Mixing dream pop with a bit of shoegaze and some ambient sounds, alternative four piece The Oyster Murders have just released Join The Party.
Set to an ominous waltz and with a video of Donald and Hilary dancing while Obama watches, it is an compelling and slightly disturbing track – obviously we like it a lot!
Have a watch/listen and click through to buy via Bandcamp.
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It has been a good while since we’ve heard from Australian dream-poppers, The Oyster Murders. The good news is that they are back with a new single – When You’re Wrong is a wash of distorted pop melodies, overdriven guitars and analog synths.
This is the band’s first release since their 2013 Mourning Birds EP and it is good to have them back.
Stream or download it below.
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Here (better late than never) are our favourite download picks from our August posts, together with a few new tunes. Altogether a genre-busting mix of nearly 20 great songs. Dive in!
Spook Houses – Living The Dream
Tempo-shifting, slacker pop.
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The Great American Canyon Band – Lost At Sea
Gorgeous, rural folk-pop.
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Vikesh Kapoor – I Dreamt Blues
A narrative about endless work and the apathy that can accompany it that has echoes of Dylan’s harmonica and the vocals of a disillusioned Donovan.
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WIDOWER – Oh Catherine, My Catherine
Borne from heartbreak, pure and simple.
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The Oyster Murders – Disaster Flowers Bloom
Typically disquieting and moody with brooding synths and eerie vocals.
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The Obits – Spun Out
Fabulous, scratchy, garage-surf-punk.
[Click through for free download]
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Suntrapp – All The Seas
Softly picked acoustic guitar intro turns into the giddy rush of a warm buoyant rhythm section and exuberant percussion through to a celebratory conclusion.
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The Fire Tapes – Scarlet Cliffs
Nine minute reverb ridden epic of rolling distortion.
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Jeffertitti’s Nile – Mountain Jam
Ambient drones and narcotic gospel blues are as engaging as they are otherworldly, with each amplified whisper and riff hanging in the ether like freshly toked peyote smoke.
[Click through for free download]
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Blessed Feathers – Ahbinreedis
Beautiful, understated, rural folk.
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Left Lane Cruiser – Juice To Get Loose
Swampy, distorted blues and junkyard punk that is raw, visceral and undeniably thrilling.
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Download Bad Sports – Let Me In mp3
Mix of Texan garage and New York heyday punk.
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Download Collisionville – The Ballad Of Herman P. Willis mp3
Bottleneck slide and pedal steel gives way to dirty, amplified harmonica and fuzzed out bass.
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Four cracking new downloads too, from the slacker infused garage punk of Mean Creek’s Cool Town and the furious guitar riffage of the Mourning Birds’ The Last Thing (I Need) to the classic 80’s influenced indie-pop of The Big Sun and their irresistible track Nightbus Topdeck and lastly, Emmett Drueding & the Cowboy Killa’s Iron Fist, a twangy excursion into soulful blues.
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[Click through for free download]
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It is getting to that time when we’re feeling like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland – so many tunes to share, so little time! So at the risk of doing somewhat of a disservice in terms of the prose to describe these, here are a collection of tunes that have landed in our in-box or mailbox and that really deserve some ear-time from you.
Kicking us off, Sydney’s Liam Gale & The Ponytails are an eight-piece collective blending blues, folk and elements of psychedelic rock. Try Antipodean Honour, which walks a strange line between old country and early 70s rock.
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Chad Kichula is a singer-songwriter and the title track from his forthcoming new album The Whale’s Back (available Sept 10) is a shambling, ragged ditty, with dueling electric guitar, harmonica, and upbeat spirit lifting the track far above standard, melancholy alt-country fare.
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The debut single from London trio Polterghost is Beast, a guitar driven garage rocker with more than a nod to the heavy metal heroes of yesteryear.
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Chastity Belt have featured on MM recently and they are now sharing their single Black Sail from forhcoming long-player No Regerts (not a spelling error we promise), and it is another gem of quirky, indie rock carried along on the back of a great vocal.
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Shoegazers Tape Deck Mountain’s sophomore album Sway will be released on the 1st October. Check out the MBV comparisons for yourself with the first two tracks from the record.
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California’s noisiest surf-punks Cosmonauts are streaming the lead track, Shaker, from imminent new album Persona Non Grata. It is a triumph of feedback, chaos, and drone-pop!
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Cloud are the latest signings to the wonderful Audio Anti-hero and as might be expected it is a off kilter mix of shimmering psychedelia and off-kilter bedroom pop. Check out Mother Sea, a free taster from the album Comfort Songs.
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The Violet May return with their new EP release Strange Lives on August 19th. We have a couple of tracks for you – the barbed guitar hooks of opener Letters Of Love and punk-edged closer Long Fall.
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The Oyster Murders are another band to have regularly featured on MM in the past and they are back with a new single Disaster Flower Bloom. It is typically disquieting and moody with some brooding synths and eerie vocals.
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King of Cats is sometimes just Max Levy and is sometimes Max Levy and his all-star backing band. Either way, shrill and sweet vocals flicker from a scream to a whisper in a second, while distortion and guitar freak-outs give way to lyrics that are equal parts funny, surreal, pissed off and downright sad. Bright Lightbulbs come from a split single release with Ides, who is in fact the Joanna Gruesome / A Grave With No Name vocalist Alanna McArdle.
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Hex Maneuvers is the fourth single from Feels Weird, the debut album from Boston indie-pop trio, Bent Shapes. It is as caustic and sharp-tongued as you could wish for…
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A Mad Affair is an acoustic trio out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who offer a warm, and poetic experience of classic backporch Americana melding elements of blugrass, folk, pop, jazz and country into a sweetly melodic whole.
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Melbourne’s Magic Bones new single Fire Song is a blisteringly raw, driving, 70s rock duet with a knowing nod to new wave punk and 60s garage thrown in for good measure.
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The Holy Orders have just released their debut album For the Ears of Dogs to Come, and Paper/Scissors/Stone is a pretty good introduction to their brand of energetic, sweeping indie rock. One to play loud.
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Lastly Americana trio The RhineTones have released their new EP Over The Hills. Take a listen to the rather good title track.
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The Oyster Murders will be releasing Lost to the Birds as a single.
Originally available on the US version of their album Winter of the Electric Sun, the song originally started out with an acoustic guitar and an ambient chorus which contained the title lyrics. They ended up taking these lyrics out of the chorus when they started singing a more upfront melody in rehearsal. However, they kept Lost to the Birds as an apt summation of the themes in the song.
So now you know all that…have a listen.
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The Sleeper’s Heart is the latest track from the (still) wonderfully named Oyster Murders. This time it is an excursion into the realms of top-notch dream pop, lyrically dark, and so the band say, probably influenced subconsciously by repeated listening to Bowie’s trilogy of Berlin albums.
Sounds good to us in every way! Download it here.
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About a year ago we wrote about the fabulously named Australian band, The Oyster Murders. Back then we posted Ghosts In Our Wake, and this track is now the lead song available as part of a four track EP for a “pay what you want” deal on their Bandcamp page here.
Here is the video too:
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Download The Oyster Murders – Ghosts In Our Wake mp3 (from Ghosts In Our Wake EP)
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Continuing our ‘down under’ theme for the day, this track comes from the brilliantly named Australian band The Oyster Murders.
The group draw inspiration from an eclectic array of sources from science-fiction novels to silent films from the 30s. Their newest episode of ambient pop goodness, an EP entitled Whatever became of Marie St. Clair? was recorded in the idyllic surrounds of a renovated old church that has nothing to do with organs, but maybe a little to do with ghosts and choirs. The result is the most mature and confident music released by the band to date.
The EP reads like a band that has fully fleshed out a musical style of their own, but isn’t afraid to stretch their boundaries. The music is eerily sweet like a thick cough syrup, with the new songs off the EP having a distinctly oceanic feel. With sweeping vocals rolling out across an apocalyptic shore.
This is sweet melancholy music with good pop-sensibilities. Try the excellent Ghosts In Our Wake below and see for yourself.
Visit their MySpace here.
Download The Oyster Murders – Ghosts In Our Wake mp3
