The Underground Stage
Nine studio albums, two Grammies, two Brit Awards, and a quarter-century into a hugely influential career, The National are bringing their potent mix of soaring song and ruthless introspection to the ICC Sydney Theatre over two nights in March. The band that helped spur a thousand others – the xx, Arcade Fire, and Fleet Foxes […]
Pop Will Eat Itself, madcap and genre-fluid, first got together in 1986 in Stourbridge, England. With ten-ish proper albums (plus a bunch of other live and compilation records) now under their belt, their three-plus decades in the game has seen them inspire many, yet rarely be precisely emulated. While never achieving significant commercial success, their […]
“Both capping off a run of excellent singles and kicking off her ‘Final Girl’ album, this synthy banger moves with light feet despite the weight of the melancholy it carries. It’s a little bit tear-stained, but it’s still dancing its bloody socks off 💃”
“Emotive and atmospheric, this mostly acoustic track soars as much as it sears, a jaunty and rippling little number that hides its scars well. It’s a beautiful (and beautifully sung) song that packs a punch, and it’s the contrast that makes it work, salted caramel for the soul🧂”
Telenova nabbed the most adds on the best Australian new music playlists this week with their latest track ‘Teardrop’. Interestingly, they have consistently been among the most widely-supported artists over the last two years, with only Phoebe Go and King Stingray getting wider backing across the lists I track. Now freshly-signed to EMI / Fiction […]
“The focus track from their excellent ‘New Modern Architecture’ album, there’s a glorious and snarling sense of freedom here, a wild and untethered sound designed to smash shackles and let loose. Fans of Royal Headache will recognise the rush, but everyone who’s ever felt tied down will feel it, deep in the bones 🔓”
“Rapid-fire and breathless, The Wolston Butchers race around like giddy loons on ‘Coz We’re High’, a track that morphs between skate-punk speed to hair-metal lines, often within the same sentence. Bags and bags full of pharmaceutical fun 💊”
“Neighbourhood Void stomp into view with their latest, towering and unstoppable hammer blows smashing things up with metronomic precision. As always, the lyrics crack and splinter with the weight of doubt and anxiety, but – again, as always – the music is enough to pull us all together 🔨”
“Prowling between the twin electrified fences of Tricky’s ‘Black Steel’ and The Chats ‘Drunk N Disorderly’, this is a brilliant bag of trouble filled with a ragged, flapping bass and some rapid, rough bars. It’s a massive thrill, and its chorus-closing phrase “rowwwwdyyyy, oath” is both a crowd-sized chant and a two-word review wrapped into one 💣”