Features
New Noise: Au.Ra, Sally Seltmann, Hideous Towns, Jon Dory
By Mess+Noise
Big-dreaming pop rules this week’s roundup of new music.
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– We’ve already heard four songs from Au.Ra’s forthcoming debut LP, and now here’s a fifth. ‘Talk Show’ is six minutes of drowsy yet dancey psych-pop that could pass for Jagwar Ma at their most subdued. And lo and behold, Jagwar Ma’s Jack Freeman will join the Sydney/London duo live, along with Julian Sudek (World Champion, George Maple), as they play their first Australian shows in the coming weeks. The run of three album-preview showcases starts tomorrow (Jan 22) with a free GoodGod gig presented by M+N and also featuring Spookyland. Jane’s Lament comes out globally on March 3 through L.A. label Felte, and it’s up for pre-order now.
Thurs, Jan 22 – GoodGod, Sydney, NSW [free w/RSVP, 8pm, w/Spookyland]
Thurs, Feb 5 – 107 Projects, Sydney, NSW
Fri, Feb 6 – The Grace Darling, Melbourne, VIC
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– Sally Seltmann has started her own label, Three of Hearts, and she’s just shared the first release. It’s a single of her own titled ‘We Are the Music’, riding a stuttered hook until it brims with her usual surround-sound euphoria. “It’s where my head’s at right now,” she says in the presser. “I just want to make music that makes people happy.” Following last year’s Hey Daydreamer, the surprisingly dance-friendly new single was created in Canada and her adopted US with her husband Darren Seltmann (ex-Avalanches) and Canadian musicians Jon Lawless (Swim Good) and Aaron Mohr. Best known for her work as New Buffalo and with Seeker Lover Keeper, Seltmann will soon reissue her whole solo back catalogue via Three of Hearts. For now, you can grab the new song on iTunes.
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– We enjoyed the murky pop of Hideous Towns’ 2014 single ‘Joy’, and now we’re working our way through last October’s five-song self-titled EP, recorded at Birdland in Melbourne. The opening track, ‘Solipsism’, downplays ‘Joy’s perkiness for more of a glum meeting between post-punk and shoegaze, but the vocals and guitar lines still float with a certain delicacy of melody. Other tracks are considerably poppier, from the ballad-y highlight ‘Undone’ to the closing ‘Pets’, while ‘Devolution’ and ‘Um Expression’ evoke Lowtide and Love of Diagrams, respectively. Promising stuff, all around.
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– The latest gem from newish Thirroul label Le Boogie is the debut EP by Sydney trio Jon Dory. The four-song For Reels keeps up the fishy associations of their band name – both in its title and in Lauren Elise’s cover art – while introducing their woozy dream-pop. Recorded and mixed by Russell Webster of Shining Bird, who also plays keyboards on it, the EP has everything from likeable boy/girl vocals to shaggy, shaggy fuzz. It sounds a bit like Phil Spector producing a John Hughes soundtrack, plucking at our heartstrings while setting loose a cascade of shimmering embellishment.
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