Four bottles? No, five. I s'pose.

In conversation with one of Sydney’s veteran rock’n’rollers, Doc Ellard of Chickenstones made the point that, to some extent, the early Stones were “trying to get away from being English, because of what America and Americana represented: freedom, freedom of expression, expansion, wealth and exotica”.

It’s hard to imagine Deniz Tek fans being disappointed by his latest release. Radio Birdman fans, maybe not so much.

While Deniz’s last album, “Detroit”, was a brooding, introspective and dark reflection on urban and personal relationship decay, “Mean Old Twister” paints with a broader aural palette. Sax, harmonica and keys are woven into the sound at strategic points, to enhance Tek’s trademark guitar and guitar player’s vocal.

Coming out of Melbourne with long-player number two, Kit Convict & Thee Terrible Two have come up with a great little album. It’s full of jangly guitar riffs, a huge drum sound and a fabulous bass player holding down its bottom end and keeping it as tight as a cat’s arsehole.

I’ll tell you now that they did not fuck around with the recording of “Cobra’s Blood”. It was all written by the band, recorded in two days (the 12th & 13th of March this year, to be precise) at the wonderful Sound Park Studios in little old Northcote. Mastered by Mikey Young, it's an album that grows and grows on you. Exactly as was intended.

These are quite remarkable recordings. Yes, you've heard rehearsal tapes and demo recordings by garage bands before, but these are different. It's all about the timeframe, the intensity and the fact that they're Australian and were recorded in relative cultural isolation.

“Dumb-World” is a serious collection of raw demos and rehearsal tapes from future Sacred  Cowboys leader Garry Gray and his early bands between 1974-1978, featuring Judas and the Traitors, The Reals and The Negatives.

To place this in a historic context, the Australian musical landscape was fairly frigid. The local artists’ soundtrack was blaring from commercial AM radio, but it that was drab even though the live scene was flourishing and there were so many gigs for local musicians to play. 

If Jack Lee went to his grave only known as the guy who wrote the Blondie hit “Hanging On the Telephone” he’d be more noteworthy than all of us combined and then some. The irony is that only music publishing houses and fans of his former band, The Nerves, would know this. Sad, but that’s the state of music in the ‘00s.

Just the facts: Their recorded output was scant but The Nerves were one helluva great power-pop band, operating out of LA in the mid-‘70s, and Jack Lee was (and probably still is) a consummate songwriter. Lee formed The Nerves and played guitar. His similarly talented bandmates were Peter Case (bass) and Paul Collins (drums.) They all sang and wrote the songs. That’s probably too much talent for one band and of course they didn’t last long…

“Thrills and Chills” is full of old school rock 'n' roll combined with big power-pop songs. This album is a winner, from the fantastic opening track “What The Hell Did I Do” until the closer, “Business To Tend To”.

This wonderful album is the New England band's first full-length effort after a string of EPs and has a little bit of everything for everyone. Led by the three guitars of Brad Marino , Kurt Baker and Jeff Palmer (who swap between rhythm and lead and bass guitar), the band also mixes the lead vocal role. Kris Rogers and Rick Orcutt fill out the ranks on keyboards/piano and drums respectively.