Pop Filter

A continuation and reconfiguration of the late, great Aussie band The Ocean Party, Pop Filter permeated the pandemic year with not one, but two great records as an introduction. They’ve kept steady over the years, filling out 2023 and 2024 with their brand of bare, emotional honesty. For their latest, the band plays it lower key, conjuring up a limited cassette release recorded amongst the machines at songwriter Lachlan Denton’s (Ciggie Witch, Partner Look) echoing workshop. The record took shape over a longer period of time, coming to life over a full year between the boundaries of family and day-job duties. The relaxed atmosphere has the band feeling their freshest in years. It’s not as polished as the synth-pop paradise of Banksia, and nowhere near as buttoned down as last year’s Ray and Lorraine’s. It’s frayed, but not fractured. The record lets the band play through some of their irresistible impulses without worrying about sanding, and they come out all the better for it.

They’re still showing the tan lines of their Aussie indie past, but through sawing violins, velvet dramatics, and a live to tape atmosphere, the band’s able to hit reset on the past couple of years. The album started out with a simple goal of being an acoustic record, but its evolution into something stranger and more fragrant becomes evident from the opening track. Tipping in with spoken word staccato, the record ropes in machinery clatter and voice memos aesthetics among the uprights and hollow-body strums. Tangled in a web like Wireheads covering Jabobites or New Bums doing their best back room Bunnymen just for kicks, the album leverages ease in ways that remind me of why the new Aussie indie wave has been so appealing. A curio on the surface, but a stunner at heart, Trade Place Tape winds up way more than just an excersise in acoustics.

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