The Underground StageEssential new music from Australia’s most exciting artists
The immaculately-named Good Pash have been a longtime favourite around these parts, and ‘Delete Me’ simply affirms all the reasons why. I could spend all day talking about their talent for balancing light and shade in their songwriting, about how this track carries you on a tide that veers between turbulent mayhem and sparkling serenity, […]
I’m absolutely not going to be the one to pronounce something so old-fashioned as a ‘scene’, but it is worth noting that in the last month we’ve had Brendan Maclean’s ‘Gemini’, we’ve had Sarah Cherlin’s ‘Small Machines‘, and now we’ve got Toogla’s ‘Bubblegum’. All three are stage-quality musical numbers masquerading as instant pop classics, and […]
This crackly little wonder comes towards the end of Jack R Reilly’s first full-length album release, ‘Middle Everything, and like much of the LP, it comes off both haunting and comforting at the same time. It’s like that nursery rhyme you remembered years later – you might have been fondly reminded of childhood but there’s […]
Representing the rich yet underexploited vein of songwriting concerned with the consciousness of bi-valve molluscs, The Double Happiness wrap up this medititaive number in some darkly piercing guitars, with shoegazey vocals swirling around turbulent rhythms. A comfortably menacing atmosphere pervades, reeling you in and then throwing you far out to sea.
New outfit Chimers crash, bang, and wallop their way into existence with this raucous debut, a heady mix of Royal Headache rawness and QOTSA intensity. Each of its parts have been stripped of their paint and pushed to their limits, leaving a concentrated blast of really bloody meaning it. An emphatic entrance.
Skyway may have only just returned from a multi-year hibernation but they’ve roared back into life with this high-velocity blast of sharply-edged punk. It’s fast and it’s loud but this is no wild haymaker, this is a series of well-aimed blows intended to inflict maximum damage. There’s just enough scream in the vocal, harmonies to […]
Scabz’ ability to chuck a sharpened penny at over-inflated egos is hurled here at the police, in a bare minute-and-a-half of contempt and pity. Frenetic, acid-tongued, and furiously mad, you’ll show up for the trademark two-liners (“I get free punching bags / activists, black kids, and fags”), but it’s also well worth hanging around for […]
More Colour’s debut record has got a scruffbag swagger that’s hard to resist, a rolling lope that’s guaranteeed to please. With a vocal that’s halfway between an operatic wail and an exhausted croak, and its spindly, spidery guitar & rhythm lines, this debut is short, sharp, and sweet all at once.
Swapping their hi-energy antics for a total change of pace, this is Cry Club doing nothing but showing off their songwriting and vocal chops. Masterfully restrained, that voice creaks at the edges with expression and range and coupled with some judicious autotune it comes off like the Disney song that Cher wishes she’d written. A […]