Rolling Blackouts, Coastal Fever – Endless Rooms review

The idea of a lock down album has long become reductive; whilst most confinements were in a basic sense physically much the same, our experiences of it were as different as people. Such are the go-slow vagiaries of the current industry model that works written in that broad span of time are continuing to reach us, and Rolling Blackouts, Coastal Fever‘s third album Endless Rooms is another.

That’s only one aspect of what is a more complicated story however; the cover features a house constructed in the 1970’s by band members the Russo brothers parents, a location which became their recording base once freed up from Melbourne’s draconian rules on human contact. Previously the quintet had been sharing basic demos, but the property’s unique acoustics gave this primitive demo material new and completely unexpected dimensions.

What emerges is their finest album to date, interspersed occasionally with lyrical anger directed at the country’s right wing government but musically the ideas re-energise a familiar groove; the band’s few critics would suggest a previous weakness for repetition, but Endless Rooms is their indie template cast in a grand redux. At this peak songs like Tidal River, Saw You At The Eastern Beach and Dive Deep are all worthy of the admittedly meaningless title of their career high, whilst the rest are consistently as tuneful as they’re thoughtful. A lock down album this isn’t – but excellent it is.

You can read a full review here.