Some songs have the summer in them. They pulse joy right through the speakers and down into your fundamentals, adding an extra swagger in the step, making the day that little bit brighter….
Songs like (Nothing But) Flowers by the Talking Heads, Corinna by Taj Mahal or Legs of Bees by Fruit Bats. With Hope Downs (2018), Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever sustain that sweet feeling for an entire album, with more licks and hooks than a prize-winning fisherman in an ice cream eating competition.
Formed in Melbourne in 2013, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever had released two fantastic EPs (Talk Tight (2014), The French Press (2017)) by the time their debut album Hope Downs came along. It is intricate, fist-pumping, and sun-drenched, and feels like it could have been released at the crest of 80s New Wave snuggled next to The Orange Juice, The Bible, or fellow Antipodeans Men At Work…without the jagged 80s paranoia.
Liam Judson produced the record and knows exactly how to work with the band to squeeze out exactly the right sound for their tight, intuitive tunes. He strips away some of the more echoey, jangly aspects of the first two EPs and layers on just the right amount of production to make the record a warmer, fuller affair. An album that reflects the feel of the hot expansive Australian skies it was recorded under. A sound robust enough to fill every inch of the desolate mine from which the album took its title.
An Air Conditioned Man kicks off the proceedings with both boots, it's like opening the door to a party in full swing. As a statement of intent, it’s up there with Red Morning Light on Kings of Leon’s first album as a perfect track 1 side 1. Rolling Blackouts C. F. are certainly not backwards in coming forwards and the first four songs rip along making more than good on the promise of the first track.
Joe Russo provides a deft, driving bass while Marcel Tussie is the metronomic thumping core of each song. The two provide a tight insistent foundation for the band, which allows the three guitarists of the group the room to swell and writhe in and out of each other to their heart's content. Yes, three lead guitarists/vocalists…which sounds like a recipe for a somewhat unfocused, crowded record, but Fran Keaney, Tom Russo, and Joe White don’t ever clash, or overindulge - they just perfectly and instinctively work with each other. It’s like being serenaded by some kind of guitar-Shiva.
The band have an innate understanding of exactly how and when to compliment each other, when to take a back seat, and when to let loose - it’s a dynamic, hypnotic mix and at times teeters deliciously on the edge of psychedelia. It’s an incredible achievement to have this many guitars playing together and to have them all sound totally essential, and it brings to mind the perfect partnerships of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd of Television, or Gary Louris and Mark Olson of The Jayhawks. That dynamism is not limited to the guitar playing alone, but is evident in the composition of every track, and the way the album plays out as a whole.
The heady double whammy of Mainland and Time In Common (we dare you to listen to it without thinking ‘Tiny Colin’) teeter on a precipice of swirling euphoria, then the brakes are deftly applied for Sister’s Jeans. It heralds a calmer, more reflective section of the album ‘When your heart aches and your morning breaks/by the TV on your own/And your hollow hand on a cold can/you're rising like a stone’. The wistfulness, regret and emptiness hinted at amongst the delirium of the opening songs comes more to the front, but this never dulls the ‘no worries’ optimism of the record. The sheer joy in the way each song is played ensures that fist-pump feeling is never far from erupting.
Exclusive Grave and The Hammer bring back the delirium to round off the album in the manner the band started it, and will have you ready to hit play all over again. They are a couple of bona fide anthems, fit for shouting from the back seat of a car hurtling through the sun-beaten Australian expanse, on its way to something brighter. ‘Or you can sever/soar to the heavens/Take a loan out/pay it back whenever‘.
So whatever the season, invite some summer into your ears, and warm your bones with 35 minutes of bliss, courtesy of Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever.
This review is fully independent and the view expressed here is our own. Other views are available from other writers in other publications. x