Fucking way into the new Danger Beach AS USUAL. As far as I’m concerned Mr Lachlan Thomas AKA Danger Beach can continue smashing tambourines and laying his Joey Ramone-ish vocals over overdriven guitar loops with vaguely Hawaiian accents forever and ever because this just sits so right, you know? This jam, which as far as I know exists only on the internet, is a cover of Dream Damage labelmates TV Colours and the fact that it’s better known as one of their lo-fi thrashers only makes Danger Beach’s gauzy, sentimental melodicism even more charming. A++++
It's taken a while, sure, but at last there's a video for one of our favourite tracks of last year: Apache, the stand-out jam from Danger Beach's debut LP Milky Way. This beautiful clip was made by NZ animator Ned Wenlock and totally captures the way Apache's elaborate, dreamy loops take over your brain.
2010: it was pretty great! I saw Inception like three times and listened to all the best music I've ever heard. Plus, Rose Quartz went to New York (SEE ABOVE) and hung out with all our new best friends. We also got to witness some of our favourite labels and bands just kill it this year: Olde English Spelling Bee, R.I.P. Society and Chapter put out a billion great records which everyone loved and bands like Street Chant, Big Troubles and way too many others did massive stadium tours of Brazil. Holla! Anyway, here's my top 10 songs of this year:
Love how relaxing this whole album is; that's not a popular adjective but it's true about Wild Nothing, all smooth and subdued like it's been lifted from the saddest '80s teen movie of all time.
Frenetic, fuzzed-out pop-punk thrashers like this are what Royal Headache do best; just total odes to shit like swimming pools that feel kinda profound cos you get bamboozled by all the hooks and then you're like wha?
Real "tender" instrumental surf-pop from inland Australia: maybe that's why the rolling guitars sound melancholic and the reverb'd out, faraway drums are ever so slightly askew.
After literally years of teasing us with sporadic 7" releases, these power popsters finally dropped a (terrific) full-length record. This is my favourite from it: lo-fi but technicolour with vocal harmonies I still can't figure out after dozens of listens.
Find of the year, for sure: this jam from Melbourne's Hammocks and Honey is beautifully, wistfully hypnotic; months after I first heard it I still can't stop listening to it.
I listened to this song exclusively for about two weeks after I first got this album, which might be because it sounds like the Ramones covering the Cars but whatever. It's totally jaunty, totally catchy, with a philosophy you can live by; winner, right?
This total 2010 h-pop classic sounds like it was recorded to a tape that had been recorded to way too many times before, but that can't hide how goofy/hilarious/catchy it is. It's a sound that's been mined before, for sure, but never as consistently well as Sam Mehran and his various projects mine it: the run of singles from Outer Limits Recordings and The Sweethearts in 2010 has been absurdly high in quality. If this was recorded in pristine hi-fidelity it'd probably be a hit; too bad, pop fans.
OTHER FAVES:
The Sweethearts - Burning Through The Nite
Big Troubles - Bite Yr Tongue
MGMT - Flash Delirium
More sounds from the final frontier from totally mystic Canberran label Dream Damage. Danger Beach is actually the solo alias for Assassins 88 main man LA Thomas, who’s forgone the blistering brutality of his other band to record a set of half-degraded memories and subdued doo-wop on this debut EP. It’s rich in melody and “vibe” as well: sounds like surf guitars chiming out over the water in some magical high place. In another dimension it could be the theme to a Hawaii Five-O spin-off, but here it’s wistful & drenched in melancholy.
