Making the links #1: harsh landscape

Recently I got the Internet hooked up, having lived without it for a few months. The Web can be pretty depressing but it's amazing how you can fall arse-backwards into something great. You can drag your cyberbody on its stomach across the deserts of Myspace or Triple J Unearthed for months looking for one band you wouldn't be completely averse to sharing some low-key bill with. Then one day you might spy someone with an interesting name in a top eight and on closer inspection find something tantalisingly solid beneath your fingertips. Grabbing hold, you pull a chain up out of the sand and before you know it you've followed the links to some sort of oasis where you become giddy trying to sample all the delights at once.

Like the other night when I was checking Good God's Myspace to see if there was any news (nup) and happened to follow a link to Feathers' profile, recalling the promising description in Before Hollywood's "Bands to Watch in 2008" back in January when they had no songs up. Well, now they have five songs and a video and they're crackers. Their gothic yet minimal bass-driven plod unwinds with rare patience but it's when they add an ethereal shimmer and a bit of sing-song that they really grab this Bad Moon Rising tragic. The places these songs inhabit are near the one Sonic Youth spent some time in for that album; Lydia Lunch was another prominent resident and Batrider are the Kiwis that moved in next door. In fact, all of the bands mentioned in this post seem to have been there. You'll recognise it when you find yourself in an empty house banging and creaking in the dead middle of day, surrounded by hissing scrub and heat haze. (For all I know Feathers is over; I wouldn't mind catching them live but it seems the set on Turnitupto10 will have to do for now.)

Anyway, from there I followed the trail to Beaches, who are a Melbourne band and something of a supergroup featuring members of Love of Diagrams, Spider Vomit and others. I didn't know that at first; all I knew was that their scuzz-damaged surf/garage/Velvets instrumental slowjams made me superkeen for their November album. And while we're on the topic of dark surf music, I had never heard of apparent expat Severine Devereaux before now either - if you ever do get sick of the aforementioned Badmoonrisingville her cool floating lounge might be a fine place to wash off the dirt.

Some further scratching around revealed that Beaches are in with a crowd called Mistletone who have a not-too-shabby roster. Would you look at the lineup for this gig?

Go forth, Melbourne folk, and rock dreamily. We Brisfolk will console ourselves with knowing that when we see Beach House it will be at the Troubadour and the Rational Academy in support should be nice. And whenever we want to find something new we can seek the assistance of bands like Feathers and Good God who seem to have a knack for making cool friends near and far.