Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever (or Rolling Blackouts C.F., for those pressed for time) came together in 2014 over cold pizza and a bedroom jam session. And while that may be the recipe for many a cover of “Redemption Song,” the Melbourne quintet’s debut single, “Clean Slate,” demonstrates the group’s sophisticated pop senses.
The singers—there are three of them, named Tom, Joe W., and Fran, and none of these guys are giving out their last names—rally around Joe R. and Marcel’s motorik rhythm. The trio trade off short verses, tagging their lines with the song’s title and raving up on countrified guitars between them. In a statement, Fran says that the group took inspiration from the way “bands like Orange Juice and Style Council built this aesthetic of imagined continental sophistication” in their music; consider “Clean Slate” a raucous picture of an imagined heartland earnestness.
The details of the group’s debut mini-LP, Talk Tight, are scarce, but the record will be out sometime in early 2016.
