New Stuff Round-Up March:
Night People / Australasia Special.

A lot of my musical discovering this month has taken place via the auspices of a (legally) downloaded compilation tape put out by the Iowa based Night People label. Probably best-known at this stage for releasing the first few Peaking Lights records, they’ve also knocked out a herculean number of low-numbered tape releases over the past couple of years, featuring an applaudably wide stylistic/geographical spread of under-the-radar groups.

Reeling in what I assume to be one track a piece from each band/artist associated with the label, NP’s ‘Dada Damage’ comp is a mixed bag for sure, opening with a whole bunch of songs I’m not that bothered about (‘god-help-us-if-there’s-a-war’ style wimpy electro-pop, dead-eyed ‘80s fancy dress, etc) and closing with a whole bunch of songs I’m not too bothered about (murky ‘triangle time’ hyponogogery of an unappealing hue, etc). Wedged in the middle though is a solid kernel of utter greatness, ready for the intrepid explorer to seize and make off with, pursued by rolling boulders and angry, keytar-wielding natives.

That said kernel intersects almost exactly with the point at which the Night People roster verges onto recognisable indieish-rock with guitars and live drums is, I would like to think, mere coincidence, and has nothing whatsoever to do with my own prejudices and hardwired cultural expectations. I mean, that would just be silly, right? Clearly the rockier stuff on here is just objectively better. If we were still living in the glory days when up & coming independent labels could conceivably have staff and resources, I’d picture a bunch of genre-specialist A&R people sitting in Night People’s swanky offices, with the indie-rock guy just totally wired all day, MAKIN’ IT HAPPEN, whilst the others slouch around half-asleep. More likely, Night People is just one guy in a college dorm or something, but who knows, maybe his/her brain is stratified in equivalent fashion?

Anyway, enough of that. This Night People comp has introduced me to more solid stuff than any label sampler in recent memory, rendering blog snark and obtuse speculation as to the compiler’s psychological make-up wholly unnecessary.

It’s also interesting to note that, despite NP being US based, ALL of my favourite tracks on the tape originate from Australia or New Zealand. It’s not my place to speculate on who made the connection, but it sounds like it’s working out pretty damn well for both continents. Good work, Night Peoples!



First up, Wellington, NZs Terror Of The Deep verily knocked me out with their ‘I Am Ocean’, a real dose of what passes for that ol’ time religion for us frail slobs raised on K Recs and Sonic Youth. Sounding not unlike a happy, upbeat version of The Embarrassment, or a slightly less ethereal early Chills track, it carries that same unquenchable optimism that propelled the latter to great heights. The rush of a new, creative band simply *happening*, the kind of indie-rock that makes you temporarily forget what a festering cesspool indie rock is and just smile in fleeting amazement. A smashing tune.

There is definitely a Flaming Lips comparison to be made vis-à-vis Terror Of The Deep’s capacity for being earnest without sucking – the hardest game in town just at the moment I feel. Investigating further via their Bandcamp, they do sadly fall victim to the usual pitfalls of earnestness – long songs, under-developed rhythms, over-developed sleeve notes. But the unflappable NZ demeanour and Chillsian shine often sees ‘em through, and when the singer exclaims “ I believe in time travel!” on ‘Here and Now’, it almost cuts through my cynicism. Almost. My patronising talent show advice: there’s something good transpiring here, but you need to edit and compress the material fellas – edit and compress, and give the drummer something to work with while yr at it.





Even better, ‘Footscray Station’ by the curiously named Scott & Charlene’s Wedding will knock your fucking socks off if you feel any kinship at all with the mighty, bedraggled rust-belt blues embodied by Dead Moon’s ballads, Cheater Slicks circa ‘Forgive Thee’ or any gang of stranded mechanics who’ve ever assembled in a shed to distil ‘Tonight’s The Night’/’Darkness on the Edge of Town’ grandeur into a bullshit-free nugget or two of overdriven blurt that’s never going to get anywhere near a radio, even if it sounds like it was composed and performed in close proximity to one... if you get my drift. Rock n’ roll always has this great capacity for taking someone’s howl of complaint at being in a place they don’t want to be and spinning it out into a kind of transcendence that we who are in the place we wanna be can scarcely even imagine. And that’s what’s happening here.

A self-described artist/musician based somewhere between Adelaide, New York and Melbourne, I’d take main guy Craig Dermody’s lyrical declaration that he’s “still drivin’ trucks” with a pinch of salt, but that he’s “makin’ no bucks” would sadly seem like a given. The Scott & Charlene’s Wedding LP ‘Para Vista Social Club’ – an excellent, if slightly overwhelming, listen throughout – was released in a long sold-out run of 200 copies, each housed in a one-off charity shop sleeve, modified by Dermody with images of witches, monsters and other such paraphernalia. Wrecking a copy of ‘Liege and Lief’ seems a bit beyond the call of duty, but nonetheless, the results look amazing – check ‘em out - and if you only hit one button today, make it 'play' on the track below.




‘I Don’t Care To Try’ by Melbourne’s Mole House is another ‘Dada Damage’ highlight, bringing some heavy Messthetics vibes with its searching bass, hesitant guitar and a drummer who completely fails to find a rhythm. All anchored by the male vocalist’s plaintive croon, it sounds kind of like an early line-up of The Go-Betweens playing whilst under the influence of heavy sedatives. Works for me! In fact if more of the things that get labelled ‘indie-pop’ incorporated the kind of right wrong directions taken in the second half of this song, I’d be a happy man.

The songs on their bandcamp (not including the one on the tape, sadly) are even more wrecked, verging on complete loss-of-all-motor-functions un-musical disintegration in places, but are all the better for it in a weird sort of way – as intricate and inexplicably charming as a band called ‘Mole House’ rightly should be, like three creatures slowly building a new language from scratch so that they can communicate their love for each other.



Check it out, Mole House in action!




Even more fantastically wonky, home-recorded guitar pop comes next, from Adelaide’s Peak Twins. Their passive-aggressive ‘Your Love’ kinda sounds like I always hoped Sebadoh might sound, before I actually heard them. Even more pleasingly (to me at least), many of the songs on their Bandcamp branch out further, taking a winningly psychedelic direction, with neat vocal harmonies and a great, low-key reverb-loaded production, emerging with something not unlike The Beets pretending to be The Brian Jonestown Massacre (christ, there’s a thought for you).

Such alarming notions aside, songs like ‘Waiting Room’ and ‘Sylvias’ are genuinely magnificent efforts; melancholy, slurred bits of crystalline bother that - like all the groups I’ve written up in this post, actually – evoke a kind of clear-eyed purpose and skyscraping scope that raises them above and beyond the kind of aimless, self-absorbed moping that the surface signifiers of this-kinda-thing would tend to imply. Brilliant cover of ‘Needles & Pins’ too. Really special.



And there’s plentiful non-Australasian good stuff on the tape too of course: Lantern’s beautiful hypnotic guitar strum/drone thing, Sore Eros soundin’ a lot better than they did on that Hozac 7” I reviewed a while back, China's Xaio Hong & Xaio Xaio Hong creeping around all abstract and unnerving, and a better class of hyponogogical ‘80s dress-up altogether from Featureless Ghost. Happy days.

Info on all Night People releases and a free download of the ‘Dada Damage’ tape can be found here:

http://raccoo-oo-oon.org/np/

Labels: Australia, Mole House, New Zealand, Night People label, Peak Twins, Scott and Charlene's Wedding, Terror of the Deep