Signings to two of the world’s most dynamic record labels in Sub Pop and Ivy League, slots at Primavera Sound and Coachella, rave reviews from revered commentators the world over and yet the members of rising tough-pop band Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever still remain well and truly humble.
When Europe and North America aren’t flailing their arms for their services, the Melbourne five-piece will be touring the local dwellings that first believed in Angeline, their joint EP with fellow rockers You Yangs or Talk Tight – the record that ignited the rumble.
And yet above all that, the command of a 9-5 hasn’t diminished – for band founders Fran Keaney, Joe White and Tom Russo, global relevance hasn’t curtailed their modest undercurrent.
“I don’t think there’s been a point where we’ve given in to complacency. We’ve been given a chance that so many bands would be pumped with, but we don’t want to rest on our laurels, we just want to keep making good songs,” Keaney says.
“We’re still all working part-time jobs and not a lot has changed for us in a way. I don’t think we’ll be a band that drive around in Mercedes’, probably not a whole lot is ever going to change really.”
Their methodology is repetition and consistency – maximising minutes on the stage and in the studio is the key to Rolling Blackouts’ success.
Most recently, their single ‘Mainland’ took them on a global crusade – 50-odd shows in two months across 11 countries, traversing over 12,000 kilometres. They ventured from the decadent plains of Coachella across the country through Nashville and stopping over in Canada, before bookending their US run in New York City.
Leapfrogging across to Brighton for UK’s popular Great Escape music festival, they then visited Paris, Amsterdam’s London Calling and Berlin before concluding their whirlwind journey at Primavera, a titanic moment for a still burgeoning quintet.
“When a show comes through you’re like ‘That’s just a theoretical thing, that’s a date in the calendar.’ But when we got to playing Primavera, it was on another level,” Russo says.
“It was probably the highlight of the tour. When we were playing the last song, I was having an out-of-body experience – ‘I don’t know whether I’ve had more fun than this, I think this is about as fun as it gets.’” Keaney adds.
Sounding an end to Rolling Blackouts’ biggest international jaunt yet, Primavera’s Porto crowd were blessed with servings from all corners of their discography, from the seminal classic ‘Clean Slate’, to the majestic ‘Fountain of Good Fortune’ to the pulsing ‘Talking Straight’ – an overture for the band’s next chapter.
The band’s debut album mutates the helter-skelter backbeats that we’ve come to love on Talk Tight and The French Press and renders it in a stunning mirage of heightened jams.
Track one and album epic, ‘An Air Conditioned Man’, is an undisputed highlight, yet as Keaney describes, it was almost a track that never came to be.
“The first song, ‘An Air Conditioned Man’, is one I’m really proud of. We had this jam going for a little while which we all really liked but we couldn’t work out what the song wanted to be and where it would go. We tried a few different things, but none of it felt natural.
“The idea of this jam was it would be more like a mood, the whole song was a mood. It took us a little while but we eventually found the natural intuitive thing for the song. Sometimes the intuitive thing happens the first time you play the song but sometimes it takes quite a while to find,” Keaney says.
“Quite often, if you don’t find the intuitive thing early, if the song doesn’t feel itself early on then you’re probably going to lose it. You’re probably not going to be able to get back into that mind frame that you were in when you created it in the first place as the concrete can set a bit. But we were able to get back in there and reopen it.”
For White and Russo, ‘Exclusive Grave’ stands at the fore with its serendipitous tale and infectious pop sensibilities.
“I remember recording ‘Exclusive Grave’, which is one of Tom’s original songs. I remember the take that was the take. It was night time up in Bellingen and we were blasting it out into the forest just before we’d had any complaints, the doors were still wide open and it was like a real party,” White says.
“That one take that really worked, it was just like ‘Wow, that was definitely it.’”
If Rolling Blackouts’ EPs hadn’t etched their peerless brand of motorik pop into alternative rock folklore, then Hope Downs carves their incision with a sharp obsidian blade. Comparisons to the Go-Betweens and the Triffids won’t lament, nevertheless, there’s a melodic inimitability that thrusts Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever into their own lonely corner, where no band has tread before.
