Australian Indie Rock "Album Band" [26] have spent the first part of 2010 touring the USA, Canada, Hong Kong, England and Scotland. Including highlight performances at Musexpo LA (USA), International Design Week (CND), Music Matters (HK), One Movement Aus Showcase (HK), Musexpo EU (UK) and the amazing Rockness Festival (UK). Playing alongside The Strokes, Fatboy Slim, Friendly Fires, Blondie, Doves, Pendulum, Ian Brown, Soul Wax, Vampire Weekend and many more. Their second album 'Births, Deaths & Marriages' is an emotionally honest, melancholic and yet hopeful music. Mixing a four piece band with string quartets, 50 piece marching bands, 100 piece choirs, electronic blips and bleeps and a good dose of rock to create their anthemic music.
[26]'s track ‘A New Beginning’ recently featured in the series finale of NBC’s TV series ‘Life’. Their track ‘Aloha’ debut on the ARIA Digital Charts at #8 and various songs from the record ‘Births, Deaths & Marriages’ have been added to radio in the US, UK, EU & Aus.
While the mere mention of their name often invokes raised eyebrows and amused smiles among the uninitiated, Brisbane four-piece band Hungry Kids of Hungary produce music that inspires equal measures of curiosity and joy. Dressing their immaculate indie tunes with a healthy dose of 60's pop sensibility and lashings of soul HKoH have wasted no time in carving out a name for themselves on the Australian music scene with a quartet of radio singles and their relentless touring regime.
Their debut self titled EP featured the incadescent single 'Set It Right' which pricked the ears of radio programmers and audiences alike setting the stage for a mammoth 2009.
"Seamless, intelligent shimmering pop with instant appeal and that classic songwriting stamp on songs made to last" Pat Whyte, Courier Mail.
DAN KELLY is no stranger to an epic tale of adventure - in fact, he specialises in this very thing. His vivid three-minute guitar pop jams are epic tales, distilled with essence of tropicalia, bottled into woozy underwater escapist fantasies and coloured with ecological dread, then shaken with his unmistakeable wit. But the story behind Dan
Kelly’s Dream itself is an epic tale – from Daylesford to Sydney then London, from delusion to discovery, folk to metal, luddite to technocrat….
Let’s cast an eye over the past six years to when Dan Kelly and the Alpha Males emerged in 2004 with a debut album, Sing the Tabloid Blues. Since then, Dan Kelly has notched up five ARIA nominations, counted the likes of
Gareth Liddiard (Drones), Christian Strybosch (ex-Drones), Tom Carlyon (The Devastations), Dan Luscombe (Blackeyed Susans/Drones), Lewis Boyes (St Helens) and engineer/producer/musician Aaron Cupples as Alpha
Male bandmates. Second album Drowning in the Fountain of Youth was deemed Album of the Year by Inpress Magazine and nominated for the JJJ Award. He has toured the world many times Solo and playing guitar for Paul
Kelly. He’s had Neil Young’s nod of approval, with the now infamous ‘Drunk on Election Night’ tune from the Pirate Radio EP which Neil included on his Living With War / Songs of the Times project.
Dan Kelly has been a solo performer, a touring guitarist for Augie March and NZ Chanteuse Bic Runga, and a trio with The Ukeladies, whose legacy is ‘The SUV Song’, another among a great many Dan Kelly songs making his trademark confused and slightly rude stand against ecological travesties.
As Dan admits, “A lot of my songs are environmental freak-out songs. Public transport snooze driven psychedelic dreams and songs about trying to escape, but realizing that all the same problems are still there wherever you end up. The planet is decaying, and I’ve been personally decaying along with it and trying to figure out my way through in writing all these songs. Dan Kelly’s Dream is the end of a trilogy, of me not knowing what I’m doing, through to now. That’s why it ends with ‘Grown Up Solutions’, perhaps I see a light at that end of some kind of tunnel, but probably not. Either way I got some new songs happening…’
Megan Washington, singer/songwriter from Brisbane is something of a rarity, she collaborates with some of the biggest names in Australian Jazz & Indie Music to form her unique sound.
She released a jazz EP in 2006, leading her to become part of Old Man River’s band as keyboardist. In 2008 she went solo and won Triple J’s Unearthed, and released her first EP as ‘Washington’ later that year.
Her album I Believe You Liar, was a success and debuted at number 3. With big plans in mind, I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more about Washington in the future.
Over the past five years, The Gin Club have established themselves as one of Australia's most exciting bands, both through their studio albums as well as their inimitable live performances. Continually evolving from the traditional folk/country of their self titled debut, The Gin Club's seven-person songwriting roster has developed a unique and distinctive style.
The 'Club' have toured or performed with acts as diverse as The Drones, Band of Horses, You Am I, Liam Finn and Midlake, as well as performing at Splendour in the Grass, Big Day Out, Bluesfest, Sounds of Spring, Sunset Sounds, Musexpo LA and Canadian Music Week.
Their third release, the critically acclaimed double album "Junk", garnered 3 prizes at the 2008 Queensland Music Awards.
In an age where a wah pedal and a couple of beards are enough to get a band labelled 'psychedelic', it's great to see a band doing it properly. Sydney's Richard In Your Mind are just such an outfit.
Full of inventiveness and spark, Richard In Your Mind make beguiling, genuinely odd, mind-bending music, the kind as likely to veer off into a hip hop verse as it is an extended sitar workout.
Now, four years after starting out, the newly expanded five-piece have blessed us with their keenly awaited second lp, My Volcano.
The Naked And Famous made their debut in 2008 with 2 attention-grabbing EPs. Last year, they made a play for alternative track of the year with the brilliant single 'All Of This'. July 2010 will see them release what is already quietly being talked about as the most anticipated local album release of the year.
By mid-2009, The Naked And Famous had evolved into a solid quintet and were hard at work writing the thirty odd songs that were to be whittled down into their debut album. This year is lining up to be a busy year for this most committed and exciting young band, appearing with the Temper Trap in Auckland in August and plans to be touring Australia & New Zealand in September.
Holed up in a cabin in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains for almost two months, Ernest Ellis wrote most of what is his debut album. The album is called ‘Hunting’, a title reflective of the process, themes and environment faced whilst making this record.
“It was a tough period in my life for a bunch of reasons and I wanted to go up there and write some songs. That was all I really felt like doing at the time. As it turned out it was the right time for writing a record anyway.” says Ernest.
The final result is a wide open, cohesive, and infectious album. Ernest Ellis’s debut album ‘Hunting’ is out now through Dew Process/UMA.
Last Dinosaurs blasted into the music ether, in 2009, wowing many with their youthful, frenetic and damn catchy tunes. Triple J Unearthed them in late 2009, and February 2010 saw the release of their debut EP 'Back From The Dead' on Brisbane independent label Dew Process/Universal.
2010 has been a fruitful year so far, with a 'cream of the crop' of Australian festival appearances including Laneway, Splendour in the Grass & Parklife. Add to this a steady stream of East Coast touring and sold out shows, and you can see why the band are on many peoples 'artist to watch' lists.
PARADES are a young art rock band from Sydney who wisely choose to create their own music with no outside input or interference. Featuring Dan Cunningham, Tim Jenkins, Michael Scarpin and Jonathan Boulet - Parade's debut album 'Foreign Tapes' is out now via Dot Dash Recordings.
The album is expansive and ambitious; a haze of pop harmonies, post rock guitars and electronic meanderings. Drum Media did a great job describing the band when they said:
"Parades create their homely tunes in a garage in Sydney's Northwest, but it might as well be Iceland or the moon. They have an ethereal, expansive sound that is sweet and understated."