New Music Monday - Parades, The Middle East

This will hopefully become a regular piece every Monday, with a hope of shining a light on either local or international talent that have released ear-catching music sometime in the preceding week.

This week I thought I would offer up two incredible tracks from two of Australia’s brightest musical collectives (and two of my favourites of past years if I may say without too much bias).

Parades - 'Water Stories'

Parades won critical acclaim last year with their debut release ‘Foreign Tapes’. The album was an eclectic journey across a vast musical spectrum, highlighted by the band’s ambitious soundscapes and expeditious songwriting overseen by the incredibly talented Jonathan Boulet. Boulet manages to deliver an impeccable level of production nous to every sound he creates, whether it is in his own solo project, with Parades, or one of a number of other bands he has so far worked with. It appears he has created another gem here with 'Water Stories', the first single to be lifted from Parades sophomore record, due out sometime later this year.

'Water Stories feels' like a natural follow-up from 'Foreign Tapes', as the band take pieces from their debut release and form a new, perhaps even more grandiose sound typified by the floating guitar lines that hold the track together. The song lyrically is reminiscent to 'Lung Full of Light', from 'Foreign Tapes', which too questions a life beneath the water, yet where the former appears more adolescent to a certain extent, 'Water Stories' has a greater sense of reach both in a musical and lyrical sense. Echoed voices hold a presence throughout the track, while sampled beats collide with Boulet’s precise stick-work to build a song that is structurally as sound on the first listen as it is on the 21^st. The crescendos that each moment of the track builds towards suggests that 'Water Stories' represents a feeling of almost reaching pinnacles, of being so close to something, of constantly striving to go further with the end in sight, and then the blissful feeling of reaching such a height.

Parades bear a striking presence in the modern Australian indie scene, creating music that constantly pushes boundaries while remaining relatively simplistic at it’s core. If 'Foreign Tapes' wasn’t enough to ensure their position amongst their peers, then it appears their follow-up may cement them as one of Australia’s most lauded rock acts.

• 'Water Stories' can be downloaded for free from paradesmusic.com now. The band is playing at Jive on April 16.

The Middle East - 'Black Death 1349'

Townsville folk collective The Middle East have been touring endlessly it seems since releasing their 2008 mini album 'The Recordings of The Middle East', which gained success in 2009 after being re-released as a 5-track EP. Tracks like ‘Blood and ‘The Darkest Side’ cemented their place as alternative radio mainstays, yet the darker side (pun) to the group’s music possibly gave fans and critics alike a sense of what this band was truly capable of. Songs like ‘Beleriand’, ‘Lonely’, and ‘Pig Food’, which was left out of the 2009 reincarnation of ‘Recordings…’, demonstrated a completely unique group; the atmospheric folk sounds that at times felt eerie and unsettling on these tracks defined The Middle East as a folk collective as good as any in the world. However, the band released a generic feeling track in ‘Jesus Came To My Birthday Party’ late last year, which simultaneously displayed the band’s lighter elements in combination with a feeling of giving in to their surroundings. Yet ‘Black Death 1349’ reinforces The Middle East’s versatility in many ways.

The song never really takes off from first gear, but it doesn’t need to. It is in the simplicity of ‘Black Death 1349’ where it’s beauty lies. A sinister tale of children dying and Jesus Christ being the survivors’ saviour is ruggedly spun over a lightly plucked acoustic guitar line. The production on this track really sets it apart from any of the band’s other releases, with a much more focused effort ensuring the band maintain their grandness whilst creating a vast distance that often shines through between the vocals and the music itself. It is a reflective ambience that slowly gets you in, and although it may come in at just under three minutes, it hopefully bodes as an indicator of what we may come to expect from the band’s debut full length album.

• 'Black Death 1349' can be downloaded for free from the Golden Plains website now. The Middle East's long awaited debut album 'I Want That You Are Always Happy' will be released on April 8, with a slew of June tour dates to follow.

Parades - Foreign Tapes

It is hard to fully comprehend how music with such a grandiose sound could be made in a garage in north-west Sydney. Yet Parades have managed to create an album in Foreign Tapes that is so expansive and ambitious, you’d be a fool not to think this was made somewhere in Europe during a cold winter (alas Sigur Ros). The Sydney 4-piece, supported by a large group of backing musicians, have proved with this album that no matter how the music is made, the motives behind it can still manage to produce something quite extraordinary.

Self-produced by indie sensation Jonathan Boulet (who is also the band’s drummer), Foreign Tapes shows it’s raw, youthful edge right from the first track. Dead Nationale’s fast beat and unrefined guitar hooks, that almost sound like classic rock riffs, open the album in a style that harks back to the early Bloc Party releases. The lyrics in this song though certainly make it a unique track in its own right, with the use of chants throughout the early parts of the song setting the scene for much of the rest of the album.

Tracks Hunters and Past Lives follow in much the same way as the opener, with uplifting, joyous moments that fearlessly show the band’s exuberance and willingness for exploration through their music. Many of the songs on Foreign Tapes show Parades’ knack for being able to produce songs with driving synth lines, repetitive drum beats, and group chants, complemented by lyrics that are optimistic and emotive in content. Marigold follows on with this formula, with the introduction of a brass section adding emphasis to the band’s harmonious sound, while singers Daniel Cunningham and Rebecca Shave jointly repeat the line “happiness, is a new idea, don’t forget the rest of us, it’s an exodus” throughout much of the song. This makes the track feel as though they are singing with you, bringing you along on their journey of escapism.

Amongst the fast-paced indie rock moments throughout Foreign Tapes, Parades provide the listener with some quite majestic tracks on this long-player. The synth-laden Invaders (Review) and down-tempo Lung Full Of Light show the band’s ability to move from one style of music to another whilst keeping their unique uplifting post-rock style intact. Shave’s vocals on the latter bring to life a story about a life beneath the ocean, with Boulet proving he is no dummy behind the skins. However the album’s centerpiece is most definitely Loserspeak In New Tongue. This track dares to be different from the start, with scratchy-sounding vocals leading into group chants which build into a wall of sound, evoking images of bursting life and explosions of colour. The song ebbs and flows throughout, showing the band’s deeper, darker, more thoughtful elements, with the mix of keys, guitars and vocals sounding almost jazz-like in part. The lyrics also manage to make this track feel like the expression of youth that it is, with Cunningham singing of adolescent apprehension to great effect (“lift your head you are young, don’t go cutting at your tongue”).

The album closer, Vulturehood, only leaves you wanting more from this band, with the slow acoustic fadeout transformed towards the end of the track by the same edgy guitar sound that Parades are not afraid to exert throughout much of Foreign Tapes. It is easy to see through many elements of the group’s sound that their indie contemporaries, namely bands such as Sigur Ros, Bloc Party, and Radiohead have all influenced the making of this album in some way. However, Parades almost create their own style of visual post-rock with their debut effort, and it is hard to compare the band’s sound to any other collective going around. With ambition, expression, and youth on their side, Parades have certainly put their hand up for Australian album of the year early in 2010, while delivering one of the more impressive debut albums from any Australian band in quite some time.