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Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Hope Downs (Sub Pop)

June 18, 2018 by A.S. Van Dorston

While guitar music remains profoundly unfashionable in mainstream music outside of Country music, your summer need not suffer for lack of guitars in your sunny pop (touched with the requisite amount of melancholy). There’s no shortage of great guitar pop, be it jangly, psychedelic or prickly indie. Just in the unassuming town of Melbourne, Australia, we have a bunch of great artists in RVG, Chook Race, Total Control, Jess Ribeiro, Last Leaves, Dick Diver, King Gizzard, House Of Laurence, Rat Columns, Drunk Mums, City Calm Down, Ooga Boogas, Totally Mild, Gold Class, and Courtney Barnett (it also has a rich history as the home of The Seekers, Air Supply, Men At Work, The Birthday Party, Hunters & Collectors, Cosmic Psychos, Dead Can Dance, Crowded House, Dirty Three, The Living End, The Avalanches, Cut Copy, Jet, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, The UV Race and Wet Lips, who recently broke up). But what if there was a band as good as The Smiths with three Johnny Marrs? A Go-Betweens with tougher, catchier songs? A Pavement without the tiresome snark? A band who’s energy generates a flush of excitement like hearing Orange Juice, The Feelies, The Church and Flying Nun bands for the first time? It’s what I felt within 30 seconds of “Wither With You” on Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s 2016 EP Talk Tight. I immediately grabbed the free downloads of their early tracks from 2013 and started slavering for their debut album on Sub Pop.

Their original plan was to issue both an EP and a full-length album in 2017 on their new label Sub Pop. The French Press had at least two timeless tracks with single “Julie’s Place,” and the magnificent title track that could have been a long lost New Order single circa 1982 when Bernard Sumner’s guitar work was still the centerpiece. The rest of the EP was more subdued, but rewarding.  Finally on the cusp of the Summer Solstice, the full-length is here, and Hope Downs shows the band fulfilling the promise that has been dangled over our heads for the past two years. At a crisp, concise 35 minutes, the short length would be disappointing were it not for the fact that every song is a gem. So what makes them so great? Let’s start with the fact that they have three members sharing guitar, songwriting and vocal duties. This could create a chaotic, shambolic sound, and while early tracks do have a giddy, fragmented quality, the writers sound completely locked in tune with each other, so I can’t easily tell who’s songs are who’s they all sound like RBCF. The band has been described as “motorik jangle” thanks to Joe Russo’s bass locked in with Marcel Tussie’s precise propulsion which is actually rooted in his background with Afrobeat. And then there’s the guitars, guitars, guitars! Fran Keaney’s acoustic guitar is aggressively percussive, while Joe White paints wide swaths of sound. With his 1959 hollowbody Gretsch, Tom Russo produces a distinctively sharp chime, a post-Shadows and Hank Marvin surf twang. Together they create a rich array of textures and intertwined leads. While so many bands feel obligated to rely on synths (a technology that’s already a half century old) to sound contemporary, it’s refreshing to just roll around in guitar heaven with a pop band.

While their Sub Pop recordings are relatively clean and pristine, the band manages to retain some of their original garage punk feel amidst the sweet melodies and hooks. “An Air Conditioned Man” is a jittery masterpiece of tension and drive, with vocals that remind me of prime Felt, a couple solos tossed back and forth like challenges. If you think this would make for great live music you’d be right. A month and a half before the album’s release, I saw them near the end of their tour. Despite coming all the way from Australia and driving across North America, the band were nearly bursting with joyous enthusiasm, clearly having a blast playing. I mostly prefer stoner psych and metal shows, because the jaded cynicism of most indie bands result in complete shit shows (a recent case in point was Parquet Courts). RBCF are a rare exception, challenging White Denim for best indie live band.

“Talking Straight” most resembles the garage rock energy of the first EP plus perfectly harmonized chorus and perfect guitar solos. “Mainland,” “Bellarine,” and “The Hammer” could all be choice singles. There’s thoughtful lyrics that are sometimes vague and impressionistic, and other times scan like a compressed literary story. “Capuccino City” is a snapshot of a young couple in an unfashionable cafe with Midnight Oil’s “Short Memory” playing in the background.  “Hope Downs” is a giant hole meant to mine iron-ore until 2037, at the expense of the community, environment and economic sustainability.

Even if you don’t listen to the words, the music does all the heavy lifting and button pressing, from passion to saudade.  All five members hold day jobs, so if they do tour again, don’t miss them. If we’re lucky, the band will continue to surf the cracks between the mainstream and underground with at least as much success as Vampire Weekend or even Spoon, and keep putting out albums for years to come.

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