” but I beg of you, have you ever heard a song that sounded like this? Surely not monsieur. What a strange concoction. Unpredictable vocal melodies whipping like flags in the wind of those awful (or amazing?) new wave guitar sounds. Truly friend, I must insist you explain to me from whencst a song like this comes because i need to find its parents and mall security are offering little to no assistance. Was it left here by accident? Did it grow here? From what parallel realm have you conjured those strange pipes.

There’s only one thing to do here, in a mystery such as this. Band, you will need to deliver me several of your finest mp3s for further investigation. I am officially soliciting your audio and I will report back to you, my reader friends, once I’ve collated more evidence. Meantimes, cop a download over here and have a lovely week why don’t you.