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Sia, Washington, Tkay Maidza and more: Australia's best new music for June

Bad//Dreems – Desert Television

For fans of: the Go-Betweens, Midnight Oil, Divinyls

There’s an uneasy, isolated air to the music of Bad//Dreems, informed by their Adelaide home and that city’s many mysteries, and further infused with the Australian rock sound of the 1970s. It was insular, dense music far removed from the overseas boardroom meetings that dictated the glossy, soulless sounds of American radio. Bad//Dreems recorded their first two records with Mark Opitz, who produced classics by Cold Chisel, INXS and AC/DC, and while his fingerprints seem to mark this new release, the song was in fact put down live in a dive studio in Hackney during a UK tour. Whatever the recording location, there’s no mistaking the sunburnt sound throughout, with sonic nods towards the Scientists, Radio Birdman, the Saints, and other early Australian punk, in both the dishevelled delivery and ragged-yet-tight musicianship.

For more: Check out their third album Doomsday Ballet, released last October.

Related: Jack Colwell: Swandream review – theatrical, raw songs packed with pain and soaring survival

Sia – Together

For fans of: Rihanna, Ariana Grande, Motown

Sia Furler has spent the past few years lending her quirky speaking voice to animated films such as My Little Pony and Peter Rabbit, which goes some way to explaining her slowed-down music schedule of late. The Adelaide artist hasn’t been otherwise idle: she has simply been shooting her feature directorial debut, Music, which stars Kate Hudson, Furler’s proxy Maddie Ziegler, and promises 10 new Sia songs to boot. Together is the first taste of this coming windfall; a bright and inspirational pop tune that speaks of rainbows, angels, and Stevie Wonder in the lyrics, quotes the Lion King for kicks, and finds Sia leading a choir of children, Pied Piper style, through a schoolyard chant of a chorus. The song was co-written by Jack Antonoff, whose recent work with Lana Del Rey, Lorde and Taylor Swift has made him the most sought-after collaborator in pop; it’s no surprise he and Furler have an easy chemistry here.

For more: The film and soundtrack Music will be released in September.

Cut Copy – Love Is All We Share

For fans of: Portishead, Tame Impala, Roxy Music

Cut Copy have always bounced between future-forward club tracks and gorgeous, warm walls of vintage synths, draped in dreamy vocal ribbons. This is most successfully realised on the band’s 2011 classic Zonoscope, a psychotropic record with a 60s sound, sharpened with 80s technology, and mastered for an iPod. Whereas Cut Copy’s most popular songs seem to turn on a dime, arrangement-wise, Love Is All We Share laconically lingers for a luxurious six minutes, beds of analogue keys hugging half-asleep vocals imploring us to pay attention to our universal similarities rather than focus on our differences – a song for the times if ever there was one. Cut Copy have been sitting on this track for a year, but given the current climate, it seems like the breath of air we deserve right now.

For more: Cut Copy’s sixth album will be out sometime in 2020.

Washington – Dark Parts

For fans of: Kylie Minogue, the Cardigans, the Dissociatives

With each release, Washington has strayed further into glossy pop territory, discarding her piano-led indie songs for lush production pieces that favour dark synths, frenetic rhythms, and shifting song structures. Dark Parts is a strong statement of intent: a disorienting time signature at odds with dancefloors, computer-warped harmonies that sound like a robotic Tony Robbins, keys that drunkenly wobble and sway. There’s no discerning hook for a while, relying instead on a rhythmic and hypnotic vocal to hammer its way into your skull. Then a rush of 80s synths flutter in, and Washington unleashes an earworm chorus that is up there with her very finest moments. By the beautifully shimmering bridge breakdown you’ll be spellbound, your finger hovering above the “repeat” button, your brain needing to hear more.

For more: Check out the video for the song, hand-drawn and animated by Megan Washington.

Tkay Maidza – Shook

For fans of: Nicki Minaj, Lil Kim, Timbaland

Tkay Maidza’s 2016 debut album was one of the best Australian releases of the decade, the perfect calling card for this insanely gifted artist. This slickly produced set was followed by an eight-song EP that upped the hip-hop quotient, and a handful of singles that pushed her further in this direction. Shook is another belting hip-hop track and another assured victory: a minimal beat indebted to Timbaland’s barely-there productions of the turn of the century, with Maidza delivering bars and bars of dexterous, effortless rap. It’s her first single since signing to legendary UK label 4AD, home to Grimes, Pixies and Purity Ring, and acts as an apt introduction to her pure hip-hop skills, if not her excellent singing voice and ear for a hook. The bonkers outro is an incredible left-turn, reminiscent of Kanye West’s bolted-on song endings, and a nice harbinger of further experiments in sound.

For more: Check out her 2019 singles: Awake and I DC IF U BE DED

Sweet Whirl – Closing Time

For fans of: Carole King, Holly Throsby, Sean Lennon

Upon hearing Melbourne songwriter Sweet Whirl aka Esther Edquist’s exquisite debut album, it becomes obvious why her first few recordings came as lo-fi cassettes. This is deeply personal music, perfect when housed in such an intimate artefact as a tape – designed to be carried in pockets, studied in solitude, worn out through repeated listens, warped by the weather. “I’ve drank too much from the lives of others / Their sorrows have grown stale / Cluttering the table,” she sings of taking on third party pains. It’s a sentiment not often shared in song. Edquis attempts to emotionally distance herself from the song’s subject, despite the very intimacy of the song itself. A stark, plodding keyboard provides the only musical accompaniment – a ghost chanting softly as Edquist gently explains why she is leaving.

For More: How Much Works is out now.

Ice Cream Hands – No Weapon but Love

For fans of: Crowded House, Teenage Fanclub, Paul Kelly

For power pop fans across the world, Ice Cream Hands were a criminally underrated band, deserving of the type of transatlantic success their luckier peers found in inner-Melbourne pubs during the 90s. Thirteen years since what was touted as a comeback record, 2007’s The Good China, Ice Cream Hands return with this sparkling anthem to love and life. And, thankfully, they don’t try to reinvent the Rickenbacker with this tune, instead offering up the type of timeless pop they have always trafficked in: dreamy harmonies pulled from the Beatles playbook, jangling guitars that summon summers past, and a simple message of love which will never slide out of style. To quote their 1999 high point, this sound is sweeter than the radio.

For more: Ice Cream Hands’ sixth album will be out in late 2020.

Pure Milk – Pressure

For fans of: the Lucksmiths, Bright Eyes, Darren Hanlon

There’s a laconic country twang to this tune that is quite at odds to the restless anxiety of the lyrics. Gold Coast five-piece Pure Milk make music indebted to Dylan’s lighter records, to Silver Jews and the Saddle Creek roster, and like the aforementioned music, this song lives or dies on its lyrics. “No signs of life / Only remnants of living / How did I end up in this place?” sings Lewis Nitschinsk, and things don’t get any brighter as he reels through a laundry list of woes, from days that linger forever, to the ghost of a past lover that haunts him. Words like “restless”, “bored”, “awkward” and “anxiety” punctuate the malaise. At one point he lists attributes as if to convince himself of their worth. Sadness has never sounded this spritely.

For more: Check out their EP Self Improvement and recent single Conversations.

Pearl the Girl – Long Way Back

For fans of: M83, the Preatures, the Grates

This is music to drive down the coast to, windows down, a hurricane whipping your hair into your eyes as the song’s giddy momentum seemingly propels the car. With a relentless rhythm and joyous guitar lines chiming throughout, Long Way Back finds the Sydney songwriter building upon triple j fave Single Use Plastic with another hook-crammed jam that never takes its foot off the pedal. Pearl expertly uses space during the verses to suck the air out of the arrangement, a plodding bass and the slight grit of her vocals marking time, until a rush of stabbing one-note guitar parts, and chunky open chords push the chorus into the stratosphere. This is an exciting rock song.

For more: Pearl the Girl’s new EP is released 16 June. Until then, check out her debut album Just a Phase.

Related: Sydney Opera House's livestreamed concert series could be a game-changer for local bands

Glenn Richards – Hi Gene!

For fans of: 80s Bowie, Talking Heads, Lou Reed

As songwriter and singer of Melbourne’s Augie March, Glenn Richards has put six excellent albums out into the world, including the stately Sunset Studies, currently celebrating its 20th anniversary. He even wrote a bonafide hit with 2006’s crashing waltz One Crowded Hour, voted both APRA Song of the Year and No 1 song in triple j’s Hottest 100, so it’s surprising that until now, Richards hadn’t released a solo single. Hi Gene! certainly makes a statement. Those expecting the haunted timbre of Augie March will instead be greeted by high-pitched voices spelling out the song title as if from an evil edition of Sesame Street. “I like my music clean,” he chants as if hypnotised by the march of modernity that has led us to polishing all the edges of our art. “I like my body smooth / I like my genitals shaved”, he adds one verse later, over a repeating music box melody. This is a darkly comedic treatise about the times; well-drawn and ultimately a little mean. It’s also the first gambit of what will hopefully prove to be an odd, challenging solo career.

For more: Glenn Richards will release a solo album this year, and Augie March are in the process of rescheduling their Sunset Studies anniversary tour.