All posts tagged ep

  • December 22, 2010

    Mess+Noise EP review: Bleeding Knees Club – ‘Virginity’, December 2010

    An EP review for Mess+Noise. Excerpt below.

    Bleeding Knees Club – Virginity

    The approach for Gold Coast duo Bleeding Knees Club is disarmingly simple, and on Virginity, their first release – five tracks, and barely 11 minutes in total – they sound simultaneously loose and confident. It works so well purely because there’s nothing else to get in the way of Alex Wall thrashing away at a shitty old drumkit while singing about his offsider being 20, him being 21, them both being drunk, and about how guitarist Jordan Malane “found my cigarettes” and “took three”. Throw in an incessantly-shaken tambourine and a harmonised vocal melody and you’ve got everything you could possibly want from a simple, dumb, awesome indie-punk tune.

    There’s a killer middle-eight in ‘Truth Or Dare’ that sounds like the wheels are about to fall off. This same sense of barely-contained enthusiasm propels Virginity along like Wall and Malane have nothing to lose.

    For the full review, visit Mess+Noise, where you can also stream the track ‘Bad Guys’. For more Bleeding Knees Club, visit their Myspace. Live footage of their song ‘Camp Out‘ is embedded below.

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  • December 2, 2010

    Mess+Noise EP review: Young Revelry – ‘You And I’, December 2010

    An EP review for Mess+Noise. Excerpt below.

    Young Revelry – You And I

    Catching Perth quartet Young Revelry on their home turf was a highlight of the recent One Movement For Music festival. Devoid of buzz or pretension, they simply climbed onto the stage, checked their instruments, then lit up the Amplifier Bar with a bottom-heavy slab of hard rock. Watching them, I couldn’t overlook similarities to youthful contemporaries like Sugar Army – whose 2009 debut remains criminally underrated – or, during their heavier moments, Violent Soho. Pleasantly, their debut EP, You And I, proves that the band can deliver both live and on record.

    Recorded with Woody Annison (Children Collide, Red Riders, Black Cab) in the Western Australian bush, You And I is a fine starting point, but it’s not going to set the world on fire. This is fine: hard rock is a difficult niche to corner here in Australia, and it seems only a handful of bands can sit atop the heap at any one time. (Dead Letter Circus – with thanks to Universal’s marketing budget – are doing their best to scale the peak in the wake of Cog stepping down. Even Sugar Army are struggling to make a dent in the genre, despite their frequent moments of brilliance.) Wisely, Young Revelry don’t seem to be in a rush.

    Full review at Mess+Noise. More Young Revelry on MySpace. The music video for the song ‘You And I‘ is embedded below.

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  • December 2, 2010

    Mess+Noise EP review: The Jezabels – ‘Dark Storm’, December 2010

    An EP review for Mess+Noise. Excerpt below.

    The Jezabels – Dark Storm

    The press release seems to want me to mention something about their age, so here goes: Sydney quartet The Jezabels are aged between 23 (singer) Hayley Mary) and 25 (drummer Nik Kaloper). Together, they write soaring, dramatic pop, so here’s where I’m meant to make some kind of comment on their maturity, and how incredible it is these young musicians are performing deep, complex, Important Music. This EP is apparently the “third and final release in a trilogy that began with 2009’s The Man Is Dead…” Alright then, moving on.

    The strangest thing about this band is that the instrumentation is essentially a blank canvas for Mary, whose voice is so urgent and alluring that you’re half-tempted to take a cold shower immediately after the disc ends. Her every yelp and note sticks in the mind, and endures; as for the instrumentation, there’s little to write home about. The band’s musical point of difference is the absence of a bass; keyboardist Heather Shannon fills out the bottom end by playing slow, deliberate chord progressions. Guitarist Sam Lockwood favours clean, feeble tones for the most part. In ‘A Little Piece’, his use of an ebow strives for that mournful, desolate soundscape feel, amid bursts of Foals-like noodling. Lockwood’s best asset as a player is knowing when to dial it back. Indeed, much of Dark Storm is characterised by a sense of space, which swells to crescendo during each chorus.

    Full review at Mess+Noise. More of The Jezabels on MySpace. The music video their song ‘Mace Spray‘ is embedded below.

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