Endless Rooms
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s third album was born out of lockdown sessions building ideas on GarageBand. With the Melbourne group unable to convene and jam—or tour previous album *Sideways to New Italy*—while COVID ran amok, files were swapped, each bursting with ideas and musical freedom. The result is RBCF’s most expansive album yet, one that came together in a flurry of creative excitement once the quintet were able to meet up and play together. While their trademark acoustic-driven indie pop is still in play (“Saw You at the Eastern Beach,” “The Way It Shatters”), there are new twists, such as the smoky ’70s grooves that permeate “Dive Deep.” Lyrically the group also explores new territory, with environmental concerns (“Tidal River” with the line “Jet ski over the pale reef”) and the horrific bushfires that engulfed Australia’s east coast in 2019 and 2020 (“Bounce Off the Bottom”) adding a discontented edge to the record.
While initial ideas for Endless Rooms were traded online during long spells spent separated by Australia’s strict lockdowns, the album was truly born during small windows of freedom in which the band would decamp to a mud-brick house in the bush around two hours north of Melbourne built by the extended Russo family in the 1970s. There, its 12 tracks took shape, informed to such an extent by the acoustics and ambience of the rambling lakeside house that they decided to record the album there (and put the house on the album cover). For the first time, the band self-produced the record (alongside engineer, collaborator and old friend, Matt Duffy). The result is a collection of songs permeated by the spirit of the place; punctuated by field recordings of rain, fire, birds, and wind. "It's almost an anti-concept album," says the band. "The Endless Rooms of the title reflects our love of creating worlds in our songs. We treat each of them as a bare room to be built up with infinite possibilities."
Still drawing from the canon of jangly, guitar-centric 1980s college rock, the Melbourne band’s latest infuses the easygoing vibe with nuanced political songwriting.
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever expand their sonic palette and sharpen their lyrical knives on third studio album 'Endless Rooms'.
The third Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever album might have been written and recorded under unusual lockdown-enforced conditions, but the result is of a piece with their other recordings.
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever sparked quite a buzz in underground circles with a sound that came off as a curious mélange of early R.E.M....
“Pearl Like You,” the short opening track on Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s third album Endless Rooms, opens a door and hints at a slower, dreamier sound than the broiling, agile, guitar-driven pop found on the Australian band’s 2020-released sophomore album, Sideways to New Italy. But the next four tracks quickly dispel that notion and reveal the same raw energy that, in some ways, is more dense, a little more polished and certainly more ambitious.
Aussie dolewave legends Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever serve up more of the same on new album Endless Rooms
By weaving in and out of broader and more intimate concerns, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever's 'Endless Rooms' possesses a wide scope that ties together.
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Endless Rooms review: Endless Rooms, diminishing returns?