I thought I'd take a moment to write about Bushwalking's outstanding No Enter album. I think I got fed this one as a recommendation by Rdio (sigh) back in the day after listening to lots of other stuff in the incestuous Australian scene, but this one hit home pretty hard and has stayed with me.
The cover has one single pensive downward-cast eye accompanied with aqua and orange eye shadow. Avoiding eye contact, just like I do.
Totally fierce medieval drone grooves, two female lead singers operating as a single titanic/Teutonic vocal and rhythm unit, dude guitarist splattering semi-tonal stuff on top with uncanny slapback like some sort of glass-shard frosting. Not a sound I've heard elsewhere, even in the postpunk genre that I guess this would fall into.
Album sequencing is pretty genius:
3 gripping relatively short songs
1 long dub-drone burner
3 gripping relatively short songs
1 unsettled song
1 totally unexpected acoustic song at the end - with flute no less
I listened to this one over and over again during the dark nights at the end of 2016, after that gross dude was elected here in the US but before he took office. The last few months before my boy was born. I would listen to this while riding my bike home from work, the calm cold dark all around me, the menacing drone from the freeway on my left echoing the drone from my little Bluetooth speaker. Occasionally I would come across someone who was walking or living on the bike path and there would be an awkward attempt to pause my speaker. As I approached my neighborhood, "Green Light" (the unsettled song) would play, and then as I rode through the potholed familiar dangerous streets of my neighborhood, the flutes of "Always Here" would guide me home. Several times the last few notes played just as I went to open the garage door.
The various players here continued on to do excellent things after this, but this one never really got the attention it deserved.
