Down Sounds: May 2010

Sydney’s RIP Society Records has already been mentioned a couple of times since The Breakdown began running a monthly music wrap-up at the start of the year, and the tiny label just seems to be gathering pace. Mostly because it has released some of the most interesting and unpretentious new Australian music of the last six months or so, and partly in the last month because of Sydney band Royal Headache (pictured), who seem to have become the next Aus band everyone’s championing for ‘overseas success’ and who released their first 7” through RIP Society at the end of March. (That’s another reason RIP are doing well – the 7” is well and truly ‘back’ and the label has a good handle on making them available, well priced and nicely homemade-looking.)

The Royal Headache 7” has apparently been selling well, even outside of Sydney, where they’re still ‘lesser known’, and for good reason: it’s four great, scrappily laid down garage soul songs, catchy enough not to be too art-space-exclusive, rough enough not to be ‘60s-revival naff. RIP Society also just last week released the debut LP from Sydney’s Dead Farmers, titled Go Home, which excellently captures their garage blues punk ruckus – it’s all drunken yelling and guitar bashing, made somehow more wild by serpentine riffs somewhere off to the side. Good stuff. They’re away from home this month so check out their tour dates.

To other releases, Brooklyn’s The National have finally released a new single, Bloodbuzz Ohio, the first output from their High Violet album, which is out next week through 4AD/Remote Control, and it’s an awesome indication of the weight of the record (promotional copies have been circulating). It’s nothing fans of the band’s Boxer album won’t be familiar with – ominous drums, trembling guitar reverberations, bar-room piano, but Matt Berninger’s voice has been recorded better than it ever has, and the sound is absolutely massive. I can’t decide whether the idea of being “on a bloodbuzz” is disturbing or appealing, though.

Liberation have been the label to pick up Violent Soho’s self-titled album, the record being the Brisbane group’s first longplayer for the US market via Thurston Moore’s Ectstatic Peace! label following their self-released We Don’t Belong Here album in Aus. It’s a large portion of that album with a few song replacements, produced by Gil Norton to become something akin to The Vines’ first record: a slick but wonderfully sharp-sounding and cohesive string of well-written rock songs.

Melbourne’s Sally Seltmann and Rat Vs Possum released very different but similarly oddly-comforting albums, both of which I’ve probably been on about enough so won’t go into. Brisbane’s Disco Nap, led by Ross Hope from Bris heroes Iron On, put out a killer shady indie pop single, The Soft Sell, quickly picking up national radio play and making a trip south to launch it. It’s so good to hear Hope’s voice on record again, and this outfit will hopefully get more people onto his honest, ‘90s-bent tones.

Sydney’s Parades released their debut album, Foreign Tapes, through Dot Dash/Remote Control. It’s been since the tidal wave of the mid-2000s that an ‘indie rock’ sound (in the English sense) found exciting, dynamic songs, and there seems no reason why they shouldn’t become one of the next festival season’s local highlights – their live show more than holds up to the strong production of the record.

Speaking of the UK, Archie Bronson Outfit followed up their brilliant 2006 album Derdang Derdang (you know, it had that song from Skins that everyone was obsessed with for ages on it) with the, for some reason, fairly lightly welcomed Coconut through Domino/EMI. Perhaps four years is too long now to hold off on another record release, but the album is certainly worth a listen, taking them further into hip-swinging Happy Mondays phrasing and tropical percussion. Another act who’ve headed further into mushroom-dancefloor territory are High Places, their latest album High Places Vs Mankind (through Popfrenzy) far more solid and melody-driven than previous output. Domino, though EMI, has also just reissued Galaxie 500’s Today, On Fire and This Is Our Music records with extra discs of live and ‘uncollected’ material – wipe a few days off your calendar for that one.

And the I’m-late-to-the-game band of the month are Cults, whose Go Outside track of hand-holding, sepia-toned field-pop has had a bit of love on the net but who no one seems to know anything about. Check them out for Kool-Aid-swilling goodness.