STACK #162 April 2018

MUSIC REVIEWS

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GUM The Underdog Interplanetary jackaroo Jay Watson is coming straight for your third eye on new album The Underdog , under his solo moniker GUM. Breakbeats dawdle then pound, glistening electronics march across the bridge of your nose, and disco rhythms accompany synth supernovas, as Watson describes the micro-troughs and macro-peaks of his mind. Like his other two musical projects (Tame Impala and Pond), GUM mines psychedelic electronica and cosmic rock, but the difference here is his grasp of melody; these songs lodge in your head more effectively than a Sherbie in your molar. Track three is titled S.I.A and stands for Say It Again – “I’ll say it again, but you won’t understand,” repeated times a hundred. I think it’s reverse psychology because despite The Underdog 's weirdness I feel as if I totally comprehend this reflection of one person’s place on our rotating “blue marble.” (Caroline) ZKR

Unknown Mortal Orchestra Sex & Food These Portland-via-Auckland psychedeliacs have always had a stranger bent than the Kevin Parkerites of the current century, but they’re still hung up on the groove. Sex & Food – carnal pleasures, you get it? – reins in some of the restlessness of previous records, trading it for a slower burn. Single American Guilt tears it up but it's the quieter Ministry of Alienation , the pastoral folk strum of Chronos Feasts On His Children , and the slinky, almost- R'n'B of Not In Love We're Just High that really stand out. Yeah, the song titles are still bananas, too. This isn’t anything UMO fans won’t recognise, but for the same reasons you're not gonna get this from anyone else. (Jagjaguwar/Inertia) Jake Cleland

Jack White Boarding House Reach On single Connected By Love , Jack White explains tenderness as a crushingly powerful religion; the track is a sermon about forgiveness and being saved by devotion, with church organ and gospel back-ups pealing off the rafters – it's a massively powerful opener. So what else is White preaching from the Boarding House Reach pulpit? Well, it’s more mad innovation from a man

whose focus on experimentalism sometimes outdoes melodic coherence, but for those who subscribe to the good book of evolution, it's a brilliant trip. And with ideas like these – that are never muddied, but all stand together in weird accord like junk shop trinkets in a halo of thundering dust – you can’t not get in, loser. There’s the motley genius of Frank Zappa all over stand-outs Corporation (“I’m thinking about starting a corporation! That’s how you get adulation!”), Ice Station Zebra (thrashing piano, sudden hold-ups while we wait for jazzy little ramblings to cross the road like ducks) and Hypermisophoniac (which sounds like a whirring, honkytonk robot slowly looping into life). Crackling with the broken brains of electric guitars and just oozing with acidic rhythms and easy grace, Boarding House Reach is gleeful aural sorcery from the Wizard White. (Third Man Records/Sony) ZKR

Head to stack.com.au for more interviews, live reviews, and superb galleries featuring snaps like those below - all captured byTim Lambert at the inaugural Pool House Party at CoburgVelodrome, Melbourne on 17/3/18. (Clockwise from top left: Baker Boy, The Sugarcanes, Press Club, WAAX. )

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