
Rhumba Club – (I’m Gonna Construct) An Image
Being a rock star is a bit of racket now, isn’t it? We all seem to know this by now, with each new procession of stars a bit closer to perfection than the previous generation, and, certainly, a lot less interesting.
Rhumba Club certainly knows this and is ready to feed into our post-modern imagination. In his world, everything is an inside joke. Tom Falle could certainly try to write like his heroes, Jarvis Cocker and Leonard Cohen, and probably succeed at creating something similarly impactful. But that wouldn’t really be cool.
(I’m Gonna Construct) An Image is clever, detached, ironic. It pokes fun at what a rockstar should be. It takes the songwriter image, adopts it, and ridicules it. It’s the piano ballad equivalent of a stand-up act where the comedian is determined to annoy as much as make people laugh. It’s so 2021. We like it.
Spineseed & the Sprouts – Gungas
Folk music comes in many guises. Yes, some of the most famous iterations usually include some dude dressed like a gold prospector. Others, recently especially, lean towards the pop-centric, aiming their energies at big, hooky choruses.
However, there are those that pack their folk with plenty of punk muscle. That’s the case with Spineseed & the Sprouts, a band that dares challenge your faith in the curative force of guitar music.
Their single Gungas is a right laugh. It’s jog on a fresh Summer morning, or the song they’ll likely play in a movie just before the protagonist finally meets their goal, love interest, wins the lottery. Musically this tune feels like Social Distortion blasting through a collection of folk tunes. If that sounds like a pretty tall order, rest assured, this debutant Australian group looks ready to live up to the hype.