“Retire” by Terrible Signal

Terrible Signal are from Perth, Western Australia and “Retire” is a runaway truck of a song, all jangling thrashing guitars, weedy keyboards, thumping bass and drums and totally-wired rapid-fire Antipodean vocal delivery. No idea what it’s about but New Zealand gets a mention.

The song is from a brand new album “The Window” out on Ballarat label Heart of the Rat. There is an LP version… pre-orders open now.

Terrible Signal mine a similar vein to The Chills, sometimes with a side serving of The Clean (check the next track “Half The Person”), or Able Tasmans (“Day”). It’s a great mix, a bit ramshackle, fizzing, and sometimes with unexpected complexity pulled off with give-it-a-go-mate cheek.

They describe their sound – presumably tongue-in-cheek – as “Saccharine Aus-Nostalgia Pop”. Despite the NZ stylistic connections perceived or perhaps imagined, it’s definitely Australian, in a let-it-all-hang-out DIY-with-ambition kind of attitude. And in the story-telling manner of the lyrics and occassional use of the talking vocal delivery. And in the way it is mastered by the ubiquitous Australian DIY guitar pop sound engineer Mikey Young.

Some of my favourite albums of the past year have been from unsung Australian bands like Terrible Signal that I had never heard of before a chance discovery on Bandcamp. You’ve read about The S-Bends and also Dumb Things here, albums I still regularly play. This is another cracker that will probably fly under the radar. Don’t let that happen. Open “The Window” and let the wind blow.

“To Be Loved” by Michael Savage

Michael Savage resides in Perth, Western Australia. It’s half a world away from NZ, but his bio includes a Dunedin link: “…expansive, emotional jangle-psych-pop – think a triangulation of The Lucksmiths, The Zombies and The Clean.”  He released his third album “Won’t Die Wondering” last year. Here’s the atypical “To Be Loved” as a Psychedelic Sunday shoegaze treat.

The album is co-produced by Ricky Maymi of Brian Jonestown Massacre, and while there’s heavy psych factor, the album is a varied collection, packed full of lush, crafted, skilful psych-pop and a few dreamy shoegaze trips like “To Be Loved” here with it’s infinite delay wash.

The opening track and “To Be Loved” are a slightly misleading introduction though. After the saturated sonic wash of these two shoegaze-psych songs the album takes on a more varied range of styles with a surplus of melodic hooks.

Overall, the album takes a Sparklehorse (or Michael Penn, if anyone who remembers him) via late period Beatles/ Badfinger/ Zombies style approach to pop-craft, even down to the levitating McCartney-esque bass-lines here and there. There’s loads of acoustic and electric 12-string, a bit of rotary-speaker effect on the vocals here and there to add colour and character to the songs.

Savage is recording a 4th album at the moment, so now’s a good time to check out his back catalogue to prepare yourself for his next release.