I’ve had a deep appreciation for music that has found its way to New Jersey from Australia for about as long as I’ve known about punk rock, first discovering bands like The Eastern Dark, Exploding White Mice and The Celibate Rifles when I was in grade school. 

Three decades later, contemporary albums by Ooga Boogas, Exhaustion and Native Cats traveled across continents to WPRB and were each highlights of my 2013 radio shows.

Which leads us to TV Colours, a band cut from a similarly tremendous cloth I likely would have never heard were it not for a throwaway comment I made on-line under a friend’s exhaustive “Best of 2013” list about how the year was yet another great one for groups from Oz.

“This is a really good album by TV Colours from Canberra, which is like our Washington DC,” a stranger added plainly.

I pressed play on the link provided and by two songs in I knew I was listening to something special.

“Purple Skies, Toxic River” is a record I would have loved when I first encountered Aussie punk and it is an album that still thrills me now. It is an LP for “the kids” and about “the kids,” capturing the electrifying, agonizing, alienating, turgid miasma of youth. I want to put it in the ears of every kid with tattered jeans and badges on their jackets to reassure them that it will take longer than they like but eventually it all will be fine. 

Made by enigmatic perfectionist Bobby Kill, TV Colours’ debut was six years in the making. It is full of teenage anthems, overdriven guitars, and unrelenting drum machines trying to outrun the sirens.

“Purple Skies, Toxic River” saw previous release in Australia by Dream Damage and was pressed by the French label XVIII, where it received rave reviews, several of which are quoted below.

This issue courtesy Comedy Minus One is the first time it has been available in North America with any ease. 

500 vinyl copies and digital downloads through all popular providers. 

My favorite record of 2013 is now your favorite album of this calendar year.

Let’s hit the freeway.

Jon Solomon
March 2015

TV Colours - "Lost Highway"

from the forthcoming album "Foremost & Fair" on Richie Records // TestosterTunes

release date April 28 2015

testostertunes.bigcartel.com

distributed by Revolver/Midheaven

HOME BLITZ -- "I'm That Key" (Foremost & Fair/ 2015)

The Flood

Mike Pace and the Child Actors is the new project from Mike Pace, formerly of Oxford Collapse.

thechildactorsband@gmail.com

The Flood

Mike Pace

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