Mum Smokes

I'm spending my Sunday with the incredible new double album from Melbourne indie quartet Mum Smokes. Easy/House Music is as close to perfect as anything else released this year, overflowing with brainy-pop and smooth jazzy-indie. Artist Mark Rodda also created the cover art and the band is Jonathan Michell from The Ancients, Karl Scullin of KES, Julian Patterson of Minimum Chips and Justin Fuller of ZOND are Mum Smokes and they launch their double CD in Melbourne on June 26 at The John Curtin Bandroom in Carlton with supports Fabulous Diamonds & White Woods. More dates and tunes on their myspace page and they release through Sensory Projects. Check out their video below which was also created by Mark Rodda.

The Rectifiers and The Sun Blindness

Sensory Projects, the excellent independent Melbourne label, has been busy releasing two of the most interesting and satisfying local releases of the year so far. The Rectifiers new long-player Playtime for John Mountain finds the band at their most confident and articulate, shedding most of the alt-country baggage (much like Wilco before them) and further embracing the more experimental and widescreen-pop vision started with their prevoius effort Wear The Weight of the Resting Sky.

The record, like the most recent by Clue to Kalo, can be thought of as a 'concept' album, as the band told Mess and Noise:

“We wanted it to be kind of pastoral,” says Jo, “it’s sort of about nature and we also wanted to find new topics and things to write songs about, lyrically. So we ended up creating a really bizarre little set of characters and fed that into the album so there’s recurring themes and characters and stuff like that, and none of it really makes sense.” Says Nick, “We were trying to sort of, almost do a children’s album, just happy, not about ourselves. We didn’t want to say, ‘I’m so sad’ or whatever. Taking it completely out of that singer-songwriter kind of confessional. So the way that we approached was just by creating scenarios and little stories and that’s why it was fun because we’d just sit here drinking beers and just going, this song, what’s this song about – well obviously it’s about a dog with a blue nose. And none of that ever gets to the final kind of cut, but just the process was like you know just completely surreal and ridiculous.” full article

Playtime for John Mountain is being launched by The Rectifiers tomorrow night (Friday 19th September) at The Northcote Social Club. More details on shows and links to tunes on their myspace.



Also coming out on Sensory Projects is the debut for local duo The Sun Blindness, which is a more psychadelic, shoegazery affair. Think Spacemen 3 or the woozy, acid tones of early Stone Roses. The guys launch their record at the Northcote Social Club on September 26. Check out some of their great tunes on myspace.

Port O'Brien and The Tigers

photo by Daniel Arnold

I've spent the afternoon listening to Californian group Port O'Brien which I found through the excellent alt-country lovin' blog Hear Ya. They're one of many bands heading for SXSW this March, and their album of 2007 The Wind And The Swell might have to move up to the top of my 'must buy' list. They mix up sweet acoustic ditties like Five and Dime with campfire sea-shanties like I Woke Up Today. In fact the latter had me thinking they sound like a cross between Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and the DIY-choir aesthetic found on the late-career records from Disaster Plan. The well respected Melbourne group plied their trade in the late 90s/early 2000s, but are sadly no more, with Richard and Mick having hung up their guitars not long after the group's 7th album 'Reality Correctors One Through Twelve' came out through the fab indie label Sensory Projects.


THE TIGERS... photo by Piano Trackiofakis

Speaking of Sensory Projects, they've recently released the new record for The Tigers, a perth outfit who've been fairly quiet since their sublime 2002 release Christmas Album. The latest is called Beautiful Forest and is available in shops or via iTunes through Intertia Distribution. I might try to include something from it in my upcoming podcast.