If like TheVine you've been mourning the demise of fantastic Melbourne quintet St Helens ever since they went their separate ways early last year, you'll be just as excited as we were to hear that main songwriter Jarrod Quarrell's solo project
Lost Animal has an album due out next month. The album's called
Ex Tropical and is out through consistently excellent Melbourne indie label Sensory Projects — and now there's a video to go with it. 'Say No to Thugs' is the first single from
Ex Tropical, and the video features Quarrell murdering his bass player Shags Chamberlain — who, hilariously, returns as a zombie to exact revenge. It was directed by Jason Heller, who's also worked with Love of Diagrams, Panel of Judges and other Melbourne indie luminaries.
Lost Animal 'Say No to Thugs'
Also on the subject of excellent Melbourne indie bands, there's also a new video doing the rounds for
New War's single "Ghostwalking". There's no murder or zombies here, although the music would totally fit such purposes — it's a simple, low budget, band-in-a-room-playing-the-song affair, but it's nicely shot and suits the song well (on what looks like some sort of actual tape, too).
If you're of a traditional bent, you may wish too look away now —
Miami Horror have done a cover of The Church's classic "Under the Milky Way" for something called the
Snickers Sessions, which invites bands to cover songs that "aren't their style". If you can restrain your sense of impending horror for a moment and have a listen, though, you might find that the song's actually not that bad — it's hardly a radical re-working of the original, true, but it works well enough for what it is. The accompanying video finds Ben Plant and chums tooling round on Ableton and recording the song at what's a fairly well-appointed Snickers-sponsored studio. Ho hum.
Miami Horror 'Under the Milky Way'
In a similar vein,
Phrase has tackled Australian Crawl's 1980s hit 'Reckless'. While the song indeed "isn't his style", there's an argument to be made that Oz hip hop these days basically fills the same role as Chisel-helmed Aus pub rock did in the 1980s, addressing the same subjects for basically the same demographic. That's a subject for another day, but in the meantime, this… Um, well, make up your own mind.
Phrase 'Reckless'