Heart Beach

Life in Tasmania seems sad, somehow. Many of its bands – notably the Native Cats – write this slightly edgy, depressed music, vaguely alienated from both friends and strangers, driven to a sort of accepting despair by their location, its dislocation from mainland Australia, both geographical and cultural.

“We’ve got to get out of this place, even if for a holiday,” sing Jonathon McCarthy and Claire Jansen in mournful harmony on Holiday, the wonderfully special second song on Heart Beach’s debut album, desperate for change but not desperate enough to leave friends and family behind. “Wish I was in Bali/ Wish I was in Hawaii.”

Location can really influence music. You can almost feel the dusty paths and sun-flecked cornfields under your bare feet in the Go-Betweens’ Cattle and Cane. In Manchester, England, where the rain is a constant low hum in the background, you can sense the dank basements and grey streets in the doom-steeped music of Joy Division. Likewise, closer to home. It’s no coincidence the beautiful cadences and jangly guitars of the early 1980s New Zealand guitar bands on Flying Nun had their origins in rain-swept Dunedin. You can taste the melancholy that comes from facing another weekend of shuttered shops and water-drenched parklands.

Heart Beach’s music is sad, minimal. Their home town of Hobart is pleasant enough – away from avaricious developers and moonscape mining towns – but it sometimes feels like its residents are slowly going stir crazy, trapped by isolation (up here in Brisbane, where I’m writing, we know the feeling).

The music is stately, slow – McCarthy and Jansen’s ever-present harmonies on vocals and guitars underpinned by Christopher Wessing’s loose, considerate drumming. Not a beat is wasted. Guitars shimmer and are left to linger in the breeze, magisterial in their own way, on songs like the glacial Away, reminiscent of old school indie guitar bands such as Galaxie 500 and Echo and the Bunnymen. “I was late today/ I don’t really care/ It’s always the same.”

It would have been interesting to hear what Heart Beach might have achieved with any sort of budget – this album was self-funded and self-released after Arts Tasmania knocked back a grant application – but even without, it possesses a downhearted grandeur which is very becoming.

The feeling of wanting to get away – if only for a holiday – seeps through the 10 tracks here, but in such a subtle manner you wonder if the band are even aware of it. The lyrics of the final song, Faces, echo Holiday and turn even darker. “Go to work and I come home/ But time is taking longer/ Wish it all away so quickly/ And I wish that I looked younger.”

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The music likewise sounds pining, plaintive. Office nearly breaks down under the weight of its own emotion, Jansen and McCarthy’s voices separating for one brief moment as the guitar line sounds out a refrain that is surely borrowed from Joy Division’s seminal first album Unknown Pleasures. “They called me to say/ You can start on Monday/ Been planning my escape/ At least I get paid,” the pair laconically sing.

Don’t take too much heed of descriptions of this as bleak. Like The Smiths, like Joy Division, this music is oddly and often wonderfully uplifting. Almost every song starts with a drawn-out chord poignant enough to break Rupert Murdoch’s stony heart. It takes a brave, thoughtful band to sound this vulnerable. Heart Beach are beautiful, beautiful, melancholy babies. Treasure them.

• Heart Beach’s debut LP is out now via Bandcamp - The Guardian

BY LUCY SHANAHAN | AUGUST 25TH, 2016 5:21:PM EST

Tasmanian self-described "skuzz pop" trio Heart Beach will follow-up their self-titled 2015 debut with new album Kiss Your Face this November.

While the album's lead single "Counting" followed the rhythmic punch of the band's previous work, follow-up "Brittle" steers closer towards the fuzzy edges, with Claire McCarthy's crisp, floating pop-bent vox emerging through the dominate wall of melancholy. Equally drawing from both the brutal starkness of Echo and The Bunnymen and the unhinged guitar-orchestrated chaos of the Pixies, "Brittle" aches with anxious innocence, meditating on the excitement of first experiences, the freshness of breakups and dwelling on a new love's heartbreak ("I feel a little brittle now, I didn't think that you knew how"). Voices wane in octaves — open, perfectly mismatched in tone, and endearing in their harmonious blend.

Kiss Your Face is due November 11th via Spunk Records, with "Brittle" is available to listen below, exclusive to Rolling Stone Australia.

- See more at: http://rollingstoneaus.com/music/post/heart-beach-brittle-premiere/4651#sthash.3ByVOP3g.dpuf - Rolling Stone Australia

In case you haven’t heard of Heart Beach, they’re probably one of the great Oceanic exports…not from Sydney or Melbourne…they’re from Tasmania. They’ve slowly begun to unleash a few tracks from their forthcoming record, Kiss Your Face, and I think you deserve to spend a little bit of time with the group today. They trade male/female vocals throughout many of the album’s tracks, and ultimately leave you thirsting for more tunes. One of the tracks below popped up on a 7″ in March, but there’s a brand new one here to get you in the mood. Look for the LP to hit on November 11th via Spunk Records. - Austin Town Hall