Photo by Mayah Salter
A frantic yet tightly controlled blend of jagged guitars, booming horns and uncompromising vocal delivery, Coldwave captures the abstract in life’s most mundane moments. Today the Australia based post-punk six piece release their first singles for 2024, the AA-side The Ants / Italia ’06, together with a video for “The Ants”.
“The Ants” is tightly coiled and unwinds itself like an emo-tinged prequel to their 2021 single “Plagiarise”, with expansively layered bars peppered throughout. “We returned to a really comfortable place writing this song,” says vocalist Harrison Evans. “It’s built around reminiscing on childhood, and is a bit of a soul-searching expedition around the realisation that you’re one of many”.
On “Italia ’06” Coldwave open the song playing with negative space and spoken word, before the aural spike strip is laid down and explodes in the second half. It’s the more narrative-driven song of the two and references the classic ‘Aussie battler’ trope – “someone who feels hard done by in a social or cultural bubble where life is actually pretty good” – through the lens of a penalty wrongly awarded to Italy during the 2006 World Cup, or, a moment that ‘broke Australia’.
The Ants / Italia ’06 was produced and recorded by Bonnie Knight (Amyl & The Sniffers, Angie McMahon, ENOLA) and mixed by James Trevascus (Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, Billy Nomates, RVG).
Coldwave broke onto the Tandanya/Adelaide scene in 2020 and released their debut EP Same Window, Different House in 2023. They’ve continued to evolve rapidly, welcoming new collaborators, exploring experimental instrumentation, and building a national audience, while remaining steadfastly loyal to their home community. They were recently named triple j Unearthed Feature Artist, performed at Aussie’s iconic Laneway Festival and Bigsound 2023. They’ll be showcasing at SXSW Sydney 2024 and touring Australia next month with more routing in the works.
The Ants / Italia ’06 is out now via P.A.K. Records. Listen / share here.
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