The Underground StageEssential new music from Australia’s most exciting artists
Lo’s latest captivates and ensorcells, a heart-achingly pretty object filled with sorrow. With only a few ingredients – voice, guitar, lashings of reverb – it illuminates the sky, and sets sheets of light flashing across the inside of your eyeballs. A crushingly beautiful song.
These New South Whales crash back into view with a curled lip and a point to make. ‘Broken System’ marches with its placard high, taking on the myriad issues of the world today with a series of kidney punches and high tackles. Everything about this record is hacked off, disgust seeping from every pore – […]
Sarah Wolfe’s demented take on pop is on full, retina-scalding display on her latest, a thumping and martial stomp that pounds you into giddy submission. The relentless and determined march of the rhythms here fuel a wild-eyed take on the standard heartbreak story, and turns it into something considerably more day-glo. Pop music for people […]
Yeah, I know – everyone’s writing a COVID number, right? This one stands out though – while it’s another absolute head-thumper and full to the brim of DFT’s signature massive song, every single ingredient here is of a band just screaming out for help. Taken from their ‘Whatever Happens’ EP the opening lyric is smart […]
For fans of mid 00s Scottish indie rock, HighSchool’s references to We Were Promised Jetpacks will bring back happy memories here, especially of the “I’m young again” lyrical refrain of ‘Quiet Little Voices’. This is no throwback though, there is a thoroughly modern sheen that glistens across the surface here just as Smiths-y guitars, Strokes-y […]
Elizabeth Fader’s appeal has always lain in her ability to make frosty cool songs bubble with warmth, and ‘Lost In The Middle’ is no expection. While her latest tumbles along like ice cubes on glass, underneath it’s once again powered by a thermal wellspring of intensity and strength. The fact it sounds like an unheard Fleetwood […]
Bucolic and warmly-lit, Gimmy Flowens debut floats in like dust on a ray of sunlight. Delicate and airy, the vocal trembles with as much twang as the guitars, and while the song is so laid back it barely has a tempo, it’s enough to settle the heartrate and calm the breath in your body. A […]
Longtime favourites round here, Shaky Handz are the lo-fi racket to properly soundtrack a world in chaos. Taken from their latest tape (split with Bozos), this – like most of their tracks, it’s less than two minutes long – shows up, explodes in a shower of fuzz and lightly-rehearsed arty fun, and promptly leaves before […]
Two Last Names are three songs deep into their recorded material, and so far haven’t put a damn foot wrong. They may be a band born into the pandemic – all we have to go on are these recordings – but there are few bands, pandemic or no, that I’ve been so desperate to see […]