Ostraaly - Misery Guests LP

I don’t wanna dredge up old ghosts here, but in my mind Ostraaly’s Misery Guests fits as a certain bookend of Dolewave that also maybe brings the half joking micro-genre term further into focus.

Originally released on Tenth Court some five years on from the coining of the term and now having a return as an LP on US-underground-heavyweights Siltbeeeze almost five years later. Musically, it’s all there—the thick Australian accents, lackadaisical playing, and a kind of post-Velvet Underground drone of violin and ragged guitar sounds in the vein of Dick Diver, School Of Radiant Living, Lower Plenty, or original labelmates Dag and Wireheads.

In the liner notes, drummer Leonie Brialey recounts how the late songwriter Katherine Daly had a rule that albums should strike a balance between political and love songs (then joking that perhaps this album skews slightly further towards the love song balance). Largely recorded on Invasion Day 2019 (and with that great band name), there’s a conscious reckoning with the complicated nature of living in the inner burbs in the here and now.

Great to see what feels to me like an important and criminally overlooked album in recent memory get another international run!

-Mitch