New Artist of the Week: Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever

What A very 1980s-inspired guitar band.
Where Australia.
Why Nostalgia is a powerful beast. In the case of Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – or Rolling Blackouts CF for, um, short – listening to the Melbourne band is akin to reliving a dimly lit past of rock music, when REM were still a jangly Georgia band on the up, when The Go-Betweens were not even the cult Aussie band they are now, and college rock had cachet.

Quite why Rolling Blackouts CF conjure such specific comparisons is down to their being less a facsimile than a band wearing the skin of the past so effortlessly. Their propulsive garage rock sounds pleasingly familiar to older listeners yet is confident enough for younger fans to embrace too.

Their new album, Hope Downs, has Aussie dry wit, barrelling rhythms and songs that sound as if they were rediscovered and relearnt from a cassette tape found down the seat of a midnight-blue coupé owned by a girl called Jenny (as their song Talking Straight suggests).

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever play Whelan's in Dublin on August 21st – which leaves just enough time for the fresh listener to indulge in this future vision of rock's past. rollingblackoutsband.com

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