Features
New Noise: Au.Ra, Mornings, Poster Boy, The Wrong Man
By Mess+Noise
Sydney (via London), Canberra and Brisbane are all represented in this week’s roundup of new music.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
– “They don’t come around no more,” repeats ‘Spare the Thought’, the new single from Au.Ra. That very sentiment could apply to the Sydney duo, who relocated to London before we’d hardly gotten to know them. But it seems the move was for the best, as they’ve racked up 4,000 Soundcloud plays for the sloshing, insistent tune in under four weeks. It’s half of a double-A-side 7” on European label LebensStrasse Records (Run DMT, The Babies), the other half being last year’s ‘Sun’, for which there’s an appropriately hazy video. Sweetly wavering reveries, both of them.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
– Despite being mostly instrumental, Canberra quartet Mornings embrace vocals on certain tracks of their debut album Guilty, which came out in July through local label Cinnamon Records. Take the opener ‘Mask’, for instance, or the single ‘Lioness’. It follows a self-titled 2011 EP on hellosQuare, which, like the album, is up for free download. Recorded and mixed by frontman Jordan Rodger, the record nods openly to Fugazi, Slint and other prickly indie guitar heroes. And yet Rodger’s alternately delicate and anguished delivery adds a proto-emo earnestness that humanises the songs in which he steps to the mic.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.][Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
– Melbourne synth masseuse Poster Boy relishes off-kilter layers and the daggy spectre of his confessed influences Peter Gabriel, Pet Shop Boys and Prince on his self-titled EP. If canned horn sections and overheated come-ons are your thing, this is pretty much a goldmine. Start with the super-sensual, gender-bending video for ‘Dance With Me’ and proceed to said EP, available as a signed and hand-packaged 100-run CD-R with above cover art by Cameron McRae. There’s not a lot of other information on the guy, apart from this cryptic snippet from the bio: “Poster Boy is the epitome of beauty; his voice, spoken through not only the mouth but also the fingers, a voice of truth and sincerity.”
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.][Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
– Brisbane label Swashbuckling Hobo have been on a monster roll lately, and they’re continuing it with a five-way launch party celebrating a Gravel Samwidge 12” and 7”s from Lovely Legs, The Dangermen, Stink Bugs and The Wrong Man. Check out the 99-second ripper ‘Vindictimised’ below from the latter guitar/drums duo. It’s off said 7”, which follows a recent six-song self-titled tape on Long Gone. The launch, meanwhile, is dubbed Hobo Town and goes down Saturday, December 14 at The Underdog (a.k.a. The Step Inn) in Brisbane. It’s $12 from 7pm, with Flying Sorcerer DJing between bands and pop-up shops from label/distros Conquest of Noise and Eternal Soundcheck. Sounds like a night to remember.
+