Red On White – North Geelong
Like a kiss or a punch to the head, rock n’ roll is the kind of thing that either you feel deeply, or it never happened. Don’t let anyone fool you by telling you about how they’re trying to quote 80s dance music or approximate the sounds of the future. Don’t let anybody trick you when they tell you that they’re playing is so subtle and classy that it is practic ally inaudible inside of the mix.
Nah, don’t even trust Mr. Fender and Mr. Les Paul. They built their guitars and priced them so you’d have to work double shifts at the local burger joint to ever have a hope of buying them. But nowadays, every guitar company strings a bunch of wires across some wood and waits for the right guitarist to make it all sound like a riot.
Finally, don’t trust people who tell you that listening to rock n’ roll ought to be a chore. Red On White are charming, hyped out and would like to drill a hole through your speaker if you let ‘em. “North Geelong” is Australian rock n’ roll that sounds as dangerous as the country’s wildlife and roads. Yeah, there’s plenty of fun and play around here, but it’s the kind of ideas that end up with a baby being dangled in front of the mouth of a dingo. Red On White got the right idea, alright, and they won’t need corporate sponsorship to confirm it.
TWÏNS – Love, Third Variation
The past is in the past. And good riddance! If you are able to read this, chances are that you’ve made it through safely. Now that it’s all gone, why spend all your time reflecting on things that can no longer be changed?
Because the past is safely tucked away, it’s likely that it’ll contain a blinding glow. That’s natural! You’re seeing it from afar. Objects observed from a distance are often distorted. The things we can no longer have are the most appealing.
There’s a certain sound of the past that calls to mind long, comfortable nights and the promise of glorious new days. For many people, myself included, that sound contains a certain crackle and comes out of vinyl discs and cassette recordings.
TWÏNS’s “Love, Third Variation” honours the past. But it’s not just one particular event that gets the celebratory treatment here. TWÏNS specialises in sophisticated retro psych-pop music that seems to come out of everyone’s best memory of what it was to be a human being on this planet at just the right time. Is it all a collective illusion? Perhaps, but it matters little. Pull the covers tightly and think about the best times.
