Image by: Benjamin Joel 

Welcome to the new music review where we connect you with some of the best new music spinning on Breakfast, The Daily and Drive programs.

ALBUMS:

Donny Benét – Mr Experience (FEATURE ALBUM)
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Custard – Respect All Lifeforms
Foreign/National – The Garden
Nat Vazer – Is This Offensive and Loud?
Smokey Brights – I Love You But Damn
Woods – Strange to Explain

SINGLES:

Arca – Time
Bin Juice – Unprofessional Behaviour
Deradoorian – It Was Me
Neil Young – Try
The New Mastersounds – 4 Walls
The Orbweavers – When the Sky is Grey

The immediate comparisons to Courtney Barnett and other literate indie-rock singer-songwriters seem inevitable, but it’s Nat Vazer’s voice that sets her apart from her contemporaries. Confident and expressive, like Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey, you would swear she was a pro long in the game; instead, Is This Offensive and Loud? is her debut album, following the 2018 EP We Used to Have Real Conversations. Over reverbed electric guitar, Vazer sings about sex, politics, and the small embarrassments of life in the Melbourne suburbs: “Used to cut my hair so short / Like Demi Moore in Ghost / And people would ask if I was a boy”. Full of wit and courage, Is This Offensive and Loud is a supremely polished debut from a promising new artist.

Though they’ve been around for fifteen years, the Brooklyn psychedelic-folk quintet Woods went from NY outsider curious to American indie-rock stalwarts in what feels like the blink of an eye. So far gone from their early records, where the Animal Collective acolytes melded boisterous acoustic guitar strumming, frypan percussion, and tape loops to create freak folk melodies, Woods are now a honed studio band that more closely resemble the studio albums of the Grateful Dead. Strange to Explain is Woods’ first since acting as David Berman’s backing band and producer for his final record, 2019’s Purple Mountains, and it would appear the experience hasn’t changed them much. Expect more of their own brand of psychedelia, rock, folk, and funk, though there are some subtle changes which hint back at the band’s origins: the drum machine and fuzzed-out bass at the start of “Can’t Get Out”; or the lo-fi piano loop on “Weekend Wind”. All this works to serve lead singer Jeremy Earl’s songwriting, which still shows a knack for producing a beautiful melody of out thin air.