Alps of New South Wails.
February 3, 2011, 0 comments
Seriously! Did somebody say “summer”? Outside my window, the sky has decided to showcase its “Berlin grey”, which is, in case you’ve never been here in January, the greyest grey imaginable, yet my inbox is slowly turning into a beach. After Colorado’s Moon Tides yesterday, a couple of hours ago I received another pretty sandy mail, this time by New South Wales resident Chris Hearn, who has been making music as Alps for the last six years. Chris is about to release his fourth album Alps of New South Wails (after Alps of New South Wales in 2006 and Alps of New South Whales in 2009, oh yes indeed), and the two songs he sent over are purest, sundrenched and hazy bedroom indie pop goodness, slightly distorted with an all-over lo-fi feel to it, but most strikingly with melodies that are mind-meltingly pretty to an extent that one could almost suspect some kind of sneering at us Europeans and North Americans who are still stuck in deepest wintertime.
The album itself – which you can stream and pre-order here – is considerably more diversified, with some other tracks where Chris’ lush guitar play gets superseded by synth or organ patterns, but it never completely abandons its concept of being made for days of sunshine, going to the beach and swimming in the deep blue sea – or, indeed, for just sailing away.
