Best Music of 2016, Part 6
It's dry season. Majors have all but shut up until post-Xmas, rolling out some Greatest Hits — or convinced a stable struggler the time is right for the long-awaited contract-obligated release — allowing some more bandwidth space for the less appreciated and spoiling us folks who lust for such.
Case in point, snuck a few in the side door of my main squeeze of late. Hat tilt to the two of the best national treasures getting themselves out there last month...
Shrapnel...
Evolving from the synth-based solo project of Day Ravies lead Sam Wilkinson, Shrapnel's 2016 incarnation is a guitar-powered beast — a fact Tranceplanetsugarmouth whole-heartedly embraces. Swansongs are aplenty as Wilkinson and company — an all-star cast that includes members of Dollar Bar, Miners, Weak Boys and Mope City — celebrate and lament in equal dosage, via mouth-contorted converse and chasers of crowd-cried choruses.
...and Thigh Master...
With the album's majority — frontman Matthew Ford's angst-edged cynicism undercutting the catchy-as-fuck and perfectly unpretentious sharehouse guitar-pop (best fused on lead single "Company") — split by venom-spitting gloom ("Brunno Brawl") and emotive strains of self-depreciation ("Hassa Been"), Early Times survives well past that first face slap of scrappy punk revelry.
Two locals that have spent a touch too long not having anything solid for me/you to sink our teeth into. Forgiven that Shraps has only been operating (in current format) for about a year, but when you're seeing these guys (quite literally) play ever weekend, it sure feels like a heavy wait.
Last month (tardy I know, but as initially disclaimered this is as much for my failing memory as your beloved Bandcamp credits) also saw some of This City's best sons, Unity Floors, capture a little bit of late-20s Sydney frustration via their cracking new smirk-and-fist-shake LP, Life Admin.
Again, with the self-quote...
Naturally, being a sum of such few components — drums, guitars and grins — calls for some requirement of inventiveness from the pair. And while 2013 debut, Exotic Goldfish Blues, glued itself to a game-plan of structuring scrappy combinations around a clear focus — Dunedin jangled hooks segmented with quotable lines from lead Gus Hunt — Life Admin finds Hunt and rhythm section, Henry Gosling, stretching out between the consistently catchy choruses with stylistical shifts (most drastically with the slightly unsettling droney organs of mid-setter "Harsh Truths") and greater poetic variation (often being both straight-forward and structurally flexible, "as they reluctantly share their drugs, now I'm giving out all the hugs, to the friends in high places").
Elsewhere, rapper Bilby's subtle stabs at Sydney (and beyond) — as well as his unique flow — are well worth the digi-bytes. As is Julia Jacklin's stunning debut — an alt-country advancement, with an isolated detachment that'll surely go under-appreciated. Possibly not as much as the long-awaited cracker from Adelaide all-rounder Liam Kenny though. Lo-lo-fi guitar rock filthier than the bathroom sink of Any Sharehouse Australia. All pissed opinions and middle-finger frustrations bottled with sum-of-less-parts spontaneity somewhat expected from a solo bedroom project.