Ball Park Music – Spark Up!
For fans of: Beck, Primal Scream, Scissor Sisters
The chorus to Spark Up! first popped into Ball Park Music vocalist Sam Cromack’s head as he walked home one evening after a particularly energetic gig. It looped in his head for months like a mantra before becoming the basis of the first song the band recorded for their forthcoming album: the excellently titled Mostly Sunny. And it’s quite a statement. Over snake-charmer drums that conjure the same voodoo allure as Sympathy for the Devil, a technicolour blend of funk and soul, disco and rock breaks forth, echoing the dizzying, experimental highs of Odelay-era Beck, with a sweat-drenched swagger that belongs in the Hacienda. By the time the song amps up a few minutes in and Cromack is screaming at you, demanding that you change your ways, you feel like you’ve jogged up the Rocky steps.
For more: Ball Park Music’s sixth album Mostly Sunny will be out later this year.
The Avalanches – Running Red Lights ft. Rivers Cuomo and Pink Siifa
For fans of: MGMT, the Flaming Lips, Klaatu
Shimmering into focus like a 1930s Disney film intercut with wobbling sci-fi spaceship sonics, Running Red Lights offers a Sliding Doors-peek into what would have happened if Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo had followed up his 90s success by indulging weirder tendencies, instead of applying mathematics and memes in an unsuccessful attempt to calculate a hit. It’s the purest pop song either the Avalanches or Cuomo have released in years – a psychedelic tab of California sunshine. The highlight comes as the hypnotic bob of the chorus makes way for a spoken-word section by renaissance man Pink Siifu, who twists positivity out of bleak lyrics written by the late David Berman, before Cuomo leaps in with a gloriously warm outro chorus worthy of a Beach Boys greatest hits record. In an age when people are being fined for sitting on park benches, when we are locked in dark apartments with views of brick walls, this dose of summer sun seems almost cruelly mistimed.
For more: The Avalanches’ third album will be out in … 2038?
Something for Kate – Situation Room
For fans of: Powderfinger, Cheap Trick, Augie March
Something for Kate ease majestically into their first song in eight years, with raindrop piano and stately strings backing some of Dempsey’s most frustrated self-analysis to date. This is a power ballad in the very best sense of the term, the type of song that moves slowly and surely because it knows what it is building towards. But then the band holds the hook back for two long minutes, teasing something big, letting the dreamy sway push and pull you through a second verse before launching a huge sweeping chorus that sounds like Cheap Trick, like Bonnie Tyler, like every powerful anthem from every important movie moment ever. If this song came out in 1986, it would have been No 1 for half a year. As it stands, this is the perfect return for a band that somehow, after 25 years, keep sharpening their craft.
For more: Something for Kate’s seventh album will be out later this year. Until then, revisit their underrated 2012 gem Leave Your Soul to Science.
Kwame – Schleep
For fans of: Migos, Earl Sweatshirt, Swae Lee
Kwame doesn’t make his music for the radio. There are no easy hooks here, no nasal choruses sung by upcoming R&B stars, no anonymous Auto-Tune smoothing out his skills or accompanying dance moves. This is straight hip-hop, just the western Sydney MC showcasing his dexterity over a menacing, repetitive beat. Earl Sweatshirt named his most impenetrable album Some Rap Songs because he didn’t want to present it as anything further from what it was – and the same intent of purpose comes to mind when listening to Kwame rap. He isn’t chasing hits; he is making mood music, darkly stark sounds that are hypnotic, relentless and perfect for these end times.
For more: Check out Kwame’s previous single Nobody, which will feature on his forthcoming EP.
Husky – Cut Myself Loose
For fans of: Oh Mercy, Crowded House, Richard Clapton
There’s something charmingly out-of-step about the music of Husky, despite the band having ridden the same zeitgeisty wave as the likes of Fleet Foxes and Mumford and Sons, washing up with a contract with Seattle label Sub Pop. Their sound has shifted since their debut in 2012, from something steeped in Americana – everything from the aforementioned Fleet Foxes back through Simon and Garfunkel and Pete Seeger – to a wholly Australian sound, sun-warped guitars and gentle melodies. Whether this is a result of the band becoming more comfortable in their collective skins, or simply a broadening of what was always quite a broad sound, who knows – but the results are breezy, pleasing and the perfect soundtrack to an afternoon spent doing nothing much at all.
For more: Husky’s new album Stardust Blues is out 12 June.
Caiti Baker - Gasoline
For fans of: Fiona Apple, Kate Miller-Heidke, Jon Brion
The four songs on Caiti Baker’s latest EP Dust (Part 1) see the Northern Territory artist bouncing from ballads, to soul anthems, to this: an off-beat chamber pop song that takes the palette of Tori Amos and strips it of pretension, bathing it in soulful backing vocals that recall Vika and Linda’s work on many Paul Kelly classics. A moody, plonking piano walks a tightrope between quirky and ominous, and the song’s woozy rhythm and hypnotic harmonies are unsettling. At times it sounds like the piano has tripped down the stairs; at others Baker’s vocals soar like a soul singer of old. Her 2017 debut album Zinc was a striking first foray, but across four songs on Dust, she manages to exceed the lofty bar she set for herself.
For more: Dust (Part 1) EP is out now – or revisit her debut album Zinc.
RVG – Christian Neurosurgeon
For fans of: the Triffids, the Church, the Go-Betweens
There are plenty of Australian bands that combine the bookish insularity of British indie music, the suburban jangle of 80s Aussie rock, and a punkish sneer straight from CBGB’s – but Melbourne’s RVG manage to sound like they rolled out of bed and into the studio fully formed, such is the languid way this song unfolds. The wackier-than-thou title suggests a novelty song (if not quite Weird Al then at least Ben Folds), but the lyrics make a whip-smart point about blind faith, scientific method and the cognitive dissonance that comes when blending the two.The song opens with a muted, reverbed guitar part reminiscent of Another Girl, Another Planet – and as with that classic song, all you can do is try to hold on as RVG blasts into the stratosphere.
For more: RVG’s second album Feral is out 24 April.
Cub Sport
For fans of: Yeezus, U2, Pet Shop Boys
This is the most ambitious song Cub Sport have released – quite a statement given the breadth and depth of their catalogue, which includes a recent bossa nova ballad with Darren Hayes on vocals. A relentless driving rhythm is the engine behind vocalist Tim Nelson’s spoken-word confessionals, about everything from his sexuality to his bodily insecurities, through to smiling his way through a boring dinner and not really wanting to be with friends. “The lyrics flowed in a stream of consciousness and when I listened back, I realised I’d articulated lots of things I’d been avoiding saying out loud,” Nelson says in the song’s press release. The guitars are distorted to a noisy wash, and the vocals crackle like he is communicating through a CB radio before being overtaken by a robotic Auto-Tune that sounds like the most industrial, apocalyptic moments from Kanye’s Yeezus record. It’s intimate, yet otherworldly.
For more: Cub Sport’s album Like Nirvana is out 24 July.
Custard – Funky Still
For fans of: Skyhooks, the Cat Empire, TISM
This is not at all what I expected from the (latest) mighty return of 90s indie kids Custard; although their catalogue was always infused with a certain sly, ironic self-deprecation, this song is almost swallowed up by it. Funky Still sits somewhere between How Bizarre by OMC and Coffee and TV by Blur, with a brief visit from Edwyn Collins’ A Girl Like You in the chorus. The band released their “comeback” album in 2015 and another in 2017, both of which were faithful to their earlier sound – but this song feels like an outlier, with its cartoon falsetto, relentless upstrokes and ska-lite bounce. If Custard wanted to prove they are funky still, they have succeeded. If they wanted to show their canny knack for an earworm melody, that’s another tick in the box. If, however, you wanted them to sound like 90s Custard, well, those CDs are still under the bed at your parents’ house.
For more: Custard new album Respect All Lifeforms will be out 22 May.
e4444e - Wolves
For fans of: Bored Nothing, (Sandy) Alex G, the Shins
There’s a fine line between warm lo-fi bedroom pop – private universes self-recorded in a hushed manner that suggests roommates may be sleeping on the other side of a thin wall – and shitty GarageBand indulgent that is begging for a hook or a producer. Happily, Wolves lands firmly in the former category: a pocket classic that sounds emboldened by its self-imposed limitations rather than restrained by them. A calming, repetitive chorus marches along lazily to a 4/4 drum that sounds like it is covered in blankets on the floor of a wardrobe. The unpronounceable Newcastle-based artist (read name Romy Church) keeps his personable vocals front and centre for most of the track, and as the music swells around him in the dying moments, electronic squiggles of indiscernible origin snake through and slowly infect the acoustic folk song, his vocals now looped over one note, a record caught in an infinite groove.
For more: Listen to his 2019 EP highwaymusic.
