The Goon Sax are James Harrison, Louis Forster and Riley Jones, from Brisbane, Australia. Still in high school when they made their first album Up To Anything in 2016, their brand of awkwardly transcendent teenage guitar pop took them into end of year lists for BBC6, Billboard and Rough Trade, and earned them raves from the Guardian, Pitchfork, Spin, Uncut, Rolling Stone and elsewhere. According to Metacritic, Up To Anything was the 8th best-reviewed debut album anywhere in the world in 2016.

We're Not Talking shows how much can change between the ages of 17 and 19. It's a record that takes the enthusiasms of youth and twists them into darker, more sophisticated shapes. Relationships are now laced with hesitation, remorse, misunderstanding and ultimately compassion.

Strings, horns, even castanets sneak their way onto the album, but We're Not Talking isn't glossy throwaway pop. Sounds stick out at surprising angles, cow-bells become lead instruments and brief home-recorded fragments appear unexpectedly. This is a record made by restless artists, defying expectations as if hardly noticing.

Release: September 14th, 2018, Chapter Music
​Words: Chapter Music

Legendary Australian punk band Little Ugly Girls formed in Hobart, Tasmania in the very early 90s, but have never released a record until now. This new self-titled set is officially their debut album, and features recordings spanning more than 20 years, including new sessions to finish off songs first tracked in the late 90s, which were left stranded on a damaged hard drive for two decades.

The band formed around fiery vocalist Linda Johnston, whose high-kicking stage antics make her one of Australia's most electrifying frontpeople, alongside her guitar demon brother Dannie "Bean" Johnston and drummer Brent "Sloth" Punshon. After moving to Melbourne in the mid 90s, the band settled on their classic lineup with the addition of rock-solid bassist Mindy Mapp (previously of another cult 90s band, Brisbane's much-loved Fur).

Little Ugly Girls played with the likes of Bikini Kill (after Sloth organised for them to make a detour to Hobart on their first Australian tour), Fugazi, Babes In Toyland, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and once memorably headlined over the White Stripes in Melbourne. But their only recordings released to date include a handful of 90s cassettes (some of them now archived at the Bandcamp page of Hobart label Goulburn Street Records) and one three track CD-R.

Now nearly 30 years since they formed, the debut album by Little Ugly Girlsshows them at their towering best - fierce and inspiring, with Linda's scarifying lyrics and impassioned delivery set to a huge wall of taut punk noise. It has been a long time coming, but it's as good as you could have dreamed.

Release: August 3rd, 2018, Chapter Records
Words: Chapter Records

IDLES self-released their debut album Brutalism last year. The Austin American-Statesman described their appearance at this year's SXSW as "May be the best punk show of its kind I’ve ever witnessed...felt like experiencing something people will be talking about for years to come."

The bands' second album Joy as an Act of Resistance bluntly addresses everything from toxic masculinity, immigration, racism, nationalism and more. The band are able to channel those weighty subjects though pure positivity and even biting humor. About the band, Stereogum have said, “IDLES seem to be the sort of band who transcend corniness by virtue of conviction and intensity. In their hands, clichés are more like blunt weapons.”

Produced by Space and mixed by Adam Greenspan and Nick Launay (Arcade Fire, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kate Bush), the album takes aim at everything from nationalism and immigration to class inequality - all while maintaining a visceral, infectious positivity. Singer Joe Talbot summarises: “This album is an attempt to be vulnerable to our audience and to encourage vulnerability; a brave naked smile in this shitty new world. We have stripped back the songs and lyrics to our bare flesh to allow each other to breathe, to celebrate our differences, and act as an ode to communities and the individuals that forge them. Because without our community, we’d be nothing.” 

Release: Partisan Records/Pod, August 31st, 2018
Words: Inertia Music

NATIVE TONGUE is a fitting title for the third studio album from Mojo Juju and it is her very essence laid bare. It is raw, honest, emotional and intrinsically political. It is also brutal and relentlessly real.

Through the telling of family history and her own personal experiences, Juju explores her relationships with Elders and Ancestry and how that informs her own identity. Contemplating her Mother’s Indigenous heritage, her Father’s experience as a Filipino immigrant and her own place in the cultural landscape of modern Australia, it is an album about self-discovery and it is her most sincere, heartfelt and personal offering to date.

Mojo explains: “In a lot of ways, I wrote this album for my younger self, because as a kid growing up in regional Australia, I would have benefit so greatly from having heard more stories from, by or about other people of colour, queer people, people like me. I wanted this to be an album for First Nations People, 1st generations, 2nd generations and 3rd Culture kids.”

Stylistically, Juju once again embarks on new territory through collaborations with multiple producers; Steven Schram (Paul Kelly), Joel Ma (a.k.a. Joelistics), jnbo (The Cactus Channel) and Jamieson Shaw (Netflix series ‘The Get Down’) and includes a number of features from an eclectic array of guests; Hip Hop MC Mirrah (L-Fresh The Lion), soul music royalty Joshua Tavares and spoken word artist Lay the Mystic.

This time around Juju has taken her eclectic influences and created a seamless and authentically original sound, continuing her dedication to bucking labels, bending genres and doing her own thing. Perhaps the manifold musical incarnations of Juju are symbolic of the manifold pieces that make up her identity. Perhaps this unique blend of soul, r’n’b, blues & hip-hop is in fact her ‘Native Tongue’.

Mojo Juju will perform in Hobart on Friday, October the 19th, at the Republic Bar and Cafe.

​She has partnered up with PLUS1 for her album tour, a charity that supports Aboriginal Legal Service, working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People to provide culturally appropriate legal services, influence positive change, and increase access to justice. For each ticket sold, there will be $1 added on which will go towards PLUS1 to help make a difference.

Release: August 24th, 2018, ABC Music/Universal
Words: Secret Service PR

“[Mitski]’s probably the most advanced American songwriter that I know.” – Iggy Pop
 
Hailed as the new vanguard of indie rock following the breakout success of 2016’s Puberty 2, Mitski has returned with Be The Cowboy, out on Dead Oceans via Inertia Music. Mitski’s carefully crafted songs have often been portrayed as emotionally raw, overflowing confessionals from a fevered chosen girl, but in her fifth album, Mitski introduces a persona who has been teased before but never so fully present until now—a woman in control. 

“For this new record, I experimented in narrative and fiction,” comments Mitski. Though she hesitates to go so far as to say she created full-on characters, she reveals she had in mind “a very controlled icy repressed woman who is starting to unravel. Because women have so little power and showing emotion is seen as weakness, this ‘character’ clings to any amount of control she can get. Still, there is something very primordial in her that is trying to find a way to get out.”

In Be The Cowboy, Mitski delves into the loneliness of being a symbol and the loneliness of being someone, how it can feel so much like being no one. 'Geyser' introduces us to a woman who can’t hold it all in any more. She’s about to burst and unleash a torrent of desire and passion that has been building up inside. While recording the album with her long-time producer Patrick Hyland, the pair kept returning to “the image of someone alone on a stage, singing solo with a single spotlight trained on them in an otherwise dark room. For most of the tracks, we didn’t layer the vocals with doubles or harmonies, to achieve that campy ‘person singing alone on stage’ atmosphere.” 

There is plenty of buoyant swagger on Be The Cowboy, but just as much interrogation into self-mythology. Throughout these 14 songs, the music swerves from the cheerful to the plaintive. Mournful piano ballads lead into deceptively uptempo songs. “I had been on the road for a long time, which is so isolating, and had to run my own business at the same time. A lot of this record was me not having any feelings, being completely spent but then trying to rally myself and wake up and get back to Mitski.”

Release: August 17th, 2018, Dead Oceans/Inertia Music
Words: Dead Oceans/Inertia Music

Phantastic Ferniture is the euphoric garage-pop project of Julia Jacklin, Elizabeth Hughes and Ryan K Brennan.

While their spiritual home may be the garage, they were born in a bar, specifically the hallowed basement of Frankie’s Pizza in Sydney. One late night in 2014, on Jacklin’s birthday, a group hug manifested amid the pinball machines, with all ten participants vowing to form a band. “Only four of us remembered the next day,” notes Hughes. United by fern puns and a love of leisurewear, the band met up whenever schedules would allow, writing songs and playing smatterings of dates to an increasingly devoted audience. Eventually it was decreed that this was no side project and an LP should follow.

The brief? More spontaneous and less technical than their solo projects. “That was the fun part,” says Jacklin. “Ryan never played drums in bands, Liz had never been a lead guitarist, Tom didn’t play bass and I’d never just sung before’". Hughes adds, ‘We wanted a low level of expertise, because a lot of good music comes from people whose passion exceeds their skill”.
 
The mission was obvious: Don’t overthink it. That’s evident in the urgent garage-pop perfection on Phantastic Ferniture's self-titled debut album, and in the unconventional path the band has taken to releasing it. The result is one of the most enjoyable albums of 2018. “It feels really good,” Jacklin says with satisfaction. “It’s like having an alter ego.”

Release: July 27th, 2018, Makeout Records/Caroline Australia
Words: Caroline Australia