- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 785
Long March Through The Jazz Age – The Saints (Fire Records)
This deserves your attention and not because it’s posthumous.
The Saints’ 15th studio album, “Long March Through The Jazz Age”, snuck out before the 2025 Christmas-New Year break and, despite best endeavours, appeared to make only a slight dent in public consciousness.
It’s not hard to work out why.
The Saints had been away a long time – the last album, “King Of The Sun”, was released in 2012. Chris Bailey was a private person but the contemporary economics of fronting a band and ill-health probably had a lot to do with that.
- Details
- By Edwin Garland
- Hits: 1371
In The Manifesto - Sacred Cowboys (Torn &Frayed/Beast Records)
It’s cause for a celebration whenever Sacred Cowboys release a new album. Principal member Garry Gray holds his freak flag high in a fight against mediocrity in music, and he’s now reunited with a fellow founding member in Mark Ferrie.
I have long argued that the Celibate Rifles captured the frantic and wild, surf-meets-Detroit Sydney Sound with their own laconic touch. Sacred Cowboys are a shining light of what the best of the Melbourne Sound. They play rootsy bar room blues, swampy while embracing post punk's excursions and maintaining a sense of punk's urgency.
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 869
Grrrr! – Girl Monstar (Vicious Kitten)
The groove is the thing on “Grrrr!!” - and so it should be on an album with a name approximating one of the many Best Of collections by the Stones. Drummer Susan Shaw (nee Sue Wold, of The Wraylettes, The Wet Ones, The Exotics and Plastic Section) and Janene Abbott lay down smooth ‘n’ slinky rhythms, and the rest follows.
So to the review but first, the backstory: Girl Monstar existed in Australia a very different time. Home base Melbourne was artier than its rawer cousin Sydney but bands like Girl Monstar were spanning both. The Big Day Out festival juggernaut emerged at the tail end of their run and pushed the underground onto a different level.
- Details
- By Edwin Garland
- Hits: 2004
Thunk - Jim Moginie and The Family Dog (Reverberama)
Former Midnight Oil guitarist Jim Moginie’s book “The Silver River” outlines how the earliest gigs for his solo band, The Family Dog, were a humbling experience.
Not unlike early shows by his teenage band FARM in the mid-1970s, they played obscure venues outside the city so he could re-learn his craft and build confidence as frontman and singer. He was incredibly nervous,. Very few people showed up, and many only did so out of curiosity.
That’s Jim Moginie all over. Normally, when a member of an international band of some standing appears in a relative backwater (Midnight Oil sold 25 million records and ranks as the third most successful band that Australia has produced) it would be massive news. Jim exudes a sweeping humility and it shines through on this album.
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 1043
10 More – MC50 (earMUSIC)
Well ain’t this the surprise packet, coming seven years after the run of shows it captures and more than a year after the release of the MC5-in-name-only record, “Heavy Lifting”. If you grabbed it, you might also have snavelled the live MC50 album “10 X MC5” that came as a bonus with some copies.
MC50 is the all-star band assembled by the late Wayne Kramer to mark the 50th anniversary of “Kick Out The Jams”. It comprised Kramer and Kim Thayil (Soundgarden) on guitars, Brendan Canty (Fugazi) on drums, Billy Gould (Faith No More) on bass, and Marcus Durant (Zen Guerrilla) on vocals. Matt Cameron (Soundgarden/Pearl Jam) alternated on drums.
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 2338
Service Station Chicken - Dave Favours & The Roadside Ashes (Stanley Records)
Dave Favours & The Roadside Ashes make country music for people who don’t like country music. That’s a truism, not a slur.
The point is that the players’ background in underground Oz rock and roll, circa late 1980s rolling into the ‘90s, is apparent in their playing. You play enough sticky carpet dives where patrons demand to be impressed and you become a harder player. At least that's how it was before streaming. These Roadside Ashes have a work ethic honed over some years.
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 2078
Apple of Life - Dom Mariani (Alive Naturalsound)
From the tumbling drums and Spector-lite touches of opener “Breakaway” to the keening country pop of single “Jangleland”, this album is classic Dom Mariani.
In a long career spanning The Stems, Majestic Kelp, the Someloves, Datura 4 and DM3, the man has never stumbled. “Apple of Life” adds another sparkling gem to the back catalogue.
Mariani’s travels have taken myriad twists and turns but strong songwriting has always been the axis on which his journey turns. So it is with “Apple of Life”, which mines the usual seams of powerpop and rock but this time adding strong country touches. Glimpses of ‘70s pop and New Wave peek through and gives the record its own distinctive edge.
- Details
- By JD Monroe
- Hits: 2037
Faith & Fumes – Brian McCarty (Electric Lab Recordings)
So there I was at some Indiana Sunday night punk rock juice bar, circa ‘87-ish, half blinded by strobe lights and taking liberal pulls from my handy flask. I was probably wearing some kinda gloomy trench coat, a NY Dolls T-shirt from High Street in Columbus (either from Mothra or Magnolia Thunderpussy), ripped jeans with band logos sharpied on them, combat boots, lots of hair spray and bad Cure kid makeup.
I'd just gotten outta juvie, where they'd stuck me in solitary for a month, for lippin' off to the kind of creep who thought that juvenile corrections seemed like a worthy calling, and that month alone made me even weirder and more stubbornly determined to escape the never ending abuse and behavior modification bootcamping of those plantation states.
The band on stage were doing some kinda crazy, confetti colored, frenzied clash between Hanoi Rocks and the NY Dolls with bubble gummy Ramones choruses and atomic energy. The songs I think I remember from back then were about defending free speech, freedom of the press, choosing one's own preferred lifestyle, and fighting the P.M.R.C. and Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority ("Smut") and struggling to find a redemptive romance while being stuck working low wage blue collar jobs ("Gasboy"). I think they were already playing "Downtown Nowhere" that night, too, which became a big favorite among our small group of peers. Always adored, "You Threw Me Away", as well. I could instantly relate to everything they were doing.
- Details
- By Ed Garland
- Hits: 2095
Give Me Another Hœur Please God - Woolworths Flu Shot (Self released)
There is nothing more pathetic than boomers who lament there are no decent bands anymore.
Sure, they’re not as bad as the ones who go on about shitty, awful tribute cover bands populated by burned-out has-beens, or those people who think |godawful vineyard gigs with heritage acts responsible for the worst Australian music of the 1980s are somehow relevant.
Don’t listen to any of them. Some of the edgiest, toughest and most inventive bands are Gen Z. OK, it’s sometimes like panning for gold to find the nuggets of wildness, but they are out there.
It was a Wednesday night a few weeks ago when I dropped into the legendary and edgy Nimbin Hotel in Far Northern New South Wales. I entered to the sound of blisteringly loud noise as the bar’s floorboards shook.
- Do you like FÄHM? Sure 'Nuff 'N Yes I Do
- Masuak's Dog Soldier charts its own course on new album
- Belligerent Dickhead? He's been called worse
- "Under The World" is all power and no self-pity
- Word on the street is that Angel Face rules on second album
- Cover this! Streetwalkin' Cheetahs deliver with other people's songs
Subcategories
Behind the fridge
Artifacts and reviews from days gone by.
Send us stuff to review
PO Box 334
Oatley NSW
2223 Australia
Get in touch: barman@i94bar.com
The Living Eye
I-94 Bar presents
"Searching for Charlie Owen"
Charlie Owen (music & spoken word)
MAR
7 - Brass Monkey, Cronulla
+ Looch Lewis + Mark Horne
7 - Brass Monkey, Cronulla
Tickets
8- 185 Bar, Marrickville (5pm)
+ Paul Berwick (EP launch)
+ Looch Lewis
Tickets
I-94 Bar presents
"Lost In Marrickvile"
The On & Ons + Jupiter 5
+ The Frequent Flyers
185 Bar, Marrickville
- Mar 20
Bleak Squad
MAR
4 - Canberra Theatre Playhouse, ACT
5 - The Factory Theatre, Sydney, NSW
8 - Golden Plains Festival, Meredith, VIC
Tickets
On The Loose Presents
Guitar Wolf Australian Tour
MAR
14 - Perth, Seasonal Brewing Co.
15 - Fremantle, The Buffalo Club
all WA shows with Aborted Tortoise
18 - Gold Coast, Vinnie's Dive Bar
w/ supports TBC
19 - Nambour, The Ramp
w/ supports TBC
20 - Brisbane, Season Three
w/ Future Shocks & Evil Dick Industries
21 - Sydney, Factory Fusebox
w/ supports TBC
22 - Wollongong, La La La's
w/ Itchy & the Nits
25 - Bendigo, Trash Cult
w/ supports TBC
26 - Castlemaine, Bridge Hotel
w/ The Freedom Wave
27 - Melbourne, The Tote
w/ Alien Nosejob & Cujo
28 - Frankston, Singing Bird
w/ Split System & DJ Centipede & The Worms
29 - Balnarring, Social Club
w/ Cry Cyclops
Tickets
“Surreal Science”
Music of the Scientists &
Kim Salmon
and The Surrealists
APR
10 – The Corner, Melbourne
Tickets
11 – Oxford Art Factory, Sydney
Tickets
18 – Rosemount Hotel, Perth, WA
Tickets
Fresh Reviews
-
Young Charlatans' legacy laid bare in a stunning time capsule
03 March 2026
-
Harem Scarem founder Charlie Marshall (and Louie's) Family Affair
01 March 2026
-
They're still Not Like Everybody Else
28 February 2026
-
It's Alive! Canadian rocker Rich Hope and his red hot band hit the mark
25 February 2026
-
Punk pioneer Brian James bids us ciao
25 February 2026