The latest offering from Bill Callaghan musically offers a mix of delicate alt.country and more experimental Velvet Undergroundesque rock meandering.  His semi-spoken vocals are fine and recall fellow 'lo-fi'ster Jim O'Rourke, who ploughs a very similar furrow when not wibbling about with electronica, and occasionally Nick Drake.  They are well suited bringing an element of doubt to the wry tales of relationships in the lyrics, which would otherwise a little too self-consciously clever for their own good ("when they make the movie of your life, they'll have to ask you to do your own stunts, because nobody can pull off the same shit as you and still come out all right...").  As with earlier albums of his this is strongest in the first half while the tunes are more consistently winning out over the rambling, but starts to peter out a bit towards the end when some of the songs could do with a prune or more of a focus.  Nevertheless fans of delicate guitar, shuffling rhythms and a slightly askew lyrical angle will find plenty here to keep them happy.  A good 'last thing at night' album.

Reviewed by Matthew H
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If the Go-Betweens sought immortality, all they had to do was avoid reforming.  That way we’d have been left with the bittersweet memory of Robert’s poetic and acerbic songs and Grant’s heart-on-my-sleeve tunes and his occasional clunky lyric and those swooning melodies in everything they did.  That way, it would have been even clearer who were the rightful ancestors of the tribe of Belle and Sebastian, the bands without an 11 on their amps but with a Beatles or Dylan or Love song on their lips.    

But after solo albums, they reformed for ‘The Friends of Rachel Worth’ in 2000 and we were all surprised and relieved that they hadn’t lost their mojo, although they perhaps couldn’t rise to the peaks of ‘16 Lovers Lane’ or ‘Tallulah…’ or ‘Spring Hill Fair’.  Now they’ve released their second-phase second album and it’s even better than TFORW, with echoes of the Go-Betweens at their best.  For a start, the guitars are as finely melodic as ever, caressing on some songs, choppy on others.  Robert is as literate as he always was, Grant just as romantic.  The band were always brilliant at filling in the spaces; where, perhaps, Amanda Brown might have added some sweet strings to latter-period Go-Betweens, now Robert and Grant grace songs like Make Her Day with wonderful keyboards touches.  

Poison In The Walls, sung by Grant, is melody laid on melody with acoustic guitars complemented by electric.  There’s that clumsy rhyme “there’s poison in the walls/ the revolution never called” but that’s as much a trait as the double ‘l’ in the album titles. 

Too Much of One Thing is Forster as Dylan, a six minute ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ like tale, while Something For Myself shows The Go-Betweens’ sometimes overlooked sense of humour as Forster sings: “want to get out of Folk and get into Rare Groove”.  For maximum jangle, you can’t beat the opener Caroline and I, with its dry yet affectionate delivery, guitar overdose and subtle piano.  

The Go Betweens play pure pop music without, paradoxically, ever being truly popular.  That will never change now but they’ve still got the power to be genuinely life enhancing for anyone with a will to listen.   And as you listen, so you’ll fall – guaranteed.    

Reviewed by Ged M
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Another Australian contender for the ‘new Vines’ title, the Sleepy Jackson produce a dreamy psychedelia that slips easily from pop to country to the experimental, and owes a debt to Sonic Youth, the Beatles and the Byrds.  The most immediate track is Good Dancers, a blissful psychedelia that combines a sugar sweet Beatles melody (think ‘Number Nine Dream’), gorgeous string arrangements and an oriental flavour that’s perfectly blended in but gives a sense of the unfamiliar at the same time.  The debt to the Beatles is acknowledged in the ‘Day Tripper’ riff that’s played out at the end of the song.  Caffeine In The Morning Sun is ‘Hey Jude’ in swing time, the accordion giving it a Cajun feel.  Miniskirt is like the Byrds in their country period, the pedal steel prominent but the sparkling pop melodies sweeping it along.  

On the evidence of this 23-minute mini album, Luke Steele has the ability to write perfect dreamadelic pop songs.  There are also fragments that might have benefited from some quality control.  Right now he’s developing a Craig Nicholls wayward genius reputation but if he can maintain his standards and his band, he’ll make music we’ll come back to again and again.  Good Dancers is a hell of a calling card.   

Reviewed by Ged M
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They’re Kerrang! darlings and the skull made up of modestly draped naked women on the cover suggests something harder than Vinny Jones in a concrete overcoat.  The rifftastic Plank of Fire or the thunderous bonus track See You Empty, with its gut-quaking bass lines, seem to confirm this post-Nirvana diagnosis.  But that guitar rush is as much Ramones as it is Guns ‘n’ Roses and Glass Slipper confirms a breath of influences.  Take a rhythm like the Saints’ ‘(I’m) Stranded’, add hoarse vocals a la Chris Applegren (The Pattern), cut out all unnecessary verses and wind it up in 1”45’ and you’ve got a crack garage tune! 

That hard rock sound is tempered by a melodic edge, redolent of Weezer at times.  On Arctic Snow, a chugging guitar riff turns into almost a Merseybeat pop chorus.  The album as a whole has an incredible riff-rate: it’s impressive till you realise that many songs are riffs first, songs later (or never).  Sometimes it’s wearing, sometimes it’s adrenalising, like the primeval, almost Sabbath-ish, riff on Stabbed In The Back of The Heart, with its treated guitar effects and the spoken word into: “You know something? You fucked me over and I’ve got a couple of words to say to you…” It exists at the crossroads where AC/DC just avoid a head-on collision with the Vines. And if you’re one of those who lift your head out of the bass bin occasionally to hear the lyrics, you might try flagging them down. 

Reviewed by Ged M
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This is switch off your mind and float downstream music, perfect for after-dark, out-of-body experiences and maybe the next big thing to come from the States.  These three blokes from Texas - Benjamin Curtis, Josh Garza and Brandon Curtis - make trippy and drone-y psychedelic noise, drawing on Brian Eno, Spacemen 3 and especially a less doomstruck Pink Floyd, with the melody machine turned to 11. 

Maybe as Texans, they write big, open landscapes.  The first Marconi’s Radio (there are two on this six track, 30-minute album) is nearly eight minutes long, a sprawling tapestry, half of which is sparse electronic drones and tinkles, like something out of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the other half a breathless, psychedelic vocal.  The other Marconi’s Radio is the album’s closer, and revisits a melody from the first part, ladening it with more and more instruments and in a steadily more manic way, until the layers collapse the song into a wonderfully untidy orchestral finale.   Songs like What Used to Be French unravel into shapes, taking minutes to coalesce from a trance-y rhythm and metronymic bass heartbeat into the “song” with its Wayne Coyne-like gruff vocal.  By contrast, Breathe is short and immediate, the dry and dusty verses building and promising till the song bursts into a flood of battered piano and woo-woo-woo-ai-ai-ai harmonies. 

It’s A Bad Wind That Don’t Blow Somebody Some Good is Pink Floyd headswapped with the Flaming Lips.  They’re so confident of the jawdropping melody that kicks in about a third of the way through the six-minute song that they tease you with steadily mounting plinking and strumming first.  Then the clashing guitars and desperately lonely vocals start and you’re just lost.  If you’ve waited thirty years to find a better record than ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ or fretted for the last year for something to replace ‘Yoshimi...’ on your stereo, the wait is over.   This is an album that gets better with each listen, that demands you select the “endless repeat” button on your stereo. 

Reviewed by Ged M
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