Rolling Blackouts Coast Thunder tonight. In concert at Lowlands Festival earlier last month and preserved for posterity by Netherlands outlet VPRO/3VOOR12-FM.
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, also sometimes known as Rolling Blackouts C.F., is an Australian indie rock band. Formed in Melbourne in 2013 by singer-guitarists Fran Keaney, Tom Russo & Joe White. The band’s five members are Keaney, his cousin Joe White, Tom Russo, his brother Joe Russo (bass guitar), and Marcel Tussie (drums). Their debut EP, Talk Tight, was released in 2016 on Ivy League Records. It was followed by their second EP, the French Press, which was mixed by Doug Boehm and released in 2017 on Sub Pop Records. They performed at the St Jerome’s Laneway Festival on 29 January 2018,and their debut full-length album, Hope Downs, was released on 15 June 2018 on Sub Pop.
This, via their Bandcamp Page:
Hope Downs was largely written over the past year in the band’s Melbourne rehearsal room where their previous releases were also written and recorded. The band’s core trio of songwriters hunkered down and wrote as the chaos of the world outside unavoidably seeped into the songwriting process. “We were feeling like we were in a moment where the sands were shifting and the world was getting a lot weirder. There was a general sense that things were coming apart at the seams and people around us were too,” Russo explains. The album title, taken from the name of a vast open cut mine in the middle of Australia, refers to the feeling of “standing at the edge of the void of the big unknown, and finding something to hold on to.”
Hope Downs is as much about the people that populate the world around us—their stories, perspectives, and hopes in the face of disillusionment—as it is about the state of things at large. It’s a record that focuses on finding the bright spots at a time when cynicism all too often feels like the natural state. Rolling Blackouts C.F. are here to remind us to keep our feet on the ground—and Hope Downs is as delicious a taste of terra firma as you’re going to get from a rock band right now.
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Have a listen to their Lowlands gig from a few days and see what you think.
