By Jay Mukherjee
Once or twice a month, typically on Friday nights, my wife and I play a game we call "The YouTube Game". Essentially, we fix ourselves one (or two) strong cocktails and sit in front of the TV. Each person picks a video as we hand the remote control back and forth. We have also been known to fall asleep playing this game. A few years ago was one of those times. This time, however, a video woke me up. Subconsciously, I must have heard something really good for it to wake me up at 2 AM! It was Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and their video for "French Press". After listening to their entire catalog the next day, I was hooked. For those unfamiliar with Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, they are a five-piece band from Melbourne, Australia, and they formed in 2013. Their music is full of definite echoes of tunes from The Go-Betweens, The Church, and the highly underrated The Apartments. But, to these American ears that grew up in the 1980's, I also hear pieces of The Feelies, Let's Active, The dB's, The Dream Syndicate, and the late, great Tommy Keene. Their new one, Sideways to New Italy, their second proper album, after 2018's Hope Downs, is out now on Sub Pop.
I was already familiar with three of the 10 tracks since they were released as singles over the course of the year. Each song, "Cars in Space", "She's There", and "Falling Thunder" are all great in their own right. "Cars in Space", specifically, with its happy jangle belies that it is a song about the moments right before the breakup of a relationship as one wonders who pulls the trigger first. "It sounds like rain / I hear the beating in my heart / You want it simple / How hard you make it" go the lyrics.
This album contains a sound that's similar to the earlier releases of this band, ensuring that fans of RBCF should love this record like the previous ones, though there are some subtle flourishes that distinguish these songs from their past output. The catchy "The Only One" with its Orange Juice-indebted melody and English Beat-style trumpet outro, and the melancholy country slide guitar in "Sunglasses at the Wedding" come straight to mind. My two favorite "new" songs happen to run back-to-back on the album, "Cameo" and "Not Tonight". "Cameo" builds slowly until the gorgeous chorus. "You take a highway jump / You feel time drippin' away / Fallin' in the burnin' blue / You feel time drippin' away" creates a cathartic release for the person in the song who feels like they're only an afterthought to someone important in their life. "Not Tonight" hits me hard because the vocals sound so much like Tommy Keene, who I still can't believe is gone. The song has another great chorus, "'Cause even when you're here / It's like there's no else around / I'm sleepin' on my tears / I'm burnin' all my candles down". The final song, "The Cool Change" with its swinging bass-line and Television-style guitar interplay is a great way to end this album.
As my fellow APIND reviewer Stan told me once: "These guys can NOT write a bad song!" Agreed!
Sideways to New Italy is out now via Sub Pop.
More details on Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever via the official Facebook page.
[Photo: Peter Ryle]