Alternative Indie | Musicosity

Alternative Indie

Calico Sunday

Calico Sunday is a 5 piece band hailing from the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Their new and energetic sound draws upon elements of indie rock and Synth Pop, blending sounds that produce an intricate and full show that goes beyond just music.

The band consists of singer Saskia Wardlaw, guitarists Michael Gage and Luke Santomartino, bassist Michael Fabri and drummer Jonathan Magnone. Playing shows around Melbourne at iconic venues such as Max Watts, The Espy and Penny black.

The band is set to release their new single ' VODKA', Which has a summer feel drawing from genres such as indie rock and Synth pop in addition to catchy lyrics and sing along able chorus this song is set to be the Band's most anticipated release.

Jeb Cardwell

Jeb Cardwell, a guitarist, singer, songwriter whose music takes you back to the glory days when guitar-driven riffs and rich vocals were king.
A two-time winner of the SAMIA (South Australian Music Industry) award for ‘Most Outstanding Guitarist’, Jeb is also an experienced performer having opened for artists such as Steve Earle and Tony Joe White. He is also an accomplished songwriter collaborating with his sister Abbie Cardwell to co-write ‘Anchored’ which won them the American BMI Songwriting Competition.

After spending a lifetime in multiple bands and as a recording sideman for a diverse range of artists including Chris Altman (Que Paso), Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson (Wreck & Ruin), Van Walker (Celestial Railroads) and ‘Triple J Unearthed’ winner sister Abbie Cardwell, Jeb set out in 2017 to pursue a solo career. After a three year period of writing, recording, re-writing, and re-recording, his debut studio album My Friend Defiance is ready for the world.

My Friend Defiance, a bluesy, Americana, Beatles-esque lesson in guitar tones dripping with Southern swagger. Interweaving synth and piano melodies, slide guitar riffs, rich and soulful vocals and some of the best song-writing Melbourne has seen, Jeb Cardwell's attention to detail is evident in every step of this production.

Three singles have already been released with ‘Blood Moon’ reaching #2 on the AMRAP charts.

Written, recorded and mixed at Union St Studios and mastered by Grammy award-winning Brian Lucey (Black Keys, Lucinda Williams, Liam Gallagher), My Friend Defiance features the crème de la crème of Melbourne's recording artists: Roger Bergadoz (Lost Ragas, Tex Perkins, Jordie Lane), Tim McCormack (Stella Angelico, Downhills Home), Bernie McMahon (Tracy McNeil & The Good Life, Jeff Lang), Mic Hubbard (Spencer P. Jones, Eagle and the Worm) and the Wolfgramm Sisters. Special guests include Kasey Chambers and Butch Norton (Eels, Lucinda Williams).

Jeb’s debut studio album ‘My Friend Defiance’ is out now on iTunes and Spotify through ‘Blind Date Records’.

The Lemon Twigs

The Twigs are legends – teen sensations, k pop stars, BrotherLovers, Twiggy Cola Lite. Their songs exist as cultural freebase. Cocaine, water, baking soda, and DNA. (o.k. )
While the White Smile Face People appoint Garage Girl, Digital Bass Face or Shitbag Boy as the new FreakoftheWeek, the Twigs have lived 26 cat lives from here to japan making real life bonafide Humans rejoice in the pagan art of Magick Pop Freebase. There are millions of fans, You see; the twigz are more Popular than You, they are Greater than Your Favorite Band, they are a phenomenon.
And now it’s been more than three years since they showed up with their masterpieces and the kids went berserk.
You loved “Meet the Twigs,” you loved the fucking monkey.
Well Music For the General Public is the ultimate ride cocksucker.
Because the Twigs heated up the bottom of their spoons and let their chemicals morph into oil-slick-rainbow clumps. 12 of them. Each song is Twigs from concentrate: seven times more concentrated than the initial juice.
A noseful for every junkie, sparkling as the cream smeared across the mythical holy Ghost-Teen’s high waisted vintage-ass JEANS.

THE TWIGS are celebs. They are in Rado’s dusty bat cave, one of several spots they’ve been chipping at their fuck puzzle. They have nothing to prove. They don’t care. Everybody who’s the face of a designer clothing campaign is because the twigs passed first.
//~ Michael lives in the studio and lays down his tracks at night. He has become a reluctant studio engineer in the Twigs’ home studio in Long Island and can run the machines himself. He is working on the album’s opener, ‘Hell on Wheels,” in which His searing cartoon visions of dirty screaming teenage deathkids ripping down the Strip parade us into into the throb of the album. He mopes around. The subject matter of his songs is dark. His songs are Masterful and bombastic, exploding and shining black, while his lyrics seem preoccupied with incest, broken homes, loneliness. Welcome.
Now It’s daytime. Brian’s in love. He and his girlfriend Anastasia have shown up after her shift at Squaresville vintage clothing store. Brian sprinkles sweetgrass around. Brian’s songs have become Too Good – they are DMT jesters of themselves, cartoon crack. You can wind a Brian Song up and watch it go BOING BOING BOING down the hallway with art deco birds towering above, snirting their snorters into snakey red inkwater.
And here you are, in your stupid fake clown costume, with your Twigs merch, hitting your vein again.
You clown, you fanboy. you love this shit.
Admit it sucker. you need this shit.

Keli Holiday

Keli Holiday (Adam Hyde) is here and unleashing his debut album, KELI, on the world! Featuring previous singles such as ‘song goes on’, ‘december’, ‘off my mind’ and ‘where you feel’, KELI all started with heartbreak and born out of the ashes of a break-up, coming into existence in a tiny bedroom in a Waterloo apartment, overlooking Sydney’s Eastern Distributor motorway.

They say life imitates art, but in the case of Keli Holiday, art also imitates life. Hyde describes Holiday as a caricature of himself: “A heartbroken man who still thinks he’s the shit.”

Heartbreak is the universal feeling at the core of the record and Hyde captures it with brutal honesty and stomach-sinking relatability.

The album, which was co-produced by The Presets’ Kim Moyes, is at once candid and cathartic, revealing and relatable, helpless and hopeful. There are dizzying pop peaks – in the form of crowd favourites ‘Corolla’ and ‘Human Nature’ which features Nicky Night Time of Van She. And there are sombre synth lows – including ‘Better’ and ‘With You’, which Hyde wrote about losing his best friend when he was 17, growing up in Canberra.

Having started the Keli Holiday project back in 2017, Hyde says now is the right time to release it into the world. “Life is a game of learning, and now that I’m 30, I know who I am and what I want. I’m more sure of myself as a person. I’m finally in a place where I feel comfortable sharing the deepest, darkest corners of me with whoever will listen. Now is the time,” says Hyde.

Bootleg Rascal

Sydney genre-benders Bootleg Rascal have announced their third studio album, ‘Sloppy Seconds’, set for release on October 29 via the band’s own Bootleg Records.

The record will feature both of the duo’s 2021 singles, ‘All About You’ (featuring Saint Lane) and ‘Therapy’ (featuring Citizen Kay and MAXINE), alongside reimagined tracks from 2016’s ‘Asleep In The Machine’ and 2018’s ‘Anómino’, plus EPs ‘Psychotica’ and ‘Collaborations Of Very Isolated Delinquents “19’.

Speaking to The Music, guitarist Jimmy Young said the album’s unique concept was one he’d wanted to explore for some time. “When the world stopped, I started to really think about projects I’ve always wanted to do but never had enough time for,” he mused.

“One thing on the bucket list was to have made a record which embraced the whole ‘something old, new, borrowed’ concept.”

Young cited Sublime as a key inspiration for ‘Sloppy Seconds’, saying the Californian ska band were “a big part of why [he] first started playing music in the first place”. He noted that the posthumous 1997 album, ‘Second-Hand Smoke’, is one Young was particularly enamoured by.

“The record was released not long after frontman Bradley Nowell’s death,” Young explained, “and follows a similar concept where it shines a light on remixed and recycled tracks. It really gives another perspective and take on some of their classics, and as a fan that’s something I really enjoy. Here’s hoping our fans feel the same.”

Tomorrow (August 27), Bootleg Rascal are set to release the third single from ‘Sloppy Seconds’, a Spanish remix of their track ‘Sharks’. The song was first released seven years ago on the ‘Psychotica’ EP.

Tendrils

Tendrils were an irregular collaboration between two Australian guitarists, Joel Silbersher of Hoss and Charlie Owen of Beasts of Bourbon.[1] The music of Tendrils is characterized by two chaotic yet complementary guitar parts and occasional stripped-back percussion. In 1995, billed simply as "Joel Silbersher and Charlie Owen", they issued an album, Tendrils. It was produced by Spencer P. Jones and recorded at Atlantis Studios, Melbourne.[2] Drums were provided by Greg Bainbridge on three tracks and Todd McNeair on one track.[2]

For the second album, Soaking Red (1998), they used Tendrils as the band's name. Owen played guitars, pedal bass, piano, organ, percussion, mandolin, banjo, bass recorder, backing vocals on one track and drums on another; Silbersher supplied vocals, guitars, drums, harmonica, and incidental keyboards; Jim White provided additional drumming on one track.[2] It was produced by Dave McLuney, Owen and Silbersher and mixed at Atlantis studios.[2] Soaking Red was nominated for at the ARIA Music Awards of 1999 for Best Alternative Release.[3] In April 1999 they advertised an intention to tour overseas. In November 2011 Tendrils supported a gig by Gareth Liddiard.

Sons Of The East

Australian band Sons of the East are an under-the-radar success story, racking up millions of streams and selling out shows across Europe and Australia without ever straying from their independent roots. And like their musical heroes, they built that impressive following through their incredible and energetic live shows, paired with a serious handful of exceptional original songs.

So far the band has racked up more than 160 million streams on Spotify, 12 million streams on Apple Music and 40 million Youtube plays from around the world. They plan to use this budding global audience to launch the next stage of their career in 2022, as they head to Europe in July for a run of summer festivals, before an extensive international debut album tour from August onward.

“Thank God for Sons Of The East... unshakeable calm and smooth tempos... harmonies woven tighter than DNA strands... dare I call it ‘Australia-cana’?” - Sam Jackson, AU Review

“What we like about this band is their Australian twist and contemporary take on the more traditional Folk music style... But ultimately what really makes this band shine is their stage presence (they are a must see live)” - Vinyl Garden.

Anita Lester

Anita Lester is an Australian based musician, writer and painter.

Having spent years touring the world with rock outfit ‘Lester The Fierce’, in March 2020, Anita released her debut solo EP ‘Erato’. Whilst the timing of the release was ominous, tracks from the work eventually resonated- notably ‘Wrong Time’ and Anita’s cover of ‘You Want it Darker’ by Leonard Cohen - being picked up by film and television including ‘The Walking Dead’, epiloguing her viral live video of the same song- praised by Leonard himself prior to his death.

In June 2021, Anita released her single ‘Sun and moon and stars’, produced by legendary Australian troubadours, Husky.

Over the last decade and a half, Anita has quietly and gracefully established herself as a force in not only music, but visual art, literature and film.

Her last short film ‘Noch Am Leben (I’m Still Alive)’ was shown in over 50 festivals globally, including multiple Oscar contenders. Additionally it is the winner of 23 award laurels.

Her paintings are irreverent, technical and striking, all with a nod to mythological stories- which is shown in her upcoming book ‘The Seven Palaces of Breath: The Mysteries of the Flying Hobbler‘.

Her most recent official portrait of Flea from the 'Red Hot Chilli Peppers', gaining praise far and wide from artists and critics, including Patti Smith, Cat Power and Chris Rock, to name a few.

Anita is also an accomplished poet and storyteller with her work appearing in over a dozen books. Her musical release ’Erato’ is also accompanied by a book of poetry, including the widely publicised ‘Ode to Oz’.

Though there are many facets to Anita Lester’s art practice, it is all grounded in a unique storytelling style that has a red thread woven throughout with links to death, sex, love, longing, slavery and spirituality.

Charm of Finches

Charm of Finches are an Australian duo consisting of Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes. The duo say "We write contemporary folk songs inspired by our personal experiences of love, grief and nature. We like to describe our music as contemporary chamber folk."

Hope D

Emerging from Brisbane, alt pop-rock artist Hope D began writing and playing music at the early age of 9 years old. Previously performing solo, she now has a passionate 5-piece band behind her, and shows have become more engaging and energetic than ever.