SERvin’ Up – w/c May 8, 2017

The New Year – Snow
Ubermesnch Blues – Rhyece O’Neil
Pond – The Weather
Slowdive – Slowdive
Thurston Moore – Rock N’ Roll Consciousness
Dappled Cities – IIIII
Tara Jane O’Neil – Tara Jane O’Neil
Heat Wave – Dead Beats
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Best Troubadour
The Protestors – Post Colonial World
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Hello,

Sydney’s Rhyece O’Neil is somewhat of a renaissance man. He’s published one novel and is about to publish a second alongside a volume of his poetry but has also come to the attention of 2SER in many musical guises. The first was Western Synthetics, an electronic music project that throbbed hard to make any room shudder with its dub-heavy production and Kraftwerk-like precision. He then traded his tools up to form Greta Mob, a rock outfit that sat somewhere between the Birthday Party and the Beasts of Bourbon with a scabrous sense of the literary and swagger to burn. Now he’s gone solo with the first release under his own name, Ubermensch Blues. Drawing from a similar lineage to Greta Mob, O’Neil amps up with a particularly bruising kind of barroom blues, rumbling forth with strings and piano to put a theatrical tilt on his songs and a damn righteous presence overall on proceedings.

Tara Jane O’Neil is one of the great mainstays of the more interesting end of the US indie scene, starting life in the fertile Louisville, Kentucky scene where the likes of post-rock pioneers Slint and Will Oldham, aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Her band Rodan only made one album – Rusty – wrung delicate, stirring emotion from the rock format as well as if not better than the more hallowed bands of that time working in the same realm and O’Neil has continued to experiment in how she delivers her unique sense of introspection across nine solo albums and various collaborations. Her latest is self-titled and while still mining the fringes of the singer-songwriter style, it is more upfront than anything previous from her, as well as overtly lovely. Her songs seems to hang in the air, wholly unhurried in unfurling their soft charms, filled with warm ambience in their loose folk way. To be sure though, there is nothing fluffy or light about these songs, O’Neil’s raw vocal drawing you in with intimacy and a curious, compelling viewpoint.

Last week it was the Underground Lovers and now this week the dream-pop revival continues with the first album in a mere 22 years from the UK’s Slowdive. Slowdive rode on a strand of dream-pop where things got a little heavier though more inward in vibe. They called it shoegaze because most band folk tended to stare at their bootlaces while playing and it was a sound spearheaded by My Bloody Valentine and Ride. Slowdive counted themselves as early adopters and got rave reviews but were buried after Oasis were signed by their then-hip label Creation. Attentions shifted and the notoriously fickle British music press turned on them and soon they were no more. The shoegaze sound has come back into the pop music vernacular – Tame Impala often work the at the more psychedelic end for example – and there was a lot of love in the air when word came out a few years ago that Slowdive were back in the rehearsal room. Now, 22 years since their last, the new self-titled album sounds as though they never stopped at all. Glistening walls of crunching, droning guitars filled with melodic tapestries and swirling rhythms topped with the blissful layered voice of Rachel Goswell is a formula making a most welcome return.

Also, new tunes this week from Bibio, Cloud Control, Jep & Dep, Leah Senior, Emma Russack, Gold Class, Steve Gunn and a stellar DD Dumbo remix from Stella of Warpaint.

Enjoy it all on 2SER,

Andrew