With their debut 2015 EP, Talk Tight, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever proved to be one of those special bands that arrives seemingly out of nowhere with a fully realized aesthetic. No tentative baby steps or half-formed experiments for this lot; Talk Tight exuded confidence and purpose, yielding five propulsive, jangly pop gems that felt instantly familiar. And its appeal was cross-generational. If you were raised on ’80s college rock, you could revel in nostalgic nods to the Feelies, the Clean, the Go-Betweens, and countless other Velvets revisionists. Younger fans could hear the sort of band the Strokes might have turned into had they aged more gracefully, or imagine what Real Estate might sound like after downing a case of Red Bull.
But while working from an old, dog-eared indie rock blueprint, the Melbourne band take great delight in redrafting the lines. With three distinctive singer-guitarists—Tom Russo, Fran Keaney, and Joe White—at the helm, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever don’t operate so much like a traditional rock band as an improv theater troupe riffing on a pre-established theme. The locomotive rhythm may be locked in, but each member is free to ride it wherever they please. A Rolling Blackouts song rarely retraces its steps, often eschewing standard verse/chorus/verse structure for a parade of changing melodic motifs that are passed around the singers like hot potatoes. In the case of Talk Tight highlights like “Clean Slate,” that meant you essentially got three great songs for the price of one.
It’s a trick that (the now abbreviated) Rolling Blackouts C.F. still pull off with great aplomb on follow-up EP The French Press. Its six songs shine just as bright as those on Talk Tight, but they cast longer, darker shadows. You can sense the subtle change in temperament within the first 30 seconds of “French Press,” where the band work a taut motorik build reminiscent of Broken Social Scene’s anxious anthem “Cause = Time.” Taking full advantage of their Forster/McLennan-style dynamic, Russo and Keaney play the roles of brothers—one traveling abroad, the other stuck at a miserable desk job—as they try to converse over a patchy Skype connection. But as the song’s incessant forward motion intensifies, the technological divide comes to symbolize the emotional one at the core of their relationship: “Brother don’t you know,” Russo sings, “that jealousy’s a curse, and what’s worse is the silence/Strange… you’re moving out of range.”
“French Press” sets the tone for a record filled with seemingly innocuous scenes that suddenly turn tense. Even the songs that more readily evoke Talk Tight’s carefree kicks—“Julie’s Place,” “Colours Run”—bound about at a more furious clip, powered by blurry-handed acoustic/electric strums liable to leave blood on the pick-ups. Just as Rolling Blackouts’ music provides an instant sense of comfort through its ’80s indie-pop signifiers, lyrically, they make you feel right at home by dropping you in the middle of intimate scenes populated by first-name-basis characters. But that also means we’re sometimes privy to conversations we’re not supposed to hear. Atop the twitchy twang of “Sick Bug,” White’s yearning reminiscence of an old flame (“I close my eyes to take you back/She touched my leg”) triggers a frantic torrent of “I want you! I want you! I want you! I want you!,” crystallizing that moment when the decorum of romance gets steamrolled by the indignities of desire.
Even as The French Press mellows out, it never really settles. The casual lope of “Dig Up” puts a sunny, soft-focus filter on a portrait of a relationship’s painfully slow demise (“The walls are closing in all around us/I feel the moment’s passing us by”). And the swooning, harmony-rich chorus of “Fountain of Good Fortune” offers a precious taste of honey to chase Russo’s bitter-pill critique of organized religion: “I’ve been washed, I’ve been anointed/I’ve eaten the body of the Lord/It’s from the fountain of good fortune/Brings dirty, cloudy water/That pollutes the mind of anyone around.” Like Talk Tight, The French Press is brimming with vim, vigor, and open-road abandon. But what makes it an even more compelling listen is that, this time, we get a clearer glimpse in the rear-view mirror of the stressors they’re trying to escape.
