Tag: Melbourne Music Week

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Aussie Punk Outfit CLAMM Wrestle with Impatience and Yearning in “Something New”

With the release of 2020’s full-length debut Beseech Me, the Melbourne-based punk outfit CLAMM — Jack Summers (vocals, guitar), Maisie Everett (bass, backing vocals) and Miles Harding (drums, backing vocals) — quickly exploded into national and international punk scenes. Originally released by the band on cassette, the album received airplay and praise from Aussie radio stations 3RRR and FBi. Reissued by UK-based label Meat Machine last year, the album earned best punk nods from the likes of Spin, Bandcamp Daily and KEXP.

Adding to a growing profile, the band has played with Wolf Alice, Civic, Amyl & The Sniffers, The Chats, Vintage Crop, and The Murlocs — and they’ve made their way across the Aussie festival circuit with stops at Boogie Festival, Melbourne Music Week, and Meadow.

The rising Aussie punk rock band’s sophomore album Care was released last week through Chapter Music globally — with the exception of the UK, Europe and Asia, where it was released by Meat Machine.

Recorded during any free moment they had last year in one of the most locked down cities in the world, the band’s sophomore album was tracked at Rolling Stock Recording Rooms and Sound Park Studios with Nao Anzai. The album also features Anzai playing synth — and he has joined the band on stage at recent shows. Mangelwurzel‘s Anna Gordon (sax) contributes sax on a number of the album’s songs.

Care, much like its predecessor sees the band exploring the confusion — and perhaps seeming hopelessness — of being a young person trying to live an honorable life in a fucked-up, mad world. Thematically, their songs are frequently about trying to navigate systems of power and oppression while retaining a healthy sense of self and mental health. Community, creativity and catharsis are what they hope to achieve through their work.

Care‘s third and latest single “Something New” is an urgent, mosh pit friendly ripper centered around enormous power chords and thunderous drumming, propulsive basslines paired with rousingly cathartic hooks and choruses, Summers’ urgent, yearning delivery and some sax wailing from Anna Gordon. The song manages to capture and evoke youthful impatience, the subtle and creeping recognition of mortality just over your shoulder, and the yearning desire for meaning and peace in such a mad, fucked up world in a visceral way — so visceral that it hurts, because we’ve all been there. Or maybe we’re still there despite age and perceived wisdom.

“‘Something New’ is a song about searching or yearning,” CLAMM’s Jack Saunders explains. “It is about impatience and time, and its title refers to the process of facing seemingly new stimuli throughout life.”

Frequent visual collaborator Oscar O’Shea directed the accompanying video for “Something New.” Shot on Kodak film, the video follows the members of CLAMM storming around Melbourne and its surroundings, starting with a house near the train line, a lakefront, an abandoned warehouse and the beach with the city just over the horizon.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Melbourne’s Pillow Pro Teams Up with Endless Prowl on a Multi-Dimensional Journey

The rising Melbourne-based electro pop duo Pillow Pro — Christobel Elliot and Jude Mills — burst onto Melbourne’s music scene with their 2015 self-released, self-titled debut EP, which quickly established their unique production style and sound: thick bass lines, ethereal harmonies and intertwining vocals. Adding to a growing profile, the rising Aussie electro pop duo have played sets at Gaytimes Festival, Melbourne Music Week, Wetfest, Listen Out and Scienceworks — and they’ve shared stages with Divide and Dissolve, Oscar Key Sung, HTML Flowers and others.

The duo’s highly anticipated full-length debut Forever is slated for a June 3, 2021 through Dinosaur City Records. The album’s latest single “Lucky” is a brooding yet club friendly bop featuring Endless Prowl, centered around skittering beats, wobbling and shimmering synth arpeggios and achingly plaintive vocals. And while the song strikes me as a retro-futuristic take on Larry Levan-era house, the song as the duo explains “is about love and lust and the insecurities and vulnerabilities that come with strong, strong feelings. It’s about being honest with yourself about how you feel.”

Created by Endless Prowl’s Dan Ford, an acclaimed multimedia artist and game designer, follows two young people who develop and maintain a connection through the internet, where they exist together in an Avatar-like dream world. Beginning with footage originally shot and edited by Ford in his studio, he then developed the characters in the artists’ likenesses and created a virtual world. The cuts between real life footage and virtual reality wind up creating a mind-bending multi-dimensional experience.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Describing themselves as five dickheads from Melbourne, Australia‘s real Wild West, the suburban town of Werribee, the up-and-coming garage rock quintet Auntie Leo & The Backstabbers, comprised of Dillon Melita (vocals, guitar, harmonica), Kole Karavias (guitar), Cameron McNish (bass), Marcus Melita (drums) and Dean Zitter (keys, percussion) can trace their origins to two rather serendipitous but very real events — exhausted from being kept awake all night by a mutual friend watching the classic Western The Good, The Bad and The Ugly at full volume, the band unintentionally formed when a misplaced tobacco pouch accidentally left on the roof of their car an later found again on the side of Great Ocean Road on their way home wound up becoming the inspiration for their first demo, “Choice Blues.”

Since then, the band released their critically applauded Wet Brain EP, which they supported with opening spots for Amyl & The Sniffers, Regurgitator, Tired Lion, Hiatus Kaiyote’s Nai Palm, Drunk Mums, Mesa and The Bennies, as well as a set at Melbourne Music Week. Building upon a growing profile, the members of Auntie Leo & The Backstabbers recently released the “Roaches”/”Down” 7 inch, which they’ll support with their first ever headlining national tour of Australia. “Roaches,” the A side single is a sleazy surf rock meets garage rock meets psych rock track that sounds as though it could have been released in 1964 — while simultaneously inspired by JOVM mainstays Crocodiles. Centered by jangling guitar chords, a propulsive rhythm and a stomping and a dance floor friendly hook, the song was inspired by an ill-fated trip to the beach in which an unusually high volume of dead cockroaches washed ashore and ruined what had been an otherwise nice day. The B side “Down,” is a bluesy stomper, centered by wailing harmonica, and looping 12 bar blues guitar. Sonically “Down” bears an uncanny resemblance to L.A. Woman-era The Doors but with a sleazy, boozy air — just how I love it.