Rolling Blackout Coastal Fever - Hope Downs (2018)

What is it with the Australian bands and their names? Here comes another young Aussie band with an impossible name, but with a very fresh, cheerful and exciting debut. It brings us fine guitar rock, but one that has neither a trace of any virtuosity, nor any instrumentalist skills showing off. Quite the opposite. The Blackouts manage, in an unobtrusive way, to serve their musical ideas and deliver their compositions which are abound in clever musical ideas and solutions. The common denominator of  the songs: a simple, honest and straightforward guitar rock, but with no riffing, rather more in the direction of singer-songwriters' folk-rock. Therefore, at first, they remind me of Buffalo Springfield - with three guitars (plus bass-guitar), they share the same instrumental setup. And then, another, even stronger, association occurs.  Namely, with their melodic guitars juxtaposed with monotonous and seemingly absent vocals, and pulsating, almost mechanical rhythm of the drums, the Blackouts are much closer musically to the Smiths than they seem at first. In fact, imagine the Smiths with, not one, but two Johnny Maars who are constantly driving delicate, melodic and beautifully coloured leads… It is a refreshing and catchy album.


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