TV Colours - Purple Skies, Toxic Rivers LP

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