No Through Road

Can any indie band in the land lay a hand on No Through Road? Their skinny white asses may not win in a headbutt fight, but in the shouty guitar slingery grudgematch they'd kick yours and your mothers. And they're from Adelaide too, my hometown, so i'm rooting for them. In the American sense yo.

The group, led by self proclaimed 'Slacker King' Matt Banham, have mutated into quite the shock-and-awe rock force, some miles away from the Oberst-esque folk wrangling of his early recordings. Now there's more of a Bob Pollard swagger and punch, with the spit and bile of early Constantines or fellow convicts The Drones. Its party music. For thoughtful tough guys and hard drinkin' geeks.

Winner, the new album from No Through Road, is released through Melbourne label Low Transit Industries on April 25th, with a corker hometown show in Adelaide is planned for May 9th at The Metro featuring Wagons, Sea Thieves and Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! Check their websites for more details, free music and links to their myspace and stuff. Below is the video for the latest single from the new album "Party to Survive" but there's even better songs on the album. Truly.

Leader Cheetah

A couple of years ago, when I presented a radio program called Local and/or General on Triple R, I got sent some great tunes by an Adelaide indie group called Pharoahs. I also saw them play in Melbourne and was suitably impressed by their swagger and repertoire. They've since called it a day (although they still exist on myspace), but from the ashes now grows Leader Cheetah, a band quickly gathering the kind of hype and hubbub that the Pharoahs could never quite attain.

The sound is, not too surprisingly given current trends, more 70s folk-rock inspired, shifting away from Pharoah's indie-disco abrasiveness. Less angles, more widescreen perhaps. Leader Cheetah have supported Dinosaur Jr and Blonde Redhead in their very short time together and are featuring on the upcoming Laneway Festival too. Their debut was recorded by legendary US producer Kramer, who worked on all of Galaxie 500's classic albums. Its called 'The Sunspot Letters' and is released in February through Spunk Records.

I'm actually quite excited by this band, and while we wait for the album, here's Leader Cheetah's clip for "Blood Lines":

Clue to Kalo

Fans of psychadelic pop-electronica can rejoice with the release of the new album by Adelaide's Clue To Kalo. Mark Mitchell anc co. have crafted a joyful, technicolour concept album centred around a fictional character, Lily Perdida, with each song being sung by a different figure in Lily's life.

Although we never hear from Lily Perdida herself, Mark told online music site Mess and Noise:

"It was kind of like the idea of a portrait which acknowledged that no portrait of someone is ever going to be accurate. So I thought that a good way to do that is to actually never even hear from the character, never really have any idea about this character, except through all these different perspectives of what this one character is, which essentially is as close as you can really ever get anyway.”

The full article is worth reading, and you can hear the new music from Clue to Kalo's Lily Perdida on myspace. The album is out through Mush Records.