What’s been tickling our fancy for the past six months? We asked some of our critics to weigh in on their favourite local releases of the year so far.

René Schaefer

ZOND
ZOND (LP, R.I.P Society Records)
This is stupendous, pummeling masterpiece that pretty much sets a new standard for noise rock in this or any other country. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object. The resulting sound is ZOND.
Read René’s full review here.

Crabsmasher
Thick Mosquito Sky (Cassette, Monstera Deliciosa)
Proving that improvised music doesn’t have to an unlistenable, tuneless mess, Crabsmasher delight in the still wide-open possibilities of doing something new with standard rock instrumentation. Reinventing the wheel in four dimensions.
Read René’s full review here.

Cured Pink
Cured Pink (LP, independent)
Nihilism and freedom are equally important in the work of Brisbane musician Andrew McLellan. A slow and intense crawl through the murky depths of human existence that revels in its own obsolescence and trashy noise. Not for the fainthearted!

Kim Salmon & The Surrealists
Grand Unifying Theory (LP, Low Transit Industries)
The title says it all. Salmon not only manages to sum up where he’s been for the last three decades, but also sets himself new goals. The 25-minute title track is an exploration of free jazz and Krautrock that is utterly compelling. A masterpiece from an artist who refuses to stand still.
Read René’s full review here.

The Bad Luck Charms
Live At The Brisbane Hotel (LP, Rough Skies Records)
A posthumous live album from one of Tasmania’s most exciting post-punk pop bands. Equally full of bile and sweetness, this album stands as a testament to a group that should have been huge. It’s also a great tribute to Hobart – the city that both inspires and exasperates songwriter Julian Teakle.
Read René’s full review here.

Ian Rogers

Whitehorse
Document 250407 (Cassette, Sweat Lung/Sabbatical)
Recorded live back in 2007 but released earlier this year for the band's national tour, this tape destroys. I bought it on a whim but it hasn't left my stereo all year. My skull actually glows a little when I have it on.

Blackboned Angel
The Witch Must Be Destroyed (LP, Conspiracy Records)
This is a world of tar black, slow moving molasses but I can still listen to it on the bus. I'd like to think that says more about Campbell Kneale's ability to make drone/doom as exciting as it is monolithic, but maybe I just listen to too much of this stuff and now have an unnaturally high tolerance for it.

Firewitch
Liars (LP, We Empty Rooms)
A reissue, but who wouldn't want to listen to dual bass stoner jams from Melbourne's yesteryear when they're as nicely presented as they are in this package.

Do The Robot
Mid-Centuary (Cassette, RR Records)
Brisbane duo Do The Robot are a band perfectly suited to cassette. In the past their recorded output has lagged behind them, often documenting already obsolescent ideas and lineups. Here, they present almost exactly where they are and just as well, as their unique brand of dubbed-out shoegaze has never sounded better.

Seja
We Have Secrets by Nobody Cares (LP, Rice Is Nice)
This is the type of sunny afternoon synth pop I always imagined Seja played at home by herself for herself. Now we all get to hear it and thank god, it's beautiful.

Doug Wallen

Circle Pit
Bruise Constellation (LP, Timberyard/Shock)
Seeing Circle Pit play, one can wonder where the songs are hiding amid all that fuzz and posturing. Right here, it turns out, and they’re criminally good. Forget any buzz or backlash and just home in on the melodies and lyrics, which are perfectly intelligible.

Love Connection
Love Connection (LP, Sensory Projects)
A makeshift band that’s since emerged as a noisy beast live, Love Connection on record is somehow distant and vague yet intimate and engaging. This is indie pop as a sustained, euphoric drone.

Otouto
Pip (LP, Two Bright Lakes/Remote Control)
Not often does art-pop manage to be at once tricky, deconstructive, and frightfully catchy. Melbourne’s Brown sisters and in-demand, kitchenware-utilising drummer Kishore Ryan do just that on their trio’s finely tuned debut.

Lindsay Phillips
Varning (LP, Departed Sounds)
Boasting a patchwork CV and uniquely fluttering voice, Phillips has come out of nowhere with this wrenching first album of gallows folk. It’s quite literally timeless.
Read Doug’s full review here.

Sally Seltmann
Heart That’s Pounding (LP, Shock)
Songwriting as therapy has been done before but Seltmann goes a step further, channelling her private insecurities into relatable lyrics and dreaming up orchestral lushness as a sort of security blanket we can all share. New Buffalo who?
Read Doug’s full review here.

Craig Mathieson

Eddy Current Suppression Ring
Rush to Relax (LP, Shock)
Made and released with their usual matter-of-fact attitude, Rush to Relax is ECSR’s most diverse record to date and now worthy of being called their best. From the furious fills taking all of a minute in ‘Walked Into a Corner’ to the extended hallucinatory repetition of ‘Second Guessing’, the quartet is wired for all kinds of sound.
Read Craig’s full review here.

Sianna Lee
Phoenix Propeller (LP, Enchanted)
Four years after Love Outside Andromeda entered terminal velocity, songwriter and vocalist Sianna Lee returns with this solemn, lacerating song cycle that puts aside the easy release of angry catharsis for tense invocations that serve as exhumations. Very uneasy listening.

Parades
Foreign Tapes (LP, Dot Dash)
Fluid never foundering, Foreign Tapes is a dizzying exercise in art pop: songs break up and remake themselves as voices, and their assumed identities, drop in and out; it’s a pleasure just trying to keep up. Bonus points for the unaffected lo-fi production that refuses to be complex for the genre’s sake.

Pikelet
Stem (LP, Chapter Music/Love & Mercy)
Aided and abetted by her acquisition of a band, Evelyn Morris takes Pikelet from the bedroom to outer space, with Stem taking in rumbling dub, harmony laden pastoral folk and vintage sci-fi soundscapes. It’s ambitious but never anonymous – it still is, and only could be, Morris.

Sia
We Are Born (LP, Inertia)
Get happy. The Adelaide expatriate’s fifth album puts aside melancholic electronica for a joyous embrace of funk-pop flexibility and idiosyncratic momentum. The songs still found strange corners of relationships to unpick, but their pleasure in getting there and back is infectious.

Trevor Block

GOD
GOD (LP, Afterburn)
Melbourne's legendary ’80s teen punks finally giving the youth of today a chance to hear what all the fuss was about – and to set some history straight.

Dollsquad
Lethal In Leather (LP, Radio Rocks)
After some delay in actually getting the damn thing out, this Steve Lucas-produced effort from the Melbourne garage girl gang kicks arse in some serious go-go boots.

The Brutals
The Honeymoon Period (LP, Half A Cow)
A posthumous souvenir of a great live act, who reformed for some shows to mark its release. Dreamy, rockin' and sundazed in the best way.
Read Trevor’s full review here.

Wicked City
With Wings (LP, Impedance)
Second album from a noisy-as-fuck trio who mine a harsh and tough seam of punchy rock stuff. Taken on its own terms, this is pretty much flawless.

Hellmenn
Thermonuclear Sonic Burnout (LP, Junkyard/Missing Link)
A vital part of Sydney's back catalogue, this is a career-spanning collection from a band who maintained their rage until the end. Comes wrapped in some fine artwork too.

Darren Levin

Richard In Your Mind
My Volcano (LP, Rice Is Nice)
Ten zillion ideas compacted into 13 perfectly formed pop songs.

Kim Salmon & The Surrealists
Grand Unifying Theory (LP, Low Transit Industries)
Brings new meaning to the term “power trio”.

Otouto
Pip (LP, Two Bright Lakes/Remote Control)
A record that reminds you how pop music is even more instantly gratifying when it doesn’t go from A to B.

Sally Seltmann
Heart That’s Pounding (LP, Shock)
In which our domestic goddess Seltmann finds validation and self worth in the everyday.

Crow
Arcane (LP, Nonzero Records)
First record for the original line-up since the Steve Albini-produced My Kind of Pain (1993). They may have mellowed out a little, but it’s still a welcome return.

Babette Gladney

Otouto
Pip (LP, Two Bright Lakes/Remote Control)
Otouto's debut album is populated by songs that are both highly developed and distinctively spare. Propelled by a pair of beautiful voices and a deeply inventive sonic palette, it's the mark of a pop trio compelled to experimentation - with a gravitas situated somewhere between adolescence and mellow adulthood. Even with its weaker moments, it's a unique, magnetic thing.

Fabulous Diamonds
II (LP, Chapter Music)
While not quite as memorable (and significantly more grown up) than their impeccable debut, this album retains the buzzing psychedelics and intelligent percussion that makes Fabulous Diamonds one of Australia's most distinctive bands ever.

Magic Silver White
‘Knew That I Loved You’ (Single, Love & Mercy)
Pure electronic pop pleasure that's halfway between the bathtub and the dancefloor.
Read Babette’s full review here.

The Ruby Suns
Fight Softly (LP, Sub Pop)
The Ruby Suns, best seen live, finally bring their electronic arrangements into the recorded domain.
Read Babette’s full review here.

Alice Hui-Sheng Chang and Rosalind Hall
From My Winter Snow Your Summer Fire Until My Autumn Rain Your Spring Sunshine
While the noise artists and doom bands use all kinds of pedals, haircuts and costumes to seem scary, Alice Hui-Sheng Chang and Rosalind Hall frighten them all away with little more than a saxophone and some of the most disturbing throat noises you might ever hear. Kingsmill is crazy for leaving this “off rotation”.

Tim Scott

Bed Wettin' Bad Boys
'Best Band In Sydney/Worst Band In Sydney' (Single, R.I.P Society)
A record of great bratty and snotty rock.
Read Tim’s full review here.

Dead Farmers
Go Home (LP, R.I.P. Society)
'Bad Time', 'Sons of Thunder' and 'Slow Time', are speaker destroying songs of sonic power. A record that is able to match the ferocious fury of the band’s live show.

ZOND
ZOND (LP, R.I.P Society)
Frightening, intense and pummelling songs that leave the listener weary. The twin guitar attack of Marney MacLeod and Justin Fuller is the best in the country.

Constant Mongrel/Taco Leg
Constant Mongrel/Taco Leg (Split cassette, Wuss)
East vs West. Two new young bands with different takes on punk rock, but whose loose and scrappy styles ultimately make for a rad tape.

Tame Impala
'Solitude Is Bliss’ (Canyons remix, Modular)
Beanbags.

Andrew McMillen

The Gin Club
Deathwish (LP, Plus One Records)
With nine songwriters in the mix across the genres of rock, folk and pop, The Gin Club's fourth full-length could easily have fallen victim to too-many-cooks syndrome. It didn't. Instead, it's one of the best Australian albums of recent memory.
Read Andrew’s review here.

Halfway
An Outpost Of Promise (LP, Plus One Records)
This Brisbane alt-country act contain as many members as The Gin Club, but on this release, the songwriting of core duo John Busby and Chris Dale is informed by the direction of Go-Betweens co-founder (turned album producer) Robert Forster. The result is 10 finely-honed songs that bear a homely, barroom feel.
Read Andrew’s review here.

Nikko
The Warm Side (LP, Tenzenmen)
Another Brisbane band - swear I'm not biased. Post-rock with vocals done well.
Read Andrew’s review here.

Faux Pas
Noiseworks (LP, Sensory Projects/Heroics)
Outrageous, otherworldly electronic pop written in a Melbourne bedroom. An outstanding debut.

Parades
Foreign Tapes (LP, Dot Dash/Remote Control)
This one was overwhelmingly dense upon first listen, and took a few listens to reveal its genius. Unconventional pop songs dressed up in the always-awkward “art rock” tag. I'm glad I gave it time. You should too.

Shaun Prescott

Naked on the Vague
Heaps of Nothing (LP, Siltbreeze)
This album should have been called “Heaps of Imagination”, but then nobody would have been interested.
Read Shaun’s full review here.

Circle Pit
Bruise Constellation (LP, Timberyard/Siltbreeze)
Sometimes you really want to climb a mountain and politely fucking request that young people stop writing Stones-aping rock music. But then a record like Bruise Constellation comes along and proves that it actually turns out really awesome sometimes. Very rarely, though. Read Shaun’s full review here.

Blank Realm
Heatless Ark (LP, Not Not Fun)
Probably the best “psychedelic” band in the country, and don’t let anyone who listens to Tame Impala tell you otherwise.
Read Shaun’s full review here.

Absolute Boys
‘Minimal Wage’ (12” single, Imperative Residence)
The A-side of this 12”, ‘Minimal Wage’, sounds like one song crushed into another and left in the sun. On the one hand Absolute Boys are staunch and boyishly technical, on the other apparitional and melancholic. Or maybe angelic. Definitely broke. It’s brooding, boisterous and unexpectedly strange.

Milk Teddy
‘Going to Sri Lanka’ (7” single, Knock Yr Socks Off)
This charmingly inoffensive ditty is so fey and, well, charming, that it’s almost reprehensible in its appeal. Somebody get this goddamned song out of my head.

Dom Alessio

Otouto
Pip (LP, Two Bright Lakes/Remote Control)
Hazel Brown’s voice gets me every time. But it’s not just that, because the trio – rounded out by sister Martha and drummer Kishore Ryan – have created a fantastic record that subverts pop music.

Parades
Foreign Tapes (LP, Dot Dash)
This is a record I find myself consistently returning to. Layered to the hilt, full of intertwining melodies and bolstered by an arsenal of percussion.

Paint Your Golden Face
Paint Your Golden Face (LP, Tenzenmen)
A simple record – it’s pretty much just drums and voice – but it’s such an idiosyncratic LP. It really sounds like nothing else released this year.

Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire!
Sea Priest (LP, Dot Dash)
Another LP I keep returning to. It’s grown on me a lot since its release at the start of this year. A oblique take on indie-rock.
Read Dom’s review here.

Pikelet
Stem (LP, Chapter Music/Love & Mercy)
Quirky with an endearing heart, Evelyn Morris and her band of merry men really turned pop music on its head with Stem.
Read Dom’s review here.