Ostraaly: Misery Guests (Siltbreeze)
Loose, woozy, mildly shambolic (a word, like “psych” and “drone,” we could do without) antipodean DIY music for swaying and singing together. Guitar and lyrics coming in from the side, then the center, and then trading places again. Australian dialect rock of the tallest lackadaisical order.In the liner notes, drummer Leonie Brialey recounts how the late songwriter Katherine Daly had a rule that albums should strike a balance between political and love songs (then joking that perhaps this album skews slightly further towards the love song balance). This is the kind of music that makes one want to be in a band again. Go gather those lines from notebooks, the diminutive mysterious phrases, especially, and those guitar chords (to say nothing of the trumpet that’s been sitting in the corner, that honkey talk vertical piano playing everyone admires, in brief, and especially a dash of VU-violin); put it all to some good use.
The only trouble, this music is not as easy to pull off as it sounds in the description above, which is what makes this album (originally issued on tape in 2020) so remarkable.
Nine great songs. None miss the mark.
Ostraaly Misery Guests (Siltbreeze) does not suffer naive pop fools gladly, replacing ironic distance with a dialect-inflected pathos/gravity. What might feel like light and easy fare, these songs, especially the lead vocals, feel quite lyrical, poetic and beautiful. Musical and lyrical lines repeat and on each rotation the meaning changes a bit. Guitar and band reminding everyone who and what’s present in the room. Obviously the production and playing suggest UK DIY, while the vocals and mood come from another hemisphere.
And smartly sequenced: Record ends, flip it over and put it on again. This marks our Core 24 ethos, folks.
Loose, woozy, mildly shambolic (a word, like “psych” and “drone,” we could do without) antipodean DIY music for swaying and singing together. Guitar and lyrics coming in from the side, then the center, and then trading places again. Australian dialect rock of the tallest lackadaisical order.In the liner notes, drummer Leonie Brialey recounts how the late songwriter Katherine Daly had a rule that albums should strike a balance between political and love songs (then joking that perhaps this album skews slightly further towards the love song balance). This is the kind of music that makes one want to be in a band again. Go gather those lines from notebooks, the diminutive mysterious phrases, especially, and those guitar chords (to say nothing of the trumpet that’s been sitting in the corner, that honkey talk vertical piano playing everyone admires, in brief, and especially a dash of VU-violin); put it all to some good use.
The only trouble, this music is not as easy to pull off as it sounds in the description above, which is what makes this album (originally issued on tape in 2020) so remarkable.
Nine great songs. None miss the mark.
Ostraaly Misery Guests (Siltbreeze) does not suffer naive pop fools gladly, replacing ironic distance with a dialect-inflected pathos/gravity. What might feel like light and easy fare, these songs, especially the lead vocals, feel quite lyrical, poetic and beautiful. Musical and lyrical lines repeat and on each rotation the meaning changes a bit. Guitar and band reminding everyone who and what’s present in the room. Obviously the production and playing suggest UK DIY, while the vocals and mood come from another hemisphere.
And smartly sequenced: Record ends, flip it over and put it on again. This marks our Core 24 ethos, folks.
Loose, woozy, mildly shambolic (a word, like “psych” and “drone,” we could do without) antipodean DIY music for swaying and singing together. Guitar and lyrics coming in from the side, then the center, and then trading places again. Australian dialect rock of the tallest lackadaisical order.In the liner notes, drummer Leonie Brialey recounts how the late songwriter Katherine Daly had a rule that albums should strike a balance between political and love songs (then joking that perhaps this album skews slightly further towards the love song balance). This is the kind of music that makes one want to be in a band again. Go gather those lines from notebooks, the diminutive mysterious phrases, especially, and those guitar chords (to say nothing of the trumpet that’s been sitting in the corner, that honkey talk vertical piano playing everyone admires, in brief, and especially a dash of VU-violin); put it all to some good use.
The only trouble, this music is not as easy to pull off as it sounds in the description above, which is what makes this album (originally issued on tape in 2020) so remarkable.
Nine great songs. None miss the mark.
Ostraaly Misery Guests (Siltbreeze) does not suffer naive pop fools gladly, replacing ironic distance with a dialect-inflected pathos/gravity. What might feel like light and easy fare, these songs, especially the lead vocals, feel quite lyrical, poetic and beautiful. Musical and lyrical lines repeat and on each rotation the meaning changes a bit. Guitar and band reminding everyone who and what’s present in the room. Obviously the production and playing suggest UK DIY, while the vocals and mood come from another hemisphere.
And smartly sequenced: Record ends, flip it over and put it on again. This marks our Core 24 ethos, folks.