THE BEST THING I'VE HEARD IN AGES!!!

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever 'The French Press'

Well this is just utterly, utterly wonderful. Hailing from Melbourne, this quintet of annoyingly lean and handsome dudes call themselves Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - an unwieldy slice of nomenclature to be sure but one which will stick in the cerebellums of any right-minded music fan for a long, long time. Formed in 2013 by joint vocalists and guitar players Fran Keaney and Tom Russo, the duo were soon joined by bassist Joe Russo, third guitarist Joe White and drummer Marcel Tussie. Inspired by a collective devotion to early 80s UK jangle bands like The Smiths and Orange Juice, along with fellow Antipodean indie-pop craftsmen The Clean and The Go-Betweens, it didn't take long for the group to take off. Last year's debut EP Talk Tight was a five-track love letter to all of the aforementioned bands with a further nod to What Goes On era Velvet Underground. It was no pastiche though. I had a similar reaction to the Fleet Foxes debut EP from ten years ago, where I was definitely able to draw a line between what each band had listened to and what they have produced themselves, but just like the Foxes, RBCF - you'll permit me the abbreviation - have stirred it all up and made a sound so much their own that it's like they've arrived on the scene totally fully formed. Indeed, their current EP - The French Press - sounds like it's been recorded by a band ten years into their lifespan. All six tracks on the new record are glorious, swooning nuggets of absolute joy. The title track alone  - with it's call and response harmony-laden guitar licks, coupled with it's poignant lyric focusing on two brothers straining to connect emotionally over Skype - would normally be enough to make this lot my new favourite band, but the brilliance never flags. Julie's Place, Sick Bug - with it's fantastic "I want you! I want you! I want you!" refrain, Colours Run and Dig Up are tremendous slices of roistering and rollicking indie, bringing to mind Murmur-period R.E.M. as well as Teenage Fanclub, Pavement, The House Of Love, early Strokes and The War On Drugs too. On first listen, I had already been grinning like an idiot for fifteen minutes, such was my amazement at how astonishing the first five tracks were. Then the final song, Fountain Of Good Fortune, kicked in and that was it. I was a goner, bowled over by this very special band's songwriting confidence and downright musical excellence. An acoustic-led, dreamy haze of a song, Fountain builds and builds quite spectacularly across it's first half, with Keaney's lyrics seemingly bemoaning the stringent rules and constraints of organised religion, before a key-change of such wonder kicks in that I literally squealed with delight when I first heard it. The two-minute instrumental coda that ends the song - complete with duelling guitars and plaintive "Woo woos" from the band - is just the taste-bud caressing icing on the cake quite frankly. It is, as the title of this particular post has already stated, the best thing I've heard in ages. No hyperbole. There is not one ounce of chaff across these six tracks, and if they can keep up this kind of strike rate on their debut album - promised for later this year - then we're in for an absolute treat.